Barbara Ellen
Body Language
Not so long ago, the world seemed to be full of women only too eager to invest in shop-bought tits. These days, it seems to be more about downsizing. In a nod to Amazons hacking their right breasts off because they interfered with shooting arrows, a British policewoman explained last week how she’d had her breasts reduced because wearing her protective vest had become unbearably painful.
Similarly, last week’s edition of the British Channel 4 series, Equinox, under the title of Storm in a D-Cup, investigates how doubts over the safety of silicone are causing women worldwide to rethink their buxom ideal. Even Hollywood, the Mammary Mecca, seems to be deflating, with Pamela Anderson leading the way by having her implants removed. Closer to home, naturally busty friends of mine seem to have stopped gloating, and started complaining – of back pain, shoulder aches, and unwanted male attention.
“There are times when I feel like my life is just one big building site,” confided one double-F cup miserably. Like most “stacked” women, her relationship with her breasts is a complex affair, ping-ponging between delight and despair, but never straying too far from dementia. When she started developing physically, her brain seemed to take its own sweet time catching up. When her parents went to bed, she would sit in front of the television, take off her top, and expose herself to celebrities. “Griff Rhys Jones was a big favourite,” she says. “But any light entertainer would do.”
She doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore (which is why she’s allowed to be my friend). “I’m OK with my breasts now,” she says. “I feel womanly, and, I can get away with having a fat bum.” Then again, she’s the first to admit that she’s an easy target for male objectification.
On one memorable occasion, a lover snuggled up to her in bed, and said: “I’ve got three little words for you.” “Oh yes?” she said, her pulse racing, little pink hearts popping before her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Tits, tits, tits!”
Now this sort of thing has never happened to me – for the simple reason that breasts have never happened to me. Not that this is an issue. I don’t recall any official complaints, or, for that matter, my baby starving for want of sustenance when I was breastfeeding. As the sparrow-chested woman’s mantra goes: “More than a handful is a waste.” However, some women can’t or won’t leave it at that. “Whose hand?” they cry, as if they envisage a dark and terrible future, full of men with obscenely high standards, and extra-large hands. Then the race is on to the plastic surgeon, where women ask for bigger breasts, when what they’re really after is male approval, self esteem . a life?
It’s certainly getting to the stage where men shouldn’t be made to take the whole rap for women wanting to conform to some feminine ideal. Men have strong, and occasionally strange, opinions about breasts, but I think that could be put down to the fact that men and women alike tend to feel that certain areas of the body are there to be shared – penises, pecs, bottoms, and breasts floating around in some psychosexual body-part limbo, with everyone allowed to have an opinion about their general size, shape, and gorgeousness. Very few men seem actively fetishistic about the size of breasts. If anything, women tend to fetishise, maybe deluding themselves that “looking the part” will solve all their problems.
One woman on the Equinox programme seemed very keen to tell us how her implants had transformed her life for the better. She is next seen illustrating this metamorphosis, by jogging along a beach and screaming with delight as she tries on low-cut dresses. Poor dear, you can’t help thinking, how dull was her life before?
I may be doing this woman a great disservice – maybe, when the cameras aren’t rolling, she leads a vibrant inner life, but I very much doubt it. It takes a certain anachronistic kind of woman to begin and end the search for self esteem in an enlarged bra-cup. And, as perceptions of beauty deflate, and women of all shapes and sizes start feeling better about themselves, we might just have to leave her behind.