Basic Trope: Buxom is not better, at least for this girl.
- Straight: Alice is a D-Cup. She hates this and tries to downplay her proportions as much as possible.
- Exaggerated: Alice has breast hypertrophy
, giving her breasts your average superheroine would be jealous of. And Alice would let them have it, because she can barely function in normal life due to her supermassive bust. - Downplayed: Alice complains about her large chest while doing things like shopping for bras or long-distance running, but for the most part she doesn't draw attention to it.
- Justified:
- If one lacks muscle training for the back, big breasts can put a serious strain on it, and can cause chronic pain or possible spine deformation. A flat-chested woman or girl might believe there are social downsides to lacking upper-torso curves, but at least her chest will never give actual health problems.
- Alice can't afford the custom clothes and bras needed to accommodate her enormous breasts. She would be forced to wear regular ones regardless of discomfort or risk of tearing the clothes or not wearing anything under them.
- People assume that Alice is promiscuous due to her large breasts. Even when Alice convinces others that she is not promiscuous, many still use the ample breast size as an excuse to slut shame and generally bully her. Authority figures assume that having a huge chest means Alice was asking for said harassment.
- Alice’s breasts often attract attention from either jealous women or smitten men, and this results in emotional discomfort for Alice.
- Alice enjoys physical activities like running and jump-roping, and if she doesn't use horrendously expensive custom bras, her breasts will bounce around uncomfortably, wreak absolute havoc on her sense of balance, and give any passing boys/lesbians an entirely unwanted show.
- Alice is actually underage and she isn't ready for intercourse with older men who pay attention to her breasts yet.
- Alice thinks being busty makes her look fat, and when her breasts are bulging out from her clothes or her bra, it becomes a Misery Trigger of Does This Make Me Look Fat?
- Big breasts are just a part of Alice's overall problem. For starters, he'd prefer it if you called him Alex.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Someone suggests this might be true, but Alice doesn't seem to mind having a large chest.
- Alice at first seems to complain about her breasts, but it turns out that she actually thought of those as good points.
- Double subverted: Alice brushes off complaints in public, but that's just so she doesn't get mocked for daring to hate what other people think would be awesome. Sarcasm about her situation is the only way she can cope.
- Parodied:
- Alice is a young girl who doesn't even reach puberty nor develop any breasts... but nope, turns out she thinks that her breasts are too big.
- Alice has a crush on a pedophilic guy who keeps chasing an A-Cup Angst girl or a Straw Misogynist who hates everyone who looks female, so she wants a flatter chest to please him.
- Alice goes bonkers whenever she hears the word "bust", even when it's used in a context that clearly has nothing to do with her, or even breasts in general ('drug bust', 'bust' in the sense of 'a sculpture of someone's head and upper chest', et cetera).
- Alice is a Straw Feminist who thinks all men who look at her must predatorily stare at her breasts without any consent.
- All girls in this work have the same breast size and body type, but Alice still thinks her breasts are too big.
- Zig-zagged: Some days she is unhappy with her big breasts. Other days, she doesn't mind at all.
- Averted: Alice never has any issues regarding her bust size or she is average sized/smaller.
- Enforced: Alice was originally designed to appeal to the Male Gaze. Later writers hated her being a blatant Ms. Fanservice or even doesn't want her to be too promiscuous, and so added insecurities around her bust size to give her some more depth.
- Lampshaded: "People who think they'd like stupidly big breasts have obviously never actually had to deal with them. The backaches suck, the male attention gets tiresome, and frankly I just want them gone."
- Invoked:
- Alice formerly had Big-Breast Pride, but a small-breasted character insults Alice's breasts to take her down a notch.
- Alice formerly had Big-Breast Pride, but eventually becomes jealous of small-breasted characters.
- Exploited: Alice is challenged by a small-breasted rival. Alice knows her endowment puts her at a disadvantage so she tries but loses or just gives up.
- Defied:
- Alice gets a reduction rather than angst about it.
- Alice decides to power through her angst and gives herself a reason to be proud of her breasts.
- Her boyfriend Bob loves Alice's breasts and makes her feel better about them.
- Discussed: "It's sort of funny how ladies tend to get so flustered over something as insubstantial as their cup size."
- Conversed: "Why is she so unhappy about her big breasts? She's attractive to men." "Maybe she's a lesbian, or just doesn't want to attract the attention of the sort of men who only give girls the time of day if they're busty."
- Implied: Alice looks down at her (ample) chest and frowns.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice finds no comfort from her jealous smaller chested friends, and only Innocently Insensitive remarks from those that like her large chest commending her on all the things she hates about them. Now she wants nothing more than to be rid of them if only so everyone could just clam up about the subject and let her be.
- Alice finds out that the only way to lose her breast size is by losing weight, so she undergoes a strict, serious diet and ends up destroying her health via malnutrition and/or excessive exercise.
- "Alex" initially thinks wanting smaller breasts is a sign of being transgender, but after actual breast removal and a few amounts of hormone therapy, it turns out that she doesn't actually want to be a man for the rest of her life, and her missing breasts delve her into A-Cup Angst instead.
- Reconstructed:
- She finally finds a supportive person who truly accepts her as her heart, not just her breast. And then, she finally discovers a shop that has bras of her size, learns to accept herself, builds her own confidence, starts wearing form-fitting clothes for her own pleasure despite negative or pervert reactions, and delves into a few degrees of Big-Breast Pride.
- Alice gets a reduction from an overly-large one to a more moderate size, and it makes her life and her activities more convenient.
- Alice discovers breast cancer survivors who remove whole breasts to save their life through a documentary and a body positivity ad, so she stops treating her accidentally missing breasts as a weird thing.
- Alex discovers that they're actually nonbinary, which can be justified why they reject both womanhood and manhood at the same time.
- Played for laughs:
- Alice isn't insecure about her breast size or is prideful about them, but something makes her temporarily lament her breasts hindering her.
- Her complaints about her breasts act as a springboard for A-Cup Angst jokes.
- Played for drama: Despite all the downsides of her large breasts, Alice can never find anyone who takes her problems seriously, which drives her into a downward spiral.
Back to D-Cup Distress, because it's too heavy.
