Not just yet. First you're going to make her sweat a little.

Something about Jessica’s tone had brought back my irritation with her. I knew I’d sounded dumb in what I’d said to her before, but that had only been because I was defending her. It would have been easier for me to agree with Marisa that Jessie was dressed slutty, but I hadn’t. And for sticking up for her she was going to mock me? I decided I was going to push her buttons a little before I let her off the hook.

“First of all, Jessica, let’s not waste our time on hypothetical situations. You’d never actually come out to paint wearing just a bra. It takes a lot of self-confidence in one’s body to defy society’s clothing conventions, and you just don’t have what it takes. I mean, just look at your example: wearing a bra? That’s your big ambitious example? Whoa! You’d be as daring as a poster in the window of Victoria’s Secret! Come on, any woman who was serious about undermining society’s senseless objectification of women’s bodies would be going topless in protest. But we know you’re not nearly daring enough for that.”

It was just trash talk, really--I was annoyed at Jessica and was trying to strike back at her pride in herself as a trend-setter and boundary-breaker, made more fun by the fact that I’d been listening to Marisa’s feminism for months now and could talk the talk.

Of course I salivated over the idea of Jessie setting those big tits free in the sunlight, what guy wouldn’t? This was the closest I could come to talking about it. Actually suggesting anything of the sort would have gotten me slapped, but teasing her like this I could get away with. She’d just insult me back, or admit that I’d had a good comeback, or maybe stalk out of the room angry only to come back laughing 5 minutes later.