i found this while searching for the origins of the purdah. there is, as of
now, no *immediate* connection between the two...
Esquire
02/01/99
Esquire
By UDOVITCH, MIM
Magazine: Esquire, February 1999
BREASTS, REASSESSED
-------------------
THEIR SUDDEN PROMINENCE IS EITHER AN EMBLEM OF EMPOWERMENT, THE FRUIT OF
TECNOLOGICAL ADVANCE, OR A SYMBOL OF THE NEW CULTURE OF FALSENESS THAT
PERVADES THE CORRIDORS OF POWER. OR MAYBE IT'S JUST A CAUSE FOR
CELEBRATION.
A FEW YEARS AGO, the following conversation occurred between a San
Francisco
radio-talk-show host named Chris Clarke and a caller named Gregory.
Gregory: I have a friend who recently had breast reconstruction after
having
undergone a mastectomy for breast cancer. She was upset because, for the
time
being, she was not allowed to get the silicone implant and had to stick
with the saline.
As it turns out, she is very pleased with the saline. But this gave rise
to an interesting
point. Another friend pointed out that in politically conservative,
repressive times, big
breasts on women become very popular, and in liberal, freewheeling times,
small
breasts become popular.
Clarke: What age are we entering into now?
Gregory: Well, clearly we are in a repressive age.
Clarke: So there are going to be larger breasts.
Gregory: Yes, based on my friend's theory. For example, the fifties were a
very
repressive age, and we had Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield. The twenties
were a
very wild age, and small breasts were popular. You see, his theory is that
in a
repressive age, people feel the need for nurturing. That's why big breasts
become
popular.
Clarke: Yes.
Gregory: Now, my theory is that my friend is confusing cause and effect.
Rather than
political thought determining breast size, it's the other way around.
Clarke: You mean breast size determines political thought?
Gregory: Yeah. Big breasts are popular, people look around, they say, "Oh,
there's lots
of big breasts--they're very big, they're scary, somebody might get their
eye put out.
I'm going to vote for Buchanan."
Clarke: Yeah.
Gregory: It's not that "Political times are repressive, ergo we like big
breasts" but that
"There are a lot of big breasts around, ergo we get scared and we get
conservative."
And, conversely, like in the sixties you had people like Penelope Tree and
Twiggy, and
people looked around and said, "Oh, there's lots of small breasts
around--it's okay, it's
safe. I'm going to join a commune and take drugs."
THE THEORY HAS ITS PROS AND CONS. Personally, I don't remember the sixties
as a
small-breasted era but rather as one when the profile of the breast
shifted from the
coniferous to the deciduous (hence Penelope Tree). The belief that behind
every
predominating political climate stands a more or less prominent breast is,
however, a
theory that is definitely an example of man's age-old quest to ascribe a
larger meaning
to breasts. If it is true that big breasts cause conservatism (paging Dick
Morris), the
current climate bodes well for Republicans. This is a big-fitted culture.
After dipping
precipitously following the FDA ban of silicone implants amid charges that
leakage
causes autoimmune and connective-tissue disease, the number of breast
augmentations recorded by the American Society for Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery
has increased 275 percent in the last five years, making it the most
rapidly expanding
procedure of any cosmetic operation for which statistics are kept. The
Wonderbra,
introduced in the States in 1994, immediately gave rise, as it were, to a
number of
copies, imitations, and variants and continues to sell at a brisk clip,
with 1998 retail
figures of $100 million. Curves--a high-tech silicone falsie, which also
immediately gave
rise to a number of copies, imitations, and variants--has sold more than
five hundred
thousand pairs, generating $50 million in retail sales.
In short, regardless of whether we vote with our breasts, they are a
uniquely
marketable body part, both attached to the individual and freestanding.
Breasts have
a potential for symbolic meaning unequaled by even the primary sexual body
parts.
Breasts are big business, metaphysically and physically, and big business
does have
its say in government.
The last time falsies and padded bras were this popular--a period that
peaked in the
fifties and flattened out in the seventies--it was because there was an
atmosphere of
sexual conservatism and an all-around culture of concealment that
necessitated a
breast that repressed and returned simultaneously. This time, in a culture
in which it
has recently been demonstrated that sexual mores have relaxed not so much
to the
point that there is a less prurient attitude about blow jobs as to the
point that it's
okay to use the term "blow job" when expressing your prurience publicly;
in which pro
wrestling is not only one of the country's most popular forms of
entertainment but a
sometime training ground for politics; and in which a seemingly heartfelt
nationally
televised confession that practically nobody believes is more effective
than a charge of
perjury that practically no one doesn't, falsies have found their metier.
This is a culture
in which seeming to reveal something appealing, even if it's obviously
false, is
preferable to revealing something ugly, even if it's obviously true. This
is a falsie
culture.
ALTHOUGH IT DIDN'T REALLY BEGIN to snowball, or snow cone, as the case may
be,
until the fifties, the application of modern technology to the breast for
the purposes of
a purely sexualized enlargement actually began in the forties with the bra
designed by
Howard Hughes for Jane Russell in The Outlaw. This simultaneously hoisted
the breast
and left its shape intact. Walter Winchell referred to breasts as
"janerussells," and I
think it is a measure of the greater variety of choices available to women
in the
post-feminist era that if he were around today, he might be unable to
choose between
"gretchenmols" and "pamelaandersons." Certainly, over the last decade and
a half,
you are far more likely to see a woman in an everyday context with her
gretchens fully
moiled than at any other time in modern American history.
Nevertheless, traditional anxieties about breast size persist. This is
true not only in
feminist but in popular literature, one good example being Nora Ephron's
well-known
1972 Esquire cri de coeur, "A Few Words About Breasts," which expresses a
basic
feeling of inadequacy about being flat-chested and would not look the
least bit
out-of-date if it were printed in Marie Claire tomorrow. To read
Jacqueline
Susann--and, by the way, if there were a Mount Rushmore of movers and
shakers of
the breast as a cultural artifact in the latter half of the twentieth
century, she'd be on
it, right alongside Hugh Hefner, Madonna, and Helen Gurley Brown--you'd
think that
having breasts (cf. Valley of the Dolls) was a tragedy almost on a par
with not having
them (cf. The Love Machine). For Susann, it was. She died of breast
cancer, and in her
fixation on size as destiny in the context of this other, more literal
destiny--one in nine
American women now contract the disease, in itself a staggering
statistic--she also
foreshadowed the age.
The flat-chested has its place in the fashion world, where the shape of
the garment,
rather than the shape of the body, is what counts. But even within the
slender
subcategory of supermodels, it is the curvier, more traditional glamour
girls like Cindy
Crawford, Laetitia Casta, and Claudia Schiffer, rather than the more
willowy
mannequins whose names you don't know, who usually have the mainstream
appeal
that is necessary for domination of the wall-poster industrial complex.
Barbie, Betty,
and Veronica, all still popular figures in the lives of little girls, have
breasts that start at
their shoulders and end at their rib cages, just above the waist. In fact,
I would say
that if there is one thing that feminism has had no impact on whatsoever,
it is body
image on an individual level.
That the size distinction is still considered to be decisive was recently
evidenced by no
less an authority on the neoclassical sexual paradigm than the president.
Monica
Lewinsky (whose relationship with Clinton was at least as much about
breast play as
about blow jobs) described a "very emotional" visit to the president in
which he was
more affectionate toward her than he had ever been, stroking her arm,
toying with her
hair, kissing her neck, praising her intellect and beauty, and assuring
her that the
harassment allegations concerning Kathleen Willey were untrue, because "he
would
never approach a small-breasted woman like Ms. Willey." I was asked not
long ago
how feminists feel about that statement. We hate it. Because we're all
fiat-chested.
Otherwise, we wouldn't need to be feminists.
PSYCHOANALYST MELANIE KLEIN posited that the infant accommodates
conflicted
feelings about the mother's breasts by dividing his or her perceptions
into two
categories: the good, nourishing breast and the bad, denying breast.
Popular culture
over the last half century has not been that generous. Despite
developments in the
arena of sexual representation, you have always had your dumb breast, and
you have
always had your mean breast. Ever a reliable go-to guy when it comes to
any kind of
misogyny, Philip Roth in 1972 wrote a novella called The Breast, a work
that is
efficiently summarized on its back cover as "the story of the man who
turned into a
female breast." In it, he characterizes his new form as "a big, brainless
bag of dumb,
desirable tissue, acted upon instead of acting, unguarded, immobile,
hanging, there,
as a breast simply hangs and is there." This view, the breast as dumb
blond, has gone
almost completely out of fashion as the classical cream-puff style of dumb
blond--the
dumb blond who was too dumb to know that you were fucking her--has given
way to
the ditzy, less sexual dumb blond, like Suzanne Somers, who was the master
of her
own thighs. While not exactly friendly (all human tissue is brainless,
with the obvious
exception), Roth's attitude is not as hostile as it could be, either. You
can get the
upper hand on a dumb breast. A dumb breast is also a safe breast.
While the dumb breast wanes, the mean breast waxes. The all-around abuse,
the
veritable shit storm that rained down upon Demi Moore and Elizabeth
Berkley during
that little convulsion in breast history that was the release of those
twin-peak
monuments to the breast, Striptease and Showgirls, could essentially be
summarized
in these words: Mean breast. Bad, mean breast. Down, breast, down. As with
all
things known to God and man, the mean breast was first seen in its
nineties
incarnation on Madonna, with the wearing of those big, missile-shaped bras
and with
the publication of Sex. Madonna was also the popularizer of the breast as
partially
unwrapped present, which has progressed from bra or slip showing to bra or
slip as
outerwear. By some, this is viewed as the equivalent of a random sex
crime, the mean
breast reversing Roth by acting rather than being acted upon: I feel
assaulted by
breasts. Hey. Get a load of the leopoldandloebs on her.
In a social context, however, over the last half century or so there has
been a
persistent belief that women are pursuing an agenda with their breasts,
more or less
malign but definitely about power. The dumb breast of the forties and
fifties had its
power corollary, sort of like a superhero persona, in the extra-sexual
dimension of the
seamed and ultrasupported fifties-sitcom maternal breast. This was not
always
benevolent, since its power was such that if you weren't careful, it might
become
overbearing and cause you to start a secret affair with your movie-star
girl friend's
adopted teenage daughter forty years later. If breasts are involved in any
way, it
doesn't matter what other power agenda is being attempted, as the next
decade's
focus on bra burning, as shorthand for a movement that was not primarily
about
lingerie, somewhat depressingly demonstrates.
Appropriately, as the liberation politics of the sixties and seventies
morphed into the
apolitical I'm-okay-you're-okay personal growth movement, the free breast
gave way
to the perky breast. This period, which foreshadowed contemporary
baby-tee,
cotton-camisole bralessness as practiced, say, by Cameron Diaz in There's
Something
About Mary, can be described in four words: Farrah Fawcett-Majors's
nipple. The
eighties, which started the briefly interrupted rise of the implant, was
the era of the
power breast, sometimes grafted onto an aerobicized hardbody, sometimes
contained
within a power suit, whose era it also was.
Finally, as this decade slouches toward the millennium, the marketplace
has
approached with a bright smile and a tastefully striped box of tit and
encouraged the
breasted part of the population to stand up straight, stick its chest out,
and slip in a
pair of Curves. This is not the power breast. It is the empowered breast.
LET IT FIRST BE SAID THAT CURVES ("Hollywood's Best-Kept Secret") are,
pound for
pound, the best bargain in this sector of the market. Two thickly opaque,
hollowed-out
prosthetic breasts, complete with nipples, they come in one of two colors,
peach and
mocha, and one of four sizes: demi, small, large, and extra large. They
have their own
little habitat, molded to contain them, which has an initial L in the left
corner and an
initial R in the right corner and looks sort of like the contact-lens
container of the
breast-faced man in that Magritte painting your acid-damaged roommate had
in
college.
It is only right and just that any one of half a million women walking
past you
tomorrow might be wearing Curves. In consumer-reports terms alone, this is
an
awesome product, beyond comparison the way to go if what you want is to
appear to
have larger breasts when clothed. Even if you have no use for falsies, I
think you
should order a pair and leave the box open on your coffee table at
cocktail parties.
Watch as your guests chortle and knead! Both practical and surreal, a
little like
Duchamp's urinal, Curves look realistic not only at rest but also in
motion. They're
comfortable to wear. And they are creepily authentic to the casual touch,
hug, or even
cursory feel-up. A commonplace at fashion shoots, they are also used on
such
breast-defining shows as Baywatch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Beverly
Hills, 90210.
It is the further genius of Curves to market itself not as something you
do to catch a
man but as something you do for yourself, to express your inner breast. "I
have to fit
into a lot of molds and feel good about all of them," says one woman
during the
Curves infomercial, a sort of combination jiggle show and motivational
video. "I know
that Curves give me the extra confidence for all the roles we play during
the day." This
theme also appears on the Wonderbra Web site, which has a Virtual
Empowerment
Page from which you can send virtual postcards with pictures of Sarah
O'Hare,
Wonderbra model, cavorting and leaping about in a bra, panties, and high
heels, just
like you and I do when we feel personally empowered. "Share that
self-confidence and
initiative with someone who needs it," urges the text. "Pick a pix, choose
a note ....
Send your messages of support and understanding to friends and family. You
have the
power. Spread it around!" I think that as soon as you have ordered the
Curves, you
should rush right on down to the nearest topless joint and shout that at a
stripper.
Someday, it's going to replace "Show us your tits!" Try to make that day
now.
Nietzsche believed that great breasts can overcome reasonable bounds of
convention
and morality. Or maybe that was great minds. In any event, the Curves
infomercial
does not go quite that far--for example, it does not suggest that Curves
constitute a
valid legal defense, at least not for a felony--but it comes close. To
watch the Curves
infomercial, which not long ago deservedly won the infomercial equivalent
of an
Academy Award, is to realize that the difference between the padding Nora
Ephron
grew up with, which was based on women being sold the notion that a larger
bosom
was a quality whose value was absolute, and the natural, realistic form of
the Curves
ethos is that while the former was an obligation, the latter is a right.
"It seems so
many women are forced to limit their wardrobe because they don't like how
they look
in a particular outfit,' says the spot's host, Laura Lewis--a point that I
believe was also
raised by Nietzsche.
"I've had many women call and say they wear their Curves with their
Wonderbra!"
says Julie Sautter, creator of Curves, in her infomercial.
"You can do that?" asks Lewis.
"Sure!" replies Sautter.
Basically, except for the lucky few, Curves are superior to the unenhanced
breast in
every way and in every situation, except the one that has troubled
falsie-wearing
women since the Fall. But Sautter suggests that the moment when the
falsies come
out is the test of true love, so if that bothers you, you're probably just
not empowered
enough.
OF COURSE, NOT EVERYONE IS BUYING the concept of cleavage as a
motivational tool,
a thing women use to put a bounce in their steps as well as in their
breasts. Some
people can see right through your cotton-camisole-clad falsies, even if
they are
opaque. "If you're hot, you do like the people in Bahrain, where it's 100
degrees by 10
A.M.," opined one letter to the editor regarding a newspaper article about
scantily clad
women in the summertime, in which some had cited comfort or said they just
did it for
themselves. "You wear long, flowing robes so you're shielded from the sun
and get
maximum air circulation .... The real reason girls show a lot of skin in
the summer is
that the heat creates an excuse to show off a body, fleetingly in its
youthful prime ....
You put on a halter top, you say, 'God, I look fabulous in this,' you
think about how
you'll be sixty in no time and won't be able to incite male lust, and you
put on the
halter top and shorts and walk out the door." You are, by my count, now
wearing two
halter tops, but never mind. Despite this letter writer's contention
regarding what
people really do when they're hot, most people are not actually advocating
purdah,
but neither are they as comfortable with the idea of the revealed female
form as
something with strictly self-reflexive empowering qualities as Wonderbra
would like
them to be.
This is a good thing for the skin-magazine industry, which in order to
survive requires
that there be at least some prurience that can't be expressed in the
mainstream
culture. But porn does face more of a challenge from traditionally
higher-production-value media in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue than it
used to,
and this has led to two loosely related developments: the rise of the
amateur and the
return of the natural breast. In the world of skin magazines, where a
woman is her
breasts, the overwhelming trend is not only toward natural but
emphatically against
implants.
Perfect 10 is the brainchild of a man whose official masthead title reads,
"Norm Zadeh,
Ph.D." Its fall issue is 113 pages of gorgeous young women with beautiful
breasts
posed on balconies and rocky outcroppings. These are accompanied by brief
Q&A's
with each girl, in which she can reveal her fondness for languages, love
of family, or
amount of progress toward her economics degree.
The Perfect 10 girl is also empowered by having perfect breasts, actually.
According to
Zadeh, one of the things that sets the Perfect 10 girl apart is that she
is very smart,
unlike most of the Playboy Playmates, who are low-quality strippers. He
also says--and
I think this shows that the doctorate is in economics rather than in
breasts--that one
of the reasons implants are bad is that they send a message that tells the
average
woman she's not good enough the way she is--logical enough in itself, but
not totally
compatible with publishing a magazine full of women who look like the ones
in Perfect
10. And he says he thinks men tend to prefer smaller breasts, although for
some
reason small breasts don't photograph well. He has a Perfect 10 contest
video on
which you can see "the models at their finest" as they compete in the
fifty-yard dash, a
potato-sack race, topless basketball, and an implant toss for distance,
among other
activities.
Zadeh wishes more people in positions of power would come out in favor of
natural
breasts; one person who has is Dian Hanson, who edits Juggs as well as Leg
Show
and a magazine called Tight, which, in her words, caters to the sad
fantasies of aging
baby boomers. Hanson's office walls are decorated with, among other
things, a
six-breasted, Chernobyl-inspired prosthesis and--I know this is off-point,
but it did
stand out--a drawing of a man with antlers who is bound, gagged, and
wearing a sign
that says, I AM ONLY A MAN, A MERE PROOF OF THE WOMAN'S SUPERIORITY. "I
don't
think that the fact that breasts can be seen more does anything to take
away people's
desire to see breasts," says Hanson. "I know that breast men find not just
arousal but
comfort and relief from anxiety in the breast--from fondling the breast,
the warmth of
the breast, resting their head on the breast, suckling the breast. There
are men who
prefer small breasts, but they're not men who prefer breasts; they prefer
that breasts
not get in the way."
Hanson believes that the ubiquity of implanted breasts in skin magazines
and topless
joints was a trend powered, if not empowered, by curiosity: "When they
started
making the mega-augmented breast, there was an interest; because it was so
cartoonishly fascinating, the men wanted to see them. But then, as they
went to strip
clubs and saw them, and saw them begin to deteriorate and deform, and they
began
to see the obvious scars, the horror factor took over, and it occurred to
them that
these were not soft breasts. And the trend just evaporated." Hanson, like
Zadeh, tries
to persuade models not to get augmentations.
Back in the real world, more women who want to be perfect tens (or who
want to be
known for their jugs) get implants every year. So far, the trend toward
the natural
breast is confined to the realm of the sex professional, and on the street
an honest tit
is hard to find--you must, you must, you must increase your bust, whether
by implant
or, as they say, explant. And although the Curves infomercial, for all its
emphasis on
self-esteem, does identify the women whose lives have been changed not
only by
name and occupation but also by marital status, the days when the Cosmo
girl
squared off against the Playboy bachelor in a breastic battle over whether
she could
make him buy the cow or he could make her give up the milk for free are
nominally
gone. Today's amazon is supposed to own her breasts, not cut them off or
trade them
in for a diamond or use them as an advance guard as she soldiers through
life,
because she is not oppressed by her breasts nor armed with them but
empowered by
them. Her femininity is a falsie that hides in plain sight. Her bra tells
her her place, and
it's the corner office. She just can't get there following a straight
line. She needs
curves.
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