titty wars

Pull up a chair, friends. This one is going to take a while.

I read an article over at Slate this week about new research on how breastfeeding your baby can raise his or her IQ. It's kind of a moot point for me, given that the kid weaned herself shortly after her second birthday and the well is likely to stay dry from here on out since Hubby and I are leaning towards quitting while we're ahead, but I think I've made it pretty clear in the past where I stand on breastfeeding. Suffice it to say that whatever benefit nursing the kid might have had on her IQ, the physical, emotional, and financial benefits for us far outranked other considerations. In previous posts, I've gleefully celebrated public nursing and expressed frustration with those who think nursing is something that should be done in private, like using the toilet or having sex. I try not to harp on it excessively, but it's unquestionably something about which I feel strongly.

So, when I read this response piece in Jezebel and the consequent comment string jam-packed with the usual reactionary, judgmental bullshit, I felt compelled to tackle the subject yet once more, and planned to put something about it in the bouillabaisse. But then I checked my email and found that the fabulous Libby Spencer had sent me a link to this post over at Shakesville (a great blog, if you've never been) and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to fit everything I wanted to say into a single point in a Friday night post. Plus I was tired and a little drunk. So I saved it for today.

Let me begin by clarifying a couple of things up front.

1) I am a feminist. I am a card-carrying NOW member, my mother was active in the second wave of feminism, I was active in the third wave of feminism, I've marched in Washington for gay rights and abortion rights, I've taken women's studies courses, queer studies courses, and feminist theology courses. Hell, I was even a Riot Grrrl back in the day. Not only am I a feminist, but I married a feminist, and we have chosen to raise our kid in a community that shares our values, even though the cost of living here is extremely high, because it's just that important to us. Feminism is still relevant and necessary because sexism is still alive and well in America, and I'm not going to waste my breath explaining why. If you disagree, stop being so willfully ignorant and go educate yourself. I don't have the time to do it for you.

2) I love sex. All kinds of sex. With all kinds of people. I embrace the whole fucking thing (pun intended). I love talking about sex, having sex, watching other people having sex. I am universally non-judgmental about people's kinks, provided that all involved parties are consenting adults. If you like dressing up in a fur suit, being ridden like a pony, getting beaten up, peed on, whatever, that's your thing, man. I don't care and, while I reserve the right to point and giggle at you, I'm sure as hell not going to tell you that what you're into is wrong. Sexual response is complicated. Everyone has different buttons to push, and which buttons prove to be most pleasurable when pushed varies so widely from person to person that I think it is entirely ridiculous to assume that whatever seems right and good to you will seem similarly right and good to anyone else. That's why all of those "50 Sex Tips To Drive Your Man Wild!" headlines on the cover of Cosmo have always irritated the crap out of me. You want to know how to drive your man wild? Why don't you just ask him what he likes. Jexenu. That's also why I can't stand anti-porn activists. It's fine with me if you don't like pornography. There's a whole lot of porn that I'd rather not consume myself, and some that definitely offends me. But I abhor censorship in any form, so I will exhaustively defend the rights of those who produce and consume pornography because the First Amendment is the fucking cornerstone of our democracy and I love it so much that I want to smoosh it to my boobs and smother it with wet, hot kisses.

Okay. So. Let's get on with it. What I want to talk about here is breasts, and our culture's weird, complicated love-hate relationship with them. There's a deep and tangled web of issues at work here, and I'm no expert about any of them, but I intend to do my best to tease them out. I don't think I'm going to say anything new here, or anything that anyone else hasn't already said, and probably better than I'm about to, but I'm in the mood for a rant. Ultimately, this is just my opinion. Which is fitting, given that this is my blog. So I'm going to be lazy and not cite references or link to articles. You can do the research your own damn self.

Here we go.

Breasts are fabulous. We have a primal relationship with them, formed long before conscious thought. How could you not fall in love with the source of your first nourishment and comfort? For most of us, as we become sexually mature, breasts become a source of terrific sexual pleasure. They are such warm, pillowy sacks of joy! And if the breasts are yours, what pleasure can be derived from another's appreciation of them! So why is it that some people react to the sight of a child taking nourishment at her mother's breast with such revulsion? And, on the other end of the spectrum, why is our culture's admittedly juvenile and developmentally stunted fun-making of breasts viewed with such hostility? Must we view breasts as uniquely sexual or uniquely purposeful? I believe that the two are so closely intertwined that the overlap inevitably colors both views.

Evolutionarily speaking, our primary purpose as humans is reproduction. We are built for it, and the biological drive to do it is strong. Some of us are built to prefer fucking members of the same gender, which obviously complicates the baby-making, and some of us are able to ignore the lizard brained part of ourselves that tells us we must make babies, but by and large, our purpose here, biologically speaking, is to reproduce. Therefore, our bodies are built to send out signals to other people that "Hey! Look at me! I'm ready for baby-making!" For women, breasts are the most obvious outward expression of our reproductive ability. Regardless of our feelings on the matter, they announce to potential mates that our bodies are capable of housing and nourishing a baby. And regardless of their feelings on the matter, heterosexual men respond to them with arousal because of it.

I was mortified when my breasts first appeared. I was the only girl in my fifth grade class with a rack, and I did my self-conscious best to hide them with baggy clothes and a slump-shouldered stance. By sixth grade, there was no hiding them anymore. Boys talked to them, girls teased me about them, my ballet teacher pulled me aside and suggested that I had no career ahead of me as a ballerina because of them. They changed everything. I remember, vividly, walking downtown one afternoon after school to go buy a candy bar at the drug store and some guy leaning out of the window of his pickup truck to yell "nice tits!" at me. I was twelve. If I could have vanished away into nothing in that moment, I would have, gladly. Growing up with giant breasts, I faced an endless parade of catcallers, boob-talkers, and potential paramours whose interest in me was limited to the region between my neck and belly.

Was I objectified? Hell yes. Is there a pervasive objectification of women's bodies in our culture? Hell yes. I can't imagine that anyone is going to try to argue that point. But many people do try to argue that the increasing objectification of men's bodies indicates a leveling of the playing field. Does that argument hold? Hell no. All it means is that we've universally lowered the bar for acceptable behavior. Pectoral implants, surgical abdominal sculpting, "manscaping," steroid abuse, male strippers, the cultural stereotype of the hapless father whose too fucking retarded to know what to do with his kids while mommy's out shopping at Filene's (You've seen that commercial, right? It makes me want to put my fist through the television set.)... all of it breaks my fucking heart just as much as breast implants, "vaginal rejuvenation," "mommy jobs," anorexia, female strippers, and the cultural embrace of the madonna/whore dichotomy. A level playing field shouldn't mean dehumanizing women and men, and yet that's where we've ended up.

So what do we do about it? This is where I diverge in opinion with most feminists. I think the solution is not less, but more. I think we should be inundated with images of women's bodies. Real women's bodies. And real men's bodies. We, as a culture, have our heads so firmly embedded in our asses when it comes to sexuality. We're wired to procreate, sure, but what that means in practical purposes is that we're wired to fuck, and the Judeo-Christian belief that the only acceptable kind of sex is procreative sex (and that only within the confines of a heterosexual marriage) requires us to rise above or ignore the strong messages we receive from our bodies. We've determined that certain body parts should be taboo to look at, lest we arouse one another inappropriately, and that certain expressions of sexuality should be taboo, lest we engage in sexual activity that has no hope of producing offspring. But of course the desire to look at those body parts or engage in those activities persists, and so we have this split between "acceptable" sexuality and the rest of the stuff that everyone secretly fantasizes about or does but won't cop to. By relegating those body parts and activities to the closet, we've allowed the porn industry to lay claim to them, perpetuating all the bullshit sexist stereotypes about both men's and women's sexuality.

Well, fuck. That. Shit. We need to grow the hell up and accept that we are sexual creatures. We need to demystify women's bodies, stop being so fucking judgmental about what gets other people off, and learn to own our sexuality so that maybe, just maybe, we can mature as a culture beyond the fucked-up, adolescent, "hurr hurr boobies" attitude we currently possess. Why are people freaked out by public nursing? Because watching a baby nurse means being reminded simultaneously of both of the breast's biological purposes - to nourish and to stimulate. It meshes the the procreative and the pleasurable aspects of our sexuality and that freaks us out. Does that mean we should be protected from seeing it? Hell no. We should see more of it. Why are people offended or disgusted by novelty tit toys? Because their existence reminds us of the ongoing objectification of women's bodies and our culture's history of subjugating women. Does that mean we should be protected from seeing them? Hell no. We should see more of them. The more of that shit we see, the more we talk about it, the more we are forced to acknowledge that our attitudes about sex are ridiculously immature.

Should we have a sense of humor about all of it? Hell yes. Sex is funny. It's messy and smelly and noisy and frequently awkward and also more fun than just about anything else. Having a lover you can be yourself with, be entirely naked with in all your lumpy, bumpy, squishy, drippy glory is the nicest thing there is. Own your body. Live in it and talk about it unashamedly. My twelve year old "nice tits" incident was humiliating and dehumanizing, for sure. But it was also instructive. I learned that my body had power, and over the years, I learned to embrace that power. But, y'know, in the immortal words of Uncle Ben, with great power comes great responsibility. Refuse to participate in your subjugation. Lay claim to your body. Lay claim to your sexuality. Own your biases and assumptions and call other people on theirs. The battle over boobs? Whatever. As fantastic as they are (and really, they are pretty fantastic), they're just breasts. Get over it, already, and let's talk about something really interesting.

Like vaginas.