Note: This is excerpted/adapted from Psychology Today’s website from Sept. 25, published on the daily blog of Ed Strong, hardcore leftist and top-shelf pornography curator. I have no idea how I got on his mailing list — but it’s great fun. He posted this today. — efc
Americans seem inordinately obsessed with women’s breasts. The beach party flicks of the ’60s idolized the bouncing jugs of Gidget-style surfers. From Playboy to more hard-core stroke mags, giant bosoms dominate America’s Technicolor spreads.
What other country could found, patronize, and overall accept a restaurant franchise named “Hooters”? The founder of a chain called “Nichons” (the nearest translation available) in France would be viewed as a pathetic juvenile, a joke.
Cultures more comfortable with their sexuality view breasts as they should be viewed, as an attractive part of the more interesting overall context. Here is a quote from Time magazine, in the ’70s, when an Italian publisher booted up a marinara-flavored version of Playboy:
“Reflecting European tastes, Playmen does not display the mammary obsession that Playboy profitably discerns in Americans.
“Says Publisher Tattilo: ‘The U.S. is a matriarchy. I think this is the reason for the American male preference for women with exaggerated, voluminous bosoms, true wet nurses with a reassuring maternal aspect’.”
Maybe. I think there’s more to it than the fact that American women tend to wear the pants at home.
The US, when it comes to being comfortable with sex, is closer to Iran than it is to, say, France or Germany.
A plausible theory for the boob obsession is this: The era when American mass media culture invaded most homes in the US was the same period during which breastfeeding (again in the US) was denigrated as primitive and unsanitary, compared to the “clean, safe, hygienic and modern” alternative of bottles and formula.
For several generations, American newborns were deprived of the comfort and nutrition of the milk-crammed, rosy, leaking mammaries of their moms. Instead, egged on by TV’s various versions of Dr. [Benjamin] Spock [a famous pediatrics guru of the 1960s], their mothers served them a pasty, pale, sugar-stuffed liquid in a sterilized bottle topped with a cold and plastic nipple.
Humans for millions of years had been conditioned to seek nurture and dinner at the living teat. No wonder those poor little guys of post-war America, when they grew up, found themselves fetishizing the warm and heaving bosom.
And so did their girlfriends, in a different way. They became obsessed with having big, creamy breasts, to fondle and admire in the privacy of their bedrooms, to reveal to boyfriends who made it to “second base.”
When nature didn’t cooperate, they bought push-up bras, or had silicon blisters surgically implanted to make their boobs big, if not necessarily creamy.
If this were not re cancer-awareness I would have thought it was a joke:
“Former NFL quarterback rips league’s breast cancer footballs”
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Former-NFL-quarterback-rips-league-s-breast-canc?urn=nfl-276660
Really? On footballs? There are a whole bunch of bizarre twists in there. How ’bout we leave breast cancer out of football? Too Weird.
So, sitting here with the miners coming up the tube on the computer behind me, I went to Sarah’s desk to cast the chart – her rig has the more modern version of my astrology software…and I’m staring at Katy Perry. Looking at her, studying her, intrigued, curious, turned on! She is gorgeous and her breasts and that adorable little frame with her dress clinging to it, and her face and playful demeanor all say one thing, which is: “fuck me” — and that is why this video was pulled. They always blame the kids; it’s how the adults react. In this case any vaguely heterosexual boys or men with a pulse, who see her in her dress-up gown, are pretty much going to have the same or similar natural, organic, and most of all simple reaction.
It really is simple…and beautiful.
Very nice, thank you Kelly.
You made the connection!
How visibly similar are these words..but add me an “r” !
=== fixed! ef
Eric you have spurred me too. I’ve just become a subscriber xx
p.s Len i love your comment
You should see what I have saved for Thanksgiving.
Anyway — I was at the gym tonight and thought: write something basic on mirrorplay so that you can convey the idea. This was by the way spurred by Pam’s reply below, with some (a lot of) encouragement from Kelly.
Turn down the lights and dim the screen. Best to wait till the kids are in bed. Here ya go. I just cast the chart for this posting, and included it at the bottom of the article. You don’t need to know a lot of astrology to see the image of a mirror, from Gemini to Sagittarius.
You should have saved this article for Thanksgiving, but i suppose you wanted to get a leg up and wing it now.
Hi Eric. I love the way you write about topics that involve sex. I’m a Scorpio
The US is under the sign of Cancer? I remember reading it. If so, their breast obsession is pretty normal I guess. I think of Pamela Anderson, a Cancerian, as an example of someone that epitomizes the extent of the country’s fetish. It’s so funny!
I think that at the core of this conversation is the question: do we consider sex a form of nourishment, or a perversion?
I think we need to consider that we are putting breasts on display in a culture that is both emotionally and sexually starved, and judgmental of what we all want.
This is one of the most complex discussion points in all of sexuality, but I can say this, I always thought breasts were beautiful, but doing Book of Blue the past five years, which has involved being around nude women, photographing them and looking at pictures many of which include breasts, my appreciation is now on a cosmic scale, with a reverence that really is new to me. Apropos of Pam’s comment, my feelings have evolved in spaces where women are in front of a mirror, feeling and seeing themselves in open daylight, with a witness.
The other day I encountered a video, posted by Ed Strong (who pointed us to this Psychology Today article above), which I will share with you for your pleasure, contemplation or both. Note, this video is probably not appropriate for workplace viewing as it involves nudity, and some people may – ironically – feel it’s not suitable for kids: here it is.
The video is the second item down; scroll down. It is indeed extraordinary: I’ve seen a lot of erotic imagery in my life and this is my very favorite by another artist.
Eric, I don’t know too many women who sit and admire any part of their anatomies in the privacy of their bedrooms. Most of the women I know are too busy finding fault with various parts of their anatomies, and breasts seem to get the most vociferous criticism. Too big, too small, too far apart, too close together, too droopy, different sizes, nipples too big, nipples too small, nipples the wrong color, yadda, yadda. The United States would be a much happier place if we women actually did play with and admire our bodies on a regular basis. Much happier.
I’ll go with the cultural learning argument.
I had a German language teacher in high school who consistently cut out and censored the breasts in the German magazines we read in class. Not because she was offended, but because we ‘might’ be. She was actually Danish, and had lived in the US since the 1950′s, so she admitted to us that her personal attitude was not very American.
Not that we teenage boys in the class had a problem with what we couldn’t see, but it was frustrating to come across holes in the magazines… It just seemed silly, and still does.
Yes, I was breast fed. Am I fixated on breasts? Not entirely, but I don’t ignore them either. It’s all good!
My astrology teacher, Beth Underwood of Phoenix, AZ (now deceased) told me that the reason Americans are so enamoured of the female breast is because in the Sibley chart, our collective sun, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter are all in Cancer, the sign of the Mother. The Great Mother with her voluminous and bountiful breasts pervades our subconscious culture.
My Belgian friend once remarked that Americans are so breast conscious; he said their TV and magazines have naked people on them all the time and no one even bats an eye. I remember German TV Guides having a naked woman on it and a German movie in what we would call prime time having full male frontal nudity on it. They just don’t think of breasts the same way we do and African American men still, generally speaking, prefer butts over breasts which is mirrored in some African cultures to this day in various African countries.
I am not so sure breast feeding has as much to do with it as we would assume; both my older brother and my husband were breast fed in that time you mentioned (late 50′s early 60′s) and both of them had/ have breast fetishes. I think instead it is a cultural thing; boys growing up see the media focus on breasts and set their focus on those as well…much like ducks imprint on whomever they first see after hatching.
Black children, raised in White America’s very White-centered media still seem to prefer butts because in their own sub-culture, they see and hear their men express a preference for backsides. My bi-racial brother is one who has a butt preference despite being raised in our all-white family and among an older, breast focused white brother. His forays with African American kids his own age caused him to be more like his Black peers and prefer butts. Both my brothers were exclusively breast-fed.
Based on this anecdotal evidence, I would posit that culture plays a HUGE roll in the formation of children’s values and ideas; far more than anyone would believe.
and on the note of happy – really; Elmo and Katy make a totally cute song and dance couple – Bouncy n pink-cheeked!
Way better than Kermit and Miss Piggy who’s partnership always got stuck like a frog in my throat.
(sorry no christian fillet o fish jokes on my platter today)
You and your frog king pix seems to have stirred the chowder.
Give me a ‘big creamy breast’ anyday..
“McDonald’s Happy Meal resists decomposition for six months”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101012/bs_yblog_upshot/mcdonalds-happy-meal-resists-decomposition-for-six-months
Unlike the Happy meal, Elmo looks quite Happy.
Christians?
Bring back the fish!
Hahahahaha! Oh how true I find all this! And it is not just American men who have a breast fetish, oh no….we poor natural-nipple deprived American women do too!
My kids (who were both breast fed) don’t “get it” – why isn’t a body considered a holistic device?
LOL! Thanks for posting this, Eric.