The Breast

The breast looms large in Western Culture -though if you think about it, it's difficult to really say why. Seth McFarland had fun with the song and dance number, I Saw Your Boobs, at the Oscars. The whole production seem to either amuse or offend, depending on who you talked to.

The next day I Saw Your Boobs was one of those "around the water cooler" subjects. Several women not only thought it was sexist but they demanded some kind of parity. After a few failed attempts at it nobody was coming up anything quite as catchy. That just might be because the humor between the sexes has always been asymmetrical. One woman was very astute and questioned the whole industry and how it commodifies  women's bodies.

At some time we all get made into a commodity. The very idea of a labor market says that every employee's time and efforts are a commodity.  That can get pretty depressing if you think about it too much.

 Back in college there was one aspiring feminist writer who had the theory that every culture has at least one designated part of a women's body that must to be covered up. She researched historical, anthropological and sociological studies to support this. There seem to be a number of societies were being bare breasted was the norm but the thigh was considered to salacious for public display.  In some of the city states of ancient Greece the term "thigh flasher" was as provocative and as insulting as the word slut is today.    

At one time on many Polynesian islands, before the Christian Missionaries came, a woman's navel was seen as taboo. A part of her body that only her parents or husband should ever see.  From a feminist viewpoint having a part of the body as taboo in public is similar to the issue of virginity. Both can be a way or the woman to demonstrate she is exclusively dedicated and even consecrated to her mate in a monogamous relationship.

In all the cultures where it was normal for women to be bare breasted  the men weren't "titillated" by the sight of them.  Breasts were still part of foreplay but not visually arousing. The feminist writer from back in college suggested if women wanted men to focus in on their eyes instead of their breasts, women should always wear sunglasses and go around topless.

One of the art student at my old school wanted to run with that idea but he couldn't find any volunteers. Later he asked what is it that makes a breast sexy or sexual? One of the staples of advertising and fashion is the image of a woman showing as much cleavage as possible without exposing the nipple? As though a breast is not a breast without a nipple. That might explain the torso of the Barbie Doll, or how punk performer Wendy O Williams  could get on stage topless except for a piece of electrical tape over each nipple. It reminds me of a court case in Maryland where a woman at a wet tee shirt contest cut two holes in her tee shirt that let her nipple protrude out  though the rest of the breast was covered. She was arrested for indecent exposure.        

The artist saw these kinds of inconsistencies as something worth exploring. He put together a fake or parody magazine called Celebrity Nipple. This was long before photoshop so the magazine was more like a low quality fan-zine. I wished I save my copy. As far I remember the art study wasn't back at college the next semester.

How did the female breast become so sexualized? There's  quite a bit of speculation on that. One essay traced how rich women who would subcontract out the job of breastfeeding their children to wet nurses. With the development of the baby bottle and rubber nipple, eventually breastfeeding a child was seen as something only poor people did.  Rich women were seen as more sexually liberated and free. Once the breast was separated from the task of feeding a baby, sex could be further detached from childbirth.

Outside of advertising and entertainment the next two most influential things that shape our perception on breasts are the Barbie Doll and plastic surgery. The overly exaggerated curvy body of Barbie is iconic. As of 2002 over 1 billion Barbie dolls have been sold in over 150 countries.  Since 1959 this is the body little girls were shown as a model of what a woman should look like.  

Barbie was based on an earlier doll, Lilli. Lilli was not for children. It was manufactured and sold in Germany to adults. It was sold in bars and tobacco shops as sort of a sex doll. Somehow this inappropriate adult novelty migrated to the children's toy chest.  When Lilli became a successful export her more risqué  past was quietly side stepped.

Unintentionally Barbie wasn't  just for young girls. It's almost a universal experience for young boys to borrow and undress their sister's doll. I got caught undressing a neighbor's Barbie doll. She wasn't upset but she wanted to know what the big deal was. It seems I wasn't the first boy she discovered doing that.

Plastic surgery has a longer history than I imagined. Aulus Cornelius Celsus lived in the first century AD and described how injuries to face can be repaired with skin grafts from other parts of the body.  Breast implants date back to the late 1800's.  It seems it was almost always done as reconstructive surgery after a serious accident or the removal of  a tumor. Before silicone implants  a wide variety of plastic foams, ground rubber, ivory, animal cartilage and paraffin were among the materials used. Some of these materials lead to disastrous results for the women.  These days breast implants still have long tern medical risks; and you often hear stories of teenage girls wanting surgery even before their young bodies have finished developing.

Real life 'Barbie' Valeria Lukyanova continues to deny plastic surgery 

 Be honest, does she really look normal to you?