About Breasts

I’ve been thinking a lot about breasts lately.  It all started after seeing “American Hustle”, in which it seemed to me that one of the cast members should have been listed as “Amy Adams’ Breasts”.

Last month I read an article in the New York Times about store mannequins being built to reflect the new “extreme” bodies desired by women in Venezuela.   I was appalled by the following quote from the maker of the mannequins,  “I say that inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.”

More importantly, though, this week a friend underwent a double mastectomy. I am hoping this will be a big part of ridding her of cancer, now and forever.  And I also find myself wondering what it might be like to be a woman living without breasts. 

Every woman I know has a mixed relationship with her breasts.  Some think theirs too small, others, too big.  For as long as I have had them, I have resented their appearance on my body.  Men have desired them, ogled them, made lewd comments about them, and adored them.  Sports have challenged them, and clothes?  Don’t get me started.

In a world where it is publicly discussed if Hilary Clinton shows a shadow of cleavage, a world which has grown comfortable with the word “breast”, as in “breast cancer”, yet a world which still glorifies young women willing to bare their breasts for attention, what is a woman supposed to do when faced with losing her breasts?

As Betty Rollin said decades ago, first you cry.  And then you do what makes you comfortable, regardless of the worldview on women’s bodies.  It’s a very personal decision, a decision made while facing one’s own mortality.  I would hope that we would all grow more comfortable with the sight of a beautiful woman, breastless, one-breasted, reconstructed, flat-chested or bosomy and just celebrate who we are rather than our cup size.