Basic Trope: A female character is unhappy because she has a small chest.
- Straight: Alice is extremely unhappy because she has an A-cup chest.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice goes to extreme lengths to hide her small chest, including wearing extremely baggy clothes to make it appear like she's hiding a large chest.
- Alice is Driven to Suicide because she has a concave chest.
- Downplayed:
- Alice, while not happy about her small chest, doesn't make too much of a deal out of it, mostly just making self-deprecating jokes about how she could pass for a boy or something.
- Alice has a respectable bust size, but is still jealous of women with bigger ones.
- Alice seems vaguely disappointed while in the locker room, or other places where women change clothes together.
- Justified:
- People think Alice is underage because of her small chest, or she can't land a date because she's often compared to the contrasting Bobbi.
- Bonus points if Alice is Really 700 Years Old and stays as a first-grader physique forever, much to her dismay.
- People think Alice is underage because of her small chest...in a dirty way.
- Alice lives in a society where women with small breasts are seen as inferior to women with big breasts and gets teased/harassed badly because of it.
- Alice is still young, by the time she grows...
- Alice is often mistaken for a guy due to her lack of breasts.
- A flat chest is only part of the major issue that Alice is having with the body she was born with.
- Alice's breasts are too small to find any well-fitting bras, or her breasts forcefully make her to waste time at the children's department to look for designs that aren't too infantile.
- People think Alice is underage because of her small chest, or she can't land a date because she's often compared to the contrasting Bobbi.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Someone is worried Alice has this problem, but she doesn't seem to mind having a small chest, or she was just joking.
- It's shown that Bobbi has back troubles because of her overly large chest.
- Alice gets mad whenever someone calls her "washboard" — not because of her flat chest, but because her abs aren't toned enough for that yet.
- Alice has an A-cup chest and dislikes it, not because it's too small, but because he is a Transgender man who would rather be called Alan.
- Alice's insecurity about her bust size is initially assumed by others to be this, but then her clothes are removed to reveal that she has a buxom chest that she doesn't like.
- Double Subverted:
- But her boyfriend/chaser makes her extremely uncomfortable since he always Baby Talk with her and treats her in strange condescending ways. due to the fact that he is actually a Loophole Abuse pedophile who only likes her small breasts for a fetishized reason.
- Alternately, the joke gets her thinking about her breasts, leading to this trope.
- Alice doesn't care that giant boobs cause back troubles; she still envies Bobbi.
- ...But she gets mad when people confuse her gender and don't let her enter the women's restroom/locker room since she has toned muscles and lacks of breasts.
- Alice is actually a transgender woman and she still presents as "Alan" to avoid being harassed or something else.
- Parodied:
- Alice has a C-cup chest but all her friends have E-cups or greater, so she still complains at regular intervals about her lack of chest size.
- Alice has an H-cup chest but still thinks she's too small. The reason being that every other woman has I-cups and greater.
- Alice goes bonkers whenever she hears the word "flat", even when it's used in a context that has nothing to do with her.
- When asked about why she wants large breasts, Alice says she wants all the problems D-Cup Distress brings (back pains, expensive custom clothes, etc.). Turns out she just likes seeing how green the other side's grass is.
- Even some of the men have bigger chests than Alice does.
- All girls in this work have the same breast size and body type, but Alice still thinks her breasts are too small.
- Zig Zagged:
- Some days she feels inadequate. Other days, she doesn't mind at all. And once in a while, she is extremely happy that she doesn't have the same back troubles as Bobbi. And in some situations she even wish her breasts being completely absent for less attention from men.
- Alice has Poland syndrome
, which cause her underdevelopment of her one boob, much to her dismay, while another side is a gigantic buxom breast that she doesn't like whatsoever.
- Averted: Alice never has any issues regarding her bust size, or she is average sized or well-endowed.
- Enforced:
- Alice is the star of a new series aimed at younger girls, so she's given a smaller chest to appear younger to help her relate with the target audience.
- Alice is the star of a comic in a women's beauty magazine. Alice's experimenting with supposed methods for a bigger chest serves as a medium for the author's advice to women regarding that subject.
- Lampshaded: Alice looks down her shirt, and says to her breasts, "Where are you guys?"
- Invoked:
- The very busty Bobbi routinely flaunts herself around Alice to stir up feelings of inadequacy in Alice.
- Alice gets a job as a stripper or porn star, and since the laws don't allow seemingly underage people to work as sex workers, she starts worrying that her breast size won't allow her to pass the Censorship Bureau.
- Alice, tired of My Girl Is Not a Slut treatments and/or Lolicon fetishists due to her breasts size, starts seeking methods to make her become more busty.
- Exploited:
- Bobbi, of the Invoked example, notices Alice's preexisting angst, and flaunts herself to bruise Alice's self-esteem further, knowing that she would ask Charlie for a date as a measure to reinforce said bruised self-esteem. Bobbi does this because she knows Alice and Charlie would make a nice pair.
- Charlie intentionally pushes Alice's breast angst button, if only to see her trying to fish for compliments. Because to him, there's nothing cuter or more feminine than a girl wanting the boy she likes to notice her.
- Less positively, pure negging. It's much easier to pick up chicks if you provoke their biggest insecurities and then assure them afterwards.
- Defied:
- Bobbi realizes she's going to meet the flat chested Alice, and having some jealousy inducing assets, chooses to incorporate a sweater into her everyday wardrobe to help smooth over their acquaintance.
- Bobbi tells Alice that Alice is actually a B-cup, not an A, and her breasts are actually only slightly below average - and that many women are actually, because of public perceptions, wearing a bra a size too small.
- Alice quickly gets breast implants.
- Discussed: Two characters are discussing, "It's sort of funny how ladies tend to get so flustered over something as insubstantial as their cup size."
- Conversed: Two characters are discussing a work they like, "Well, at the very least, I guess we should be happy they included a female character who doesn't look like she should have back problems."
- Implied: If you look carefully you can see a character with a flat chest sometimes staring at buxom girls or looking down at her breasts when well endowed girls are around.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is eventually Driven to Suicide because she's so unhappy with her lack of assets, and partially prompted by Bobbi who frequently bullies her about it.
- Alternatively, every single relationship she tries to get into fails because she can't look past the fact that she has a small bust. Guys that would ordinarily be interested in her are turned off by her extreme angst.
- Alice has a serious neurosis that manifests itself as her physical insecurities. Something terrible ensues.
- Alice doesn't actually mind her chest or anyone else's larger ones; it's everyone expecting her to be angry about it that annoys her, leading people to believe her ticked expression whenever someone brings it up to be genuine breast envy. A mix of Condescending Compassion during breast jokes and actual mean-spirited jibes eventually makes her want to make her breasts large just to make it all stop.
- Alice has a serious gender dysphoria alongside with severe body image issues, but no one takes her issue seriously. The Sour Prude and the ones who have Madonna-Whore Complex thinks she shouldn't need to be like a Ms. Fanservice, worse than that, the Petite Pride Straw Feminist claims that Alice is just brainwashed by Male Gaze and she flaunts herself to cheer Alice up, all of these treatments make Alice feels 'worse' about herself and even Driven to Suicide.
- Alice initially thinks she needs big breasts, but after breast implants, it turns out that she doesn't actually want large breasts like what society dictates her to do, and the side effects from her breasts delve her into D-Cup Distress instead.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice then gets implants or moves to a place where she is statistically normal or well-endowed by comparison.
- Alice seeks professional treatment and learns to react to her small cup size much more moderately, maybe getting implants from less than A-cup to A or B-cup for therapy reasons.
- Alice still doesn't hate her breasts, but she eventually speaks up to the others about how they shouldn't assume she has a complex. If it was Psychological Projection on their part, they learn to stop using her as an example to feel better about their own chests.
- Alice only hangs out with a bunch of skinny guys to avoid comparison. Alice even renames himself "Alex" and blends with them.
- Alice decides that she'd rather have flat boobs than constant back pains.
- Alice then gets a reduction to have small but not too flat size, instead of the overly large one.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is flustered at being surrounded by other women's huge and often awkward busts. Hilarity Ensues, Alice faking a big chest would be a source of comedy, with chest bouncing and the occasional Skinship Grope for good measure.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice is flustered at being surrounded by other women's huge and often awkward busts. The Deconstruction line provides some pretty sterling examples of this.
- Alice's barely-there breasts are justified that she suffers from serious genetic condition which prevents her from puberty.
- Untwisted: Alice is a Butch Lesbian who doesn't mind about her breasts publicly. But in private, she angsts over her lack of a bust.
- Plotted A Good Waste: It's an excuse for Alice to get implants and provide a lot of Fanservice in a way that implies she likes it just as much as the viewers do.
Fine! Go back to A-Cup Angst. You're only doing it because that page has bigger breasts than me, you perv!
