I have fairly large breasts and have been wearing bras since the fourth grade. For some time, I felt ashamed when I was braless, as though my breasts were far from natural. I would even wear a bra when I slept because I thought they needed to always be covered.

When I got older and got to high school, I started to hate wearing bras. I was still ashamed to be braless, but I thought bras were uncomfortable and I could never find bras that really fit me properly. The joy in my day came when I took my bra off to go to sleep. Although I would no longer wear bras to sleep, I would still take them off to shower and then put them back on until I went to bed. I was never giving my breasts a break.

I was finally sized and told that my bra size was 36DD and that I would soon need to move into a DDD. This explained my discomfort during the day, because I was squeezing myself in to a 36C. My bra choices at this size were hideous.

I was finally wearing my size, but I was still relishing in the moments when my bra came off and I dreaded the ones when I put it on. I eventually stopped putting my bra on after the shower, but I would hear complaints about how my being braless, even while wearing a huge t-shirt, was inappropriate. God-forbid I make the decision to spend my Saturday at home and on the couch sans a bra, my mother would have a conniption about how that was not fair to my father or grandfather. I was making them uncomfortable.

I need an explanation on this. My boobs that are a natural and non-sexual part of my body, are making the men in my family uncomfortable. Keep in mind that I am not shirtless in front of them. Doesn't really make sense does it?

What makes less sense is that these men are not telling me of their discomfort or of any offense, and they are not shy about speaking their minds, but the women in my family are. So I am being told that the men I am related to and that are way older than me, might look at my chest in a sexual manner. That makes me uncomfortable. If my family is turned on by my body or may be turned on by my body, that really should not be up to me to fix. That is their problem.

So often I am told, when I decide that I am not feeling the constricting bra, that I am trying to convert people to my way of thinking and that they are old school. I can understand having values that they would like me to respect, but respect me while explaining them. Have the man that is uncomfortable, tell me that they would like me to put on a bra because my chest makes them uncomfortable, and I will be respectful. Do not motion to my chest and exclaim, "Really?" and then berate me for being disrespectful. This is my body and it is my choice whether or not I wear a bra. I will not be ashamed of my natural body by being forced to cover it for people that should definitely not be staring at it in the first place.

My decisions about what I do with my body, how and when I cover it, and what it looks like should not revolve around what makes men comfortable or uncomfortable. Your wearing Axe nauseates me, but I won't demand you not wear it around me. If your hair is greasy, I won't demand that you wash your hair because I like it that way. None of what you do is up to me, so why do you think you can decide if I wear a bra while binge watching Netflix?

If my bras weren't so damn expensive, I might have burned them in protest.