There was a time when I could walk through any store and find bras that fit my plain old 32B sized breasts with no problems. All I had to do was choose a color, a style, and find the correct label with my size on it. It’s still the same, but there are no regular bras to be found anywhere: they are all either padded for the small breasted or medium breasted woman or under-wire for the large-breasted woman. Even the girls’ section, for teenagers, is full of padded bras, sending them the message that their breasts aren’t good enough unless they pad them. I wander along the aisles of Target, Macy’s, TJ Maxx, Walmart, and Kohl’s aimlessly, in search of the bra I want, but is no longer available to me. Why? Because I have small breasts? And because I have small breasts, I am supposed to pad them, fluff them up and out as they used to in the fifties circa Marilyn Monroe’s cone-piercing chest?
I have no shame for my breasts. I don’t care that they are small, petite, or nondescript. They are my breasts, they hide beneath my clothes, and they do not define me. When I meet someone, I do not want them to look at my breasts, or define me based on their size. What is it with our society and breast-obsession?
The only time my breasts became larger was when I was pregnant with my children. I still remember my brother-in-law staring at my full-budded boobs while I was stuffing my four month pregnant stomach with roasted chicken and string beans. He gave me a lop-sided grin, nodded his head in appreciation and said something along the lines of “At least you gotta be proud of those babies.” The food got stuck in my throat and I felt like gagging, depriving my baby of its food just to have a smidgen of satisfaction by spitting all of it upon his smirking smile. I wasn’t even showing cleavage, but the rounded mounds of my pregnant breasts were seemingly inciting awareness, open discussion, and appreciation I did not warrant.
I was offended by a few things:
1. BREAST BEWARE – Don’t look at my boobs. There is a reason I clothe them, shelter them, deprive them of sunlight and roaming eyes. They are mine, privately owned, privately shown. They belong to me, and if I choose to, they belong to my children when they breast feed. You have a wife — go look at hers. I cannot describe the chilling angst and dismay I experience when men’s eyes falter upon my chest. Their eyes, their glances, and their appreciation of my form are unwanted and uninvited. My breasts are not there for public display, and I most certainly do not find comfort or self-esteem in appreciation that stems from masculine eye-invasion.
2. BREAST IDENTITY – Like China’s bound feet, American society has chosen the female breast as the center of feminine beauty. The rounder, fuller, and pert the breast, the greater the appreciation, the lovelier the woman. The female body has taken on the requirements of society’s ideals, and women run to surgeons to be sliced open and have extraneous and unnatural “padding” implanted. The Breast Site, which does not condone breast augmentation, says that “According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) statistics, nearly 250,000 breast augmentation procedures were performed last year, an increase of 147 percent since 1997.” The numbers have tripled among women and teenagers since 1997, and I wonder why women, and their daughters, think it’s OK to be cut into for the sake of vanity. Of course, there are women who have these surgeries as a result of cancer, but I am not talking about them. I am talking about women who allow society and men to define what it is that makes them beautiful, unique, and wonderful to begin with. The average cost of cosmetic surgery for breast augmentation is anywhere from $4 – 10,000. But think what you can do with this money other than forsake it for vanity, for the perfect body image that only exists in the hands of the guy of girl who air brushes flaws from the scantily clad and buxom-fitting forms of high-priced models. Take some classes at a local college and fill your brains with knowledge and skills that could feed your low self-esteem with a degree, a job, a career, and a hefty pay check. Invest in a hobby, a love of something that feeds your insides and makes you feel good about yourself and who you are. The possession of big, protruding breasts only makes one group of people happy — the men that look upon your cleavage. You think you’re happy and confident when you see their eyes drift upon your sex, crowning you Queen of Sex Appeal, but deep down you’re not. The fact that you need their appreciation to feel good about you is telling enough. The only one that can give you self-esteem is you. The only thing that can make you feel good about yourself is achievement, accomplishments that require skill, talent, and intelligence. Getting a boob job is not a skill. It is not an accomplishment. And the foreign blob of silicone that sexualizes you does not fill your insides with anything more than temporary satisfaction – a temporary reprieve of the way you really feel about yourself. Those raw and candid shots of self-reproach and insecurities you carry around each day, they return despite the presence of big breasts and masculine appreciation.
3. BREAST HISTORY – Marilyn Yalom’s The History of the Breast chronicles the historical context and definitions of the human and female breast. Once revered, not for its sexual powers, but for its lactating powers, the breast signified a woman’s natural ability to save humanity. Breasts nurtured babies; they only thrived because they were fed by the breast. The Greek Amazons, who lived among women and only met with neighboring men to mate, cut off one breast to accommodate the extension of the bow while in battle and and used the only available one to feed their female infants. These were times when the female breast was centered on female power in battle, in sustenance and survival. But today’s breast is the focal point of masculine desire, and women go along with it. We dress the breast up, padding it so that it sticks out and pops up. We wear low V-neck shirts so that the depth and sight of the two mounds that meet and rub against one another are seen by foreign eyes. We use ornaments like diamond necklaces to drop into the middle of the cleavage drawing even more attention to the big-sized twins. We do everything in our power to show them off, whether they are real or fake, and we do it for attention, for self-gratification. We feel good when others appreciate the grandeur of our breasts, as if they are pieces of fine art assembled for a public exhibit at the Museums of “Unnatural” Identity. But this is not power. When we adhere to preconceived notions and definitions of what it means to be as woman — when we allow society to define us as soft and nurturing and sexual and “breast-ial” — when we go into surgery to change ourselves, have objects placed inside of us in the name of beauty — we are not powerful. We are not strong or even important. We are not valued as anything other than the hosts of masculine desire. We exist for them — for their sexual gratification. Our breasts, big, glorious, exposed, and full, exist to please them — and this should not please us. The Amazon warriors cut off their breast so that they could be stronger, faster warriors in battle. Feminists in the 70s ripped off their bras and burned them to show their independence and liberation from patriarchal labels and laws that singled them out as “feminine” and thus, the weaker sex, the softer sex, the sexualized and domesticated sex.
When men stare at my 32B’s, and some do before they realize there’s not much to see, I want to bitch-slap them in the face for their disrespect — because it is disrespectful. And when I hunt the stores for bras that are not padded, not under-wired, just plain old bras, I get miffed and perturbed. Even the clothing industry is trying to tell me that I have to be different — that I have to change the appearance of my small ones so that society can approve — so that men will be pleased. The message is clear — we are not good enough unless we please men. We are not good enough unless we do what they want us to do. We are not desirable unless our breasts are big, juicy, grabbable, and adaptable to the desires of men. Media whores and red carpet Goddesses tell us the same, their bikinis and gowns accentuating the full-breasted and exaggerated mounds of perfection that peer at us via the camera lens and smack us in the face from magazine photos. Women, free yourselves. Demand recognition of your skills, your accomplishments, your talents — talents that don’t include cosmetic surgery that distorts our image and distorts our minds. Cover your breasts and let the outside world look for something other than your sexual appeal — let them mine and locate your true beauty – your intelligence, your smarts, your talents — they are more everlasting and more valuable to you and society than your breasts!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Marina DelVecchio
Yes, I agree – it is very sad. I think the best we can do is try to teach our daughters and our sons to respect their individual bodies and the varieties of body types of others.
Thank you for you post!
Yes, Danielle, I agree with you. We need to start at home, educating both our boys and girls. Thanks for reading and commenting.
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I am following via Mom Bloggers Club. Hope you can return the favor. I am really glad that I have stumbled upon your blog. I love your perspective on it all.
http://motherhoodthetruth.blogspot.com/
Thanks so much for visiting! I checked out your site as well, and it is amazing. It’s nice to be around moms who are honest about motherhood!
HI Marina, well written piece today. Like the look of your website but some of the text is hard to read, it may be red on blue which is difficult to see.
On the practical issue of bras, I have a friend in her 60s who has never worn a bra. and she manages just fine. She is a very successful career woman and a highly fulfilled individual without any help from elastic! Personally, I can’t stand padded bras either but find no trouble at all getting unpadded ones anywhere. I suggest you try a department store with a qualified “fitter” who knows the inventory and can fit you well and comfortably. In my experience it is well worth the little more you may pay for the items, plus you can buy several bras at once when you are fitted correctly.
I agree with you that the “obthethed with breatheds” that we seem to be subjected to (was that a Seinfeld episode?) is tiresome but frankly for myself, I don’t spend any energy on this particular issue. Seems to me there are a few other issues of some importance out there to capture our attention, our concern and our call to arms ( no pun intended). Men too have to put up with the obsession with “size” so I suppose that all these quantifiers of sexual prowess or pleasure or attraction are part of our current social norms. Perhaps it is better than a puritan alternative of “unmentionables” ? Certainly, the overt sexuality that young people in particular, project in everyday social settings seems to me, excessive. But I suppose that there are those who would accuse me of perversion for noticing – and being surprised -by the large, bared, bouncing breasts and wobbly thighs of our young women as they walk about in airports, shops, restaurants and schools. I personally feel, like you it seems, that our sexually suggestive “bits” require reasonable modesty in everyday public situations. What one does in one’s own home is not relevant to the argument, of course.
But then again, think of the style of “breasts on a plate” as I affectionately think of the Empire period in womens fashions. That coincided with great modesty and formality in manners in other ways.
Interesting to debate, amusing, fun to create arguments but not worth wasting your serious and inquiring mind on, in my opinion! Let’s hear it for the challenges of education, of social justice, of serious economic theory, of kindness to one another, and of the joys of the simple things of life! I look forward to further blogs.
Jillian, I hear a lot of things that your response is telling me, but the loudest one is that I should focus my responses on more important issues. Well, that’s relative. My issue with women’s objectification in our society prevails with me. I’m sure it has a lot to do with my two very different and polar opposite mothers. I have always been an observer until I began my Doctoral work in gender politics and theory. Where the common woman thinks this is trivial or believes this is how it has always been, scholarly research in scholarly journals say otherwise. I’m trying to bring what I have learned to mainstream audiences that do not have access to journal research, which focuses so much on the way women are treated in our society. There are seasoned journalists out there who are covering more “relevant” issues, but this is most relevant to me. I am a cultural feminist and I observe the ways with which patriarchal society victimizes women via rapes, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, domestic abuse, and unfair unequal treatment in the work force; the way society and men define women’s accomplishments based on their sexual appeal, their external facets, their faces and bodies, as opposed to valuable members of society.
Of course, I like that you bring this up, so that we can talk about. If women knew more about history and the history of women, motherhood, warriors, they would see that it hasn’t always been this way. There was a turn in society when men began to misdirect the powers of women, the strengths and the valor in femininity, and women became compliant. This is my writing agenda – my feminist agenda. And it is more important to me than anything else, because when I look out at the world, out at women and the myriad of roles they play, I see potential choking to get out. One day women will have equality and power in this society and in this world, and it will be achieved not through their sexuality but through their intelligent accomplishments.
As always, thank you for reading and for bringing such critical issues to the forefront for discussion — after all, this is a linguistic space for discussion on issues of womanhood.
Id love to shop with you. I need a pretty padded bra in a DD. Having my daughter gave me an extra D and it stayed. I guess large breasts are a C? because its almost impossible to find something really nice in large sizes. Proof being Victorias Secret only goes to D. I used to love to wear there pretty padded bras. ( When u are bigger chested you need the padding or you will be showing even more than you want). My back would kill without an underwire and It is a necessity, not an accessory. Keepin the girls up and supported sometimes takes all the extras… Take it from me , sometimes having DDs is a full time job, Pretty bras make me happy. Sexy ones make my husband happy. I know i am smart, fun, funny educated and although i would hate it if a family member (like your bro. in law) oggled me, otherwise, I dont think it makes me look any less intelligent whether i am wearing something conservative or low cut.Now if i could only find some nice, pretty, sexy, bras in my size, that would make ME happy… But thats just me.
Yeah… But you’re missing my point. Bras are not about functioning the breast nowadays, but about exposing an icon of sexuality and sexual appeal. Women are defined by the size of their breasts and they are ok with it. They even buy into the notion that sexy bras make them feel sexy…. When it’s really that they feel sexy bc their men find them sexy..and why is that? We define our sex appeal based on how men see us.
And I’m not saying that big boobs is equal to dumb ho.. I’m saying that we should stop helping men and society place us in boxes of what is appealing. We should be more concerned about our accomplishments and not our beauty or sexual appeal…as defined by patriarchy.
I’m not trying to be offensive. I just wish women would help the cause more and empower themselves through their brains and not their bodies.
Thanks for reading, of course! And for commenting.
I guess i did miss you point on this one. I love your writing whether i agree with it or not. I dont think that the reason nice bras are cute, nice, or sexy is because a man has made me think that, maybe i am a brat but i dont mind seeing myself in a nice bra, man or no man and appreciating what i have. I also need a good bra. I guess i am commenting at a bad time bc i am frustrated that they dont make bras for real women who have big boobs, pretty ugly or otherwise, i need some support and i dont mean by my friends i mean by a good bra company. ugh.
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Thank you for retweeting my post! I really appreciate it.
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You know… I remember when I was little hearing my mom and her sister discuss their grandmother’s breasts! Then, as I grew and began to mature, they commented how I would have “Grandma Georgie’s” figure!
So guess what? I am raising two daughters and NEVER comparing their bodies to dead people!
Thanks for your writing! I LOVE your boldness!
Thanks Angie. I loved your story and appreciate your visit!
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Useful blog website, keep me personally through searching it, I am seriously interested to find out another recommendation of it.
It is certainly wrong to objectify women or men, and current western society is obviously breast-obsessed and has been for longer than I’ve been alive (I’m 46). And, as has been touched on, men deal with “size matters” with their own sexuality as well. Unfortunately, the bra-burning of the seventies, meant as a statement of women’s liberation from the oppression of objectification by men, backfired — by burning those bras, refusing to succumb to the dictates of society about how a woman should dress and simultaneously “hide” her nipples while emphasizing her breasts, those women were met instead with cheers from the very men they were trying to put in their place. And where were the men looking? Well, we all know, don’t we? Men are raised with expectations, as are women, and some of those are covert as well as overt. Advertising, fashion, peer pressure, religion, parenting, media, gender identity and role models are just some of the influences. At this point, it may not be entirely facetious to suggest that this particular objectification of women won’t end until men are eradicated. But you know, even that wouldn’t do the trick. Because of the pervasiveness of the disease, a great many women would have to be retrained as well. Women, even without men to objectify them, fall prey to many of the same influences. A sad commentary on our society.