Busted
Titties, boobs, chest, bosom, breasts, big bags of wheateena, the twins, melons.
The obsession with breasts is peculiar. To me it makes just about as much sense as being consumed with hands or belly buttons, yet the chest fixation is socially acceptable and even lauded in media.
Sure, most babies start out being sustained by this very part of the female body but, if you think about it, the same goes for the belly button.
I can also understand the erotic appeal of the breast, it is soft- like a neat pillow- and often reacts favorably to stimuli, which granted, the belly button does not. But other than that, what is the big deal?
Breast Augmentation was in the top five surgical cosmetic plastic surgery procedures in 2003, with just over a quarter million reported.
82% of people who have cosmetic surgery are women. That is a HUGE gender discrepancy, folks.
Before I continue, I should admit to having had my teeth done. I have an overbite and my parents refused to let me to have braces. They thought I should wait until my head had caught up with the size of my overbite. But nothing could ever catch up with the size of my overbite
and I ended up having fairly large gaps between my teeth and the gaps really annoyed me.
Some years ago I was able to have the gaps "sculpted" which took less than two hours, caused no pain and no suffering and had no side effects except I now get foods stuck in my teeth. I often forget to floss. I therefore am fully capable of walking around for a whole day with something stuck in my teeth.
Yeah, real fancy and glam.
The other thing I should admit is that I was a 34D by the time I was 14, and it was hell. Being groped by teenage boys is hell. Having people stare at your breasts when you are too young to tell them to go to hell, is hell.
But not being to accept one's own body is even worse.
I think most people find charisma and self confidence far more attractive than the size of breasts or any other body part. So why are we obsessed?
Part of it is "image bombardment". We are continually bombarded with images of perfection. Even now, when we know how easy it is to photoshop Keira Knightley's chest, we don't get it. There are very few women who actually look like the photo shopped picture of Keira Knightly, probably less than 1%. The rest of us have this that an the other thing that keep us out of that league, just like we can't all be members of Mensa or paint like Odd Nerdrum. But how often do we hear people say "Tag nabbit! I wish I was way smarter so I could make better investments and make more money!" One of the main reasons for this is the skewed flow of information. The "1% body-fabs" are disproportionately featured in media. We see their pictures so often that we actually think there are more of them and eventually start thinking that we should look like them.
Meanwhile, the beauty industry is making $160 billions-a-year, globally.
I should probably start investing in it, I'd rather make money off of them than have them make money off of my insecurities.
PS. Ask for any advice you need!
The obsession with breasts is peculiar. To me it makes just about as much sense as being consumed with hands or belly buttons, yet the chest fixation is socially acceptable and even lauded in media.
Sure, most babies start out being sustained by this very part of the female body but, if you think about it, the same goes for the belly button.
I can also understand the erotic appeal of the breast, it is soft- like a neat pillow- and often reacts favorably to stimuli, which granted, the belly button does not. But other than that, what is the big deal?
Breast Augmentation was in the top five surgical cosmetic plastic surgery procedures in 2003, with just over a quarter million reported.
82% of people who have cosmetic surgery are women. That is a HUGE gender discrepancy, folks.
Before I continue, I should admit to having had my teeth done. I have an overbite and my parents refused to let me to have braces. They thought I should wait until my head had caught up with the size of my overbite. But nothing could ever catch up with the size of my overbite
and I ended up having fairly large gaps between my teeth and the gaps really annoyed me.
Some years ago I was able to have the gaps "sculpted" which took less than two hours, caused no pain and no suffering and had no side effects except I now get foods stuck in my teeth. I often forget to floss. I therefore am fully capable of walking around for a whole day with something stuck in my teeth.
Yeah, real fancy and glam.
The other thing I should admit is that I was a 34D by the time I was 14, and it was hell. Being groped by teenage boys is hell. Having people stare at your breasts when you are too young to tell them to go to hell, is hell.
But not being to accept one's own body is even worse.
I think most people find charisma and self confidence far more attractive than the size of breasts or any other body part. So why are we obsessed?
Part of it is "image bombardment". We are continually bombarded with images of perfection. Even now, when we know how easy it is to photoshop Keira Knightley's chest, we don't get it. There are very few women who actually look like the photo shopped picture of Keira Knightly, probably less than 1%. The rest of us have this that an the other thing that keep us out of that league, just like we can't all be members of Mensa or paint like Odd Nerdrum. But how often do we hear people say "Tag nabbit! I wish I was way smarter so I could make better investments and make more money!" One of the main reasons for this is the skewed flow of information. The "1% body-fabs" are disproportionately featured in media. We see their pictures so often that we actually think there are more of them and eventually start thinking that we should look like them.
Meanwhile, the beauty industry is making $160 billions-a-year, globally.
I should probably start investing in it, I'd rather make money off of them than have them make money off of my insecurities.
PS. Ask for any advice you need!
posted by disinterpreter at 2:34 PM
4 Comments:
What you are saying is soooo true. We are so deluded by the media. Everywhere you look is thin and perfect! I've read studies that the average size for a healthy woman is a size 14! I admit it. I'm terribly average. I know the facts about photoshopping and the models, but some days it is harder than others to like yourself isn't it?
The prolific zoologist Desmond Morris (in “The Naked Woman”) recently wrote: “Every woman has a beautiful body – beautiful because it is the brilliant end-point of millions of years of evolution. It is loaded with amazing adjustments and subtle refinements that make it the most remarkable organism on the planet. Despite this, at different times and in different places, human societies have tried to improve on nature, modifying and embellishing the female body in a thousand different ways. Some of these cultural elaborations have been pleasurable, others have been painful, but all have sought to make the human female more beautiful than she already is”.
Apart from being adept at recycling the same few (middlebrow) ideas constantly in slick, commercialised packages (the only other slim volume in my library that bears his name on the spine is “Babywatching”, bought, surprise, surprise when I was pregnant) I find the above passage sympathetic. Another excerpt which appeals reads as follows:
“To me, as a zoologist who has studied human evolution, this trend towards male domination is simply not in keeping with the way in which Homo sapiens has developed over a period of millions of years. Our success as a species was due to a division of labour between males and females, in which the males became specialized as hunters. Living in small tribes, this meant that, with the males away hunting, the females were left in the very centre of social life, gathering the food and preparing it, rearing the young, and generally organizing the tribal settlement. As men became better at focusing on their one, crucially important task, women became better at dealing with several problems at once. (…) There was never any question of one sex being dominant over the other. They relied totally on one another for survival. There was a primeval balance between the human sexes – they were different but equal.
This balance was lost when human populations grew, towns and cities were built, and tribespeople became citizens. Religion, at the centre of human societies, has had a major part to play. In ancient times the great deity was always a woman, but then, as urbanization spread, She underwent a disastrous sex change and, in simple terms, the beign Mother Goddess became the authoritarian God the Father. With a vengeful male God to back them up, ruthless holy men throughout the ages have ensured their own affluent security and the higher social status of men in general, at the expense of women who sank to a low social status that was far from their evolutionary birthright”.
I would not venture to comment upon the accuracy of his sketch of human history, and always feel uncomfortable about speculations concerning the earliest human societies (all too often employed as a means of keeping women “in their place” by positing a “natural” order), but on a purely non-analytical, emotional response level I appreciate his verdict.
On the subject of breasts (he devotes a chapter to each part of the body, moving downwards from top to toe), he lists a few antiquated expressions for the fount of life and nourishment, which I include for your amusement:
“No fewer than 74 colourful titles have been ascribed to them over the centuries, including such exotica as Big Brown Eyes, Brace and Bits, Cats and Kitties, Charlie Wheeler, Cupid’s Kettledrums, Golden Apples, Mae West, Moons of Paradise and Twin Globes. Less flowery terms include bosom (tenth century), paps (fourteenth century), duckys (sixteenth century), bubbies or tits (seventeenth century), bust or diddies (eighteenth century), dugs or titties (nineteenth century), boobs, bristols, gazungas, hooters, jugs, knockers, mammaries or melons (twentieth century)”.
As you may have noticed, I have just arrived back from Wales in one piece :)))
Cheryl & Chameleon,
I agree 100%.
ps. Welcome back from Wales, I take it you had a good time!
Sometimes, these gambles pay off, but there are occasions when they fail miserably,
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