Every girl probably remembers the first time they had to change in front of someone other than a sister, step into a communal shower after a gym class, shop for their first bra, or the shock that someone could be the same age as flat-chested you and have the hugest breasts you had ever seen!
“I had never spent the night at anyone’s house. I knew no one,” said Geraldine Padgett (1954-56). “I had no friends at camp and the other girls were not from my area. One of the biggest things for me was changing clothes in front of girls! In those times, you didn’t even lounge in your pajamas and we showered alone. I had never dressed in front of people and I was very modest.”
“I do remember, just as my friends did, that we all wanted to be around when one girl was putting on her bra. Her boobs would fall into the cups and then she would just snap it on and pull up the straps. We had never been around girls who were not modest. I think we bothered her “laughed Dorothy Niedzielski (1946-47).
Pat Kula said the memory of her early forties bra story at camp still brings howls of laughter to her bunkmates that witnessed the same act of the girl with the biggest boobs stepping into her bra from the floor. There was not much room for privacy for the girl who was cups ahead of her flat-chested roommates!
The second or third year Susan Prieskorn was at camp (1966-72), she got a training bra. “I was going away to camp and it was my first bra. They were new from the Ben Franklin store. I had packed them at the bottom of the foot locker, so my mother would not find them, but she did find them and I was mortified. I must have been ten or eleven. Of course, by the time I got to Senior Village, everyone started going without their bras. It was the burn the bra era, except when I hit puberty I was larger and running down a hill with a large chest didn’t work as well. My counselor tried to coach me to wear a bra.”
One camper said she was always behind in the development department. Her bra resembled an undershirt and the girls teased her, and she did not know about periods, despite having two sisters. On the last day she cried because she didn’t want to leave, but never returned to camp because of the teasing.
Dorothy Bonnen (1942) said her daughter came home from camp one summer and said everyone had a bra except her. Other girls remember that they returned to camp wearing a bra the following summer for the first time.
Dawn Sohigian (1966-74) remembered a counselor with the biggest boobs she had ever seen in her life. “She could not find a bathing suit to fit her. We told to to go in with her bra and pants because we were all girls and we didn’t care, but she wouldn’t. So, we sewed two bras together, tie-dyed it and made her first bikini and she was thrilled and wore it!”
“One year there was a problem in hut three,” said Nancy Michelson (1962+). “A girl from New York came and we considered her a foreigner. I walked in and she was trying on some of my bras. It was a huge deal to me. It was so intimate. I called my Mom and cried for her to buy me new bras, that I was never putting them on after she did, so she drove to Birmingham and bought me beautiful new ones and mailed them to me.”
“The seventies was such an empowering time. We could say what we thought, we could wear a bra or not wear a bra and we all developed confidence in ourselves with no boys around,” said Priscilla Johns. (1968+) Debbie Tweedie (1965-72) arrived at camp to a new tradition. “When I became a C.I.T. the counselors had us “burn our bras”. We had to take them off and put them in our trunks and we couldn’t wear them until our parents picked us up.”
What “developing” story did you have at camp:)
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