I just finished reading
this week's New York Times Magazine cover story, by a 35-year-old woman who has breast cancer, and it got me thinking about breasts. My mother's friend went in for a mammogram the day after her fiftieth birthday. A week later and BOOM! she was told her breasts were riddled with cancer. She now writes furious letters to stores that don't sell bras for women who have lost their breasts.
That's when it really hit me that even when you're fifty, losing your breasts is more than the pounds of flesh you lose. We live in a country, after all, when 40,000 women a year get breast implants, and 36,000 get breast reductions. We don't take our breasts lightly. Which is why gURL's meditation on breasts is so refreshing. These girls talk about breasts as if they really were just pounds of flesh — sometimes large, sometimes small, and sometimes just kinda bouncy.
Of course, if you take the historical view, any pair of breasts is just fine by men — from the apple-like breasts favored in the Middle Ages to the breasts-as-rockets in the '40s, the no-bra, no-boobs '60s, and the return of cleavage in the '90s.
Which leaves just one question: How do you hang them? Is the bra a keener pleasure for being optional? Here's an idea: Use a friend. Joe is My Interactive Bra is a wonderful, funny (and, be warned, sexy) photo essay on Man As Bra. Check this out for insight: "Acknowledging your bra rather than trying to ignore it seems a healthy change." Amen to that, sister. Breasts have feelings, too.
Emma Taylor is the editor of Tripod's Women's Zone. Her e-mail is [email protected].
