Femininity (5 page)

Without doubt it was men who created the fetish of size and shape, for the ability
to breastfeed has nothing to do with external dimensions, and pleasurable sensation
resides in the erectile tissue of the nipples, not in the bulk. But the otherness
of breasts, their service in the scheme of male erotic satisfaction, long ago promoted
the myth that a flatchested woman is nonsexual or ungiving. At the other extreme,
a woman with large breasts is usually assumed to be flaunting her sex or inviting
attention. “Gay deceivers,” the charming turn-of-the-century euphemism for what later
generations referred to pragmatically as falsies, implied that a faked bosomy opulence
was more appealing in its deceitful flirtatiousness than the honest reality of an
unspectacular chest. The assumption of a ready-to-go sexual nature in big-breasted
women is reminiscent of the time when generous sensuality was assigned to large, meaty
thighs, and the phrase, “She has no thighs,” implied an erotic stinginess or a sensual
failure that bore no relationship to a woman’s own orgasmic response.

An uptilted cup shape is idealized in Western art, for high, round breasts are associated
with youth. Yet an uplifted sphere is invariably smallish in nature, since a large
mass cannot defy the laws of gravity except when securely trussed in a bra or shot
up with silicone, and “the larger the breast, the lower the pull” is a reliable rule.
The essential contradiction between a large breast and one that tilts upward is generally
resolved by a fantasy that combines both desirable traits. Clothes are never designed
for low-slung pendulous breasts, and rarely do we see this shape extolled in the nude.
A strikingly different tradition, however, is evident in African art. Wood carvings
from Mali celebrate a
figure whose breasts point downward sharply. A sharp downward thrust also typifies
New Guinea and Kwakiutl carvings.

Obviously there is no such thing as an average breast, but the amazing variety is
something that Western civilization chooses to deny, for it is the containerized breast
that greets the world and imposes a uniform shape that is considered most highly erotic
and fashionable in a given era. Most women cannot help but think that the shape of
their breasts and the line of their clothes can be improved by a standardized bra.
Blouses with side darts used to leave no doubt where the nipples should point. Sweaters
look snug and chic only when the breasts curve upward, or so our eye is trained to
believe. Arguments in favor of the bra, however, go well beyond the concerns of fashion,
or rather, they combine the esthetic with other considerations, echoing the protests
once articulated by fervent tight-lacers: Without a secure foundation the chest muscles
will hurt from the strain, the breast will flop shamelessly; the jiggle is a source
of discomfort; when the nipples point down they look droopy and sad; a sagging breast
is the sign of an old lady; one breast is bigger, or lower, or different from the
other; going braless is brazen and sloppy.

In this melange of concerns the one with serious implications is that a large-breasted
woman needs artificial support to carry the weight of her breasts. Anthropological
theories generally attribute the origin of upright walking to the male, who found
it advantageous to see across the tall grass of the savanna, throw a spear, carry
home the meat, or whatever else a man of importance might have done when he raised
himself up from a four-legged trot. And females, of course, were brought along by
this evolutionary development, but alas, less perfectly. Rarely do we read that the
initial advantage might have accrued to the female who needed one arm to carry her
child while she gathered and carried the fruits and leaves.

Is there something unsound in the female’s anatomy when she walks on two legs? Did
the evolution of bipedalism tax the female in a special way? There is no medical evidence
that going braless can hurt a small-breasted woman, but large, full breasts do present
a burdensome strain on the chest, spine and back. A
body does move less efficiently, less gracefully, more slowly and with greater caution
when its balance is affected by the hanging weight of two inert, semi-autonomous masses.
In sudden or vigorous moves, jumps and twists, there is a fractional delay in coordinated
timing; the motion of the breasts falls, slightly behind. Heavy, large breasts that
slap repeatedly against the chest wall during strenuous action can strain the supporting
tissue. A prominent frontal load pulls the shoulders forward and can affect the trajectory
or get in the way of a swinging arm. For these physiological reasons, small-breasted
women usually predominate among professional female athletes and dancers. To the pleasure
of manufacturers, the fitness and jogging craze that began in the Seventies created
a new demand for a firm, sturdy sports bra, the equivalent of a jockstrap, that would
minimize bobbing.

A woman who is larger than a C-cup will never race like the swift Atalanta no matter
what brassiere she puts on, and a woman who needs a D or larger may never be free
of minor discomfort in her everyday life. The cantilever principle of the brassiere
that projects the breasts forward by suspending the weight from the shoulders causes
its own considerable problems. Women who are Ds or double Ds typically suffer from
nagging lower backaches and painful grooves where the bra straps have cut into the
flesh.

Big breasts are one of many factors that have slowed women down in the competitive
race of life. Symbolically, in the conservative Fifties, when American women were
encouraged to stay at home, the heavily inflated bosom was celebrated and fetishized
as the feminine ideal. In decades of spirited feminist activity such as the Twenties
and the present when women advance into untraditional jobs, small, streamlined breasts
are glorified in fashion. Styles in breasts even seem to differ across the country.
On the fast-tempoed, businesslike East Coast, plastic surgeons report that the current
trend is toward reductions for physical comfort, while California starlets and housewives
on the Hollywood fringe still go in for augmentations, as did many Asian prostitutes
during the Vietnam war in order to appeal to American GIs.

A famous specialty act on the strip show and topless bar circuit features a performer
in Day-Glo pasties or fringed tassels who twirls her long breasts this way and that
until there is only a blur of motion. Patrons find this amusing. I am reminded of
Desmond Morris (did he once watch a tassel twirler semaphoring in the dark?), who
proposed in
The Naked Ape
that the full female breast evolved “to make the frontal region more stimulating”
to men. Teleological arguments aside, the cultural belief that breasts are primarily
decorative and intrinsically provocative seems related historically in Western civilization
to the elimination of the routine sight of breasts as a means of nourishing the young.

The American male’s breast fixation dates from the war years of the Forties and remains
unmatched throughout the world for obsessional fervor. Perhaps it can be partially
understood as symptomatic of a new imperialist nation’s desire to overcome or transform
the childhood experience of nestling in dependence against the mother’s bosom, or
perhaps in the theory that Americans were fighting a Puritan heritage that believed
all displays of sex and sexuality to be shameful. But we must admit that the national
breast obsession is often less than amicable and frequently is downright unfriendly.
The phantasmagorical specter of the engulfing superbreast that has appeared in the
work of Philip Roth and Woody Allen is more alarming than sexual, and slangy familiarities
such as boobs, jugs and titties are basically hostile appraisals, despite attempts
by some women to incorporate these contemptuous descriptions into their own vocabulary
as hip terms of demystified endearment.

Who can blame women for being confused about their breasts? And what good does it
do to point to our barebreasted sisters in other cultures, for we have seen too many
pictures in
National Geographic
of wizened old females with sagging, shriveled teats or with udderlike breasts that
hang forlornly to the waist. No, not sexy. Not pretty and attractive. Entirely too
remindful of the she-animal function, of milking the cow until she runs dry. Who wants
to dwell on the thought that breasts can look like udders, that breasts
are
udders, dry, full, swollen, dripping with milk, squeezed, sucked on, raw, tender,
in pain—and
ultimately used up and withered. No, we’re Marilyn Monroe in her calendar pose. We’re
Friday-night entries in a college town wet-T-shirt contest. We float down the avenue
in a Maidenform bra and the nipples don’t show.

How ironic that the sight of a mother breastfeeding her baby is unnerving to many
of the same people who like to see—or to show—some cleavage in a dinner dress. In
a curious reversal the suckling infant actually becomes the embarrassing stand-in
for the adult male lover. The nipple tease is the historic basis for décolletage in
fashion: a certain amount of exposure is sexy but an accidental display of the areola
is crudely beyond the pale. It is still considered rather risqué in some quarters
to go braless, not necessarily because of the jiggle and bounce but because nipples
have a spunky way of asserting themselves according to their own agenda. Nipples and
lactation appear to be a problem—yet nipples and milk ducts are really what breasts
are all about. Not surprisingly, although the erectile tissue is present, masculine
sexuality has rarely featured or even admitted its own nipple responsiveness as a
source of erogenous pleasure. (When and if it does, will men grow shy about going
shirtless?) The little boy who draws two dark, angry circles on the poster of a fully
clothed woman has already absorbed society’s lesson: the nipples on his chest are
invulnerable and sexless but a girl’s are shameful and dirty. And the nursing mother
suffused with sensual feelings when the child is at her breast may wonder if her response
is wrong or indecent.

After decades of frantic obsession, breasts evidently were such a thoroughly colonized
province of masculine sexuality that the sight of a braless woman on the street in
the late 1960s could inspire a strong negative reaction. The hoots and catcalls eventually
subsided, but the initial emotion was something akin to rage. It was as if men had
come to believe that taking off a brassiere somehow was their right and privilege.
Understandably, many women also shared the point of view that a braless woman was
deliberately provoking dangerous attention. In discussions of rape one heard, “Well,
what do those young girls expect when they go around braless?”

No one in the women’s movement ever burned a bra in
public protest, yet as soon as feminists began to march, the myth of bra burners spread
like wildfire in the nation’s media, and the flames were fanned by journalists who
should have known better. As near as I can figure out, the legend may have started
innocently enough by some feature writer searching for a clever phrase. Militant war
resisters had burned their draft cards at public bonfires, so it was laughably imaginative
to apply the metaphor to militant feminists, some of whom indeed were braless. Bra
burning suggested a wanton, fiery destruction of safe, familiar values. The imagery
symbolized the feared feminist assault on all established traditions that kept women
and their sexual nature confined and contained in an orderly fashion. A bra burner
might be a bomb thrower, if she weren’t so silly and self-destructive. And so the
myth caught on, for it struck at the heart of feminine insecurity—the fear of not
being supported and protected, not only socially and economically but in a vulnerable
aspect of bodily shape.

The ideal feminine shape has always been subject to change, not only structurally
by means of foundation garments, but by the amount of flesh that has been considered
desirable in a given age. Botticelli’s Venus is slender enough for the 1980s but Tintoretto’s
Susannah might disappoint today’s Elders with her gargantuan buttocks and thighs.
Alas, the twenty-five plump lovelies who loll about
The Turkish Bath
by Ingres look as though they might have a trial membership in a reducing salon.
To conform to a fashionable body, today’s woman wants smaller breasts and hips than
she did at the turn of the century when the billowy Gibson Girl with the swaybacked
figure represented a voluptuous ideal, or when Florenz Ziegfeld glorified the Lillian
Russell-type showgirl in his
Follies
and declared that feminine perfection was 36-26-38, with a decided accent on the
hips.

Statuesque Lillian was much larger than that. Although she was mum about her lower
proportions, her bosom and waistline measured 42 inches and 27 inches respectively
with the help of tight-lacing. Her friendly rival Anna Held, Ziegfeld’s headliner
and wife, was under five feet tall and plump, but her vital statistics were 36-20-36
when she put on her Parisian corsets. When Held died of a bone disease at the age
of forty-five, stories
circulated that she had had two ribs surgically removed to narrow her spectacular
waist, but these were ghoulish rumors and nothing more. The important point is that
at the time of Held’s death in 1918, the hourglass body she exemplified had already
been replaced by a thinner, less exaggerated shape, the bosomless look of the uncorseted
flapper.

In the 1950s the bathing beauty who hoped to get a Hollywood contract displayed her
pulchritude at 35-25-35—an inch thinner in the bust and waist and three inches thinner
in the hips than Ziegfeld’s ideal, but her breasts could hit the tape to male applause
at forty inches or more in the manner of Jayne Mansfield without being considered
top-heavy. For street wear she usually wore a waist-cincher to nip in her middle.
However, within a decade the typical starlet with the busty chest and the wiggly rear
had become a fashion liability, too much of a muchness, even for the beach. She didn’t
look good in a bikini—there was too much overhang in all directions—and that was the
start of her downfall.