Sunday, February 8, 2009

Things that WONDER me - The History of Breasts and Power


“Her breasts stood out like Mussolini’s balcony,” he remembered as a child. Mike’s first memory of his seventh grade history teacher was her frontal view. He had hit the tit lottery. Everyone else had Mrs. Hanson and she was not the tit representation that Mrs. Dalton was. This was a view he would cherish, a love that was real and one that would last forever.

“I sat around with my friends and we tried to find an appropriate name for these things, “he said. They were much more than boobs and they were on a quest to find a name that would fit them.

“I couldn’t call those things boobs, tits or knockers. They were something more powerful. They changed my life,” says Mike.

They went through an assortment of names before coming up with the final name. They went through teats, bazooms, headlights, boobies, hooters, bazookas, zeppelins and many others before getting the permanent, the final and the name that would stick forever. They would be called----The Double Whammies.

Ahhhh…The breast. In the beginning was the breast. Our first instinct was to go to the breast, which was a thing that sustained life. Our first instinct is to go to the boob and attach ourselves; the fleshy mound that gives us life.

It happened a hundred million years ago. An intricate biological process in which our chemical makeup began to transmute and mutate blood into milk, then get it out of the creature into the mouths of their offspring. Some call it evolution and some call it God. Whatever it is, it is the first thing we do as living creatures.

From that point on, man has loved the breast, worshipped the breast and even fought over the breast. Breasts throughout our history have undergone a series of change.

During ancient history, breasts were displayed to their finest. Much of the art from our ancient past depicts the breast as a thing of both beauty and functionality. A naked woman was represented with big boobs and hips to show fertility.

As Christianity swept the lands, modesty became part of religious behavior. Women began to hide their breasts and public exposure could surely give eternal damnation.

In the Renaissance period, breasts took on a shape matching the abundance of the time. Women of size were thought to be the most desirable. Bountiful flesh and large boobs were abundant in the art of this time.

Going into the Victorian era, breasts took a dive. Straight to high-necked dresses and were jammed into corsets. They were wrapped up until reduced and otherwise stuffed away like common criminals.

The mid-twentieth century saw the breast get set free once again. Thinning straps and scant tops were all the rage. Then Twiggy burst on the scene and small breasts became the thing to have. Lack of womanly form was very popular to have and any woman with curves or breast size had to sit on the sidelines and wish for a miracle.

In the last few decades breasts of all shapes and sizes became popular once again. They boobs grew prevalent in the media and they public eye. The media loves the breasts. They get ratings, sell goods and generally make a profit. Ratings are down? Stick in a tit. Need a boost in your annual sales report? Through in a boob. Do we need to question ourselves as to why breast implants are so popular?

My friend Steve feels that more than a mouthful is a waste. “If I go out and meet a woman with big breasts, I am risking a chance at saline sacks and it’s just not worth the risk,” he says.

He loves to look at nice big rounded ones but feels the risk is too great and decided a few years ago to stick with the smaller ones. He uses the cliché “more than a mouthful is a waste” as a way to back out of the whole plastic surgery topic. The hardness of the breast is a turn off and he would much rather a smaller one with a softer feel to it.

Back in the day, a man looking at a woman’s breasts was because he found them amazing enough to be interested. He found them alluring and dreamt of being with those breasts. Today, most men look at women’s breasts and wonder if they’re real.

Then there was my other friend Robin, who stood firm in her decision to get “those” saline sacks. “Today’s media imagery communicates quite clearly that the best breast, the breast as it should be, is the youthful looking breast. It is a firm, milky white globe; not a sagging tubular bellybutton cover or two buttons affixed to your chest plate” she says.

She was born flat-chested and always felt unfeminine to the men in her life. They only way she could get comfortable in her own skin was to get a boob job. She saved and saved and eventually got the breasts that made her feel like the woman she was truly meant to be.

“I know women continue to consider their breasts as symbolic representations of themselves and I know that is not what we ‘should’ be doing but I could not be flat chested any longer”, says Robin.

Robin was willing to risk the small amount of her soft breast tissue to be stretched across a larger globe shaped saline sack. It was a small price to pay for a chest that she has always dreamt about. “If breasts are power and I have none, I’ll take fake power. With my boob job, my world has changed to the better,” Robin replied.

Robin recently had breast augmentation and now she feels she rules the world. She is now confident is situations where she was once awkward. This boob job has helped her capture a power within herself that she could not find before. Of course she had it in her to begin with, but it was a way to get her power out right now.

Breasts are a part of each woman’s’ personal power. In accepting that very important part of your body, small or large, you develop a form of power that is acceptance of yourself. That is REAL power.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is another friend of mine named Malia. She is a large woman with big features. It’s in her genealogy, she’s Samoan. “My breasts are so large that men do not look at me as a person but as a carrier of these two large fleshy mounds,” she said.

She feels that men’s admiration for her is false because it is not centered on her as a person. She is playing second fiddle to her large breasts. Malia is looking at the possibility of a breast reduction.

Women from all walks of life and with all different breast sizes know one thing about their breasts; most men love to look at them. Getting what you want is just a matter of how you work you breast viewing. With the right breast presentation, large or small, almost anything is obtainable from most men.

As wrong as this may seem, a waitress friend of mine use to wear a baggy shirt when she was at work. Her tips were moderate and she was happy with them. Then one day she came into work and pulled a long string on her shirt and it unraveled until there was a hole in her shirt. She borrowed a shirt from a smaller coworker which made her boobs tightly snuggle together and a bit more exposed.

“I couldn’t believe it, my tips went from 15 percent to 25 percent,” she said. She has since allocated all her baggy shirts to pajama tops.

The breasts have come a long way, after its repetitious journey in and out of the limelight. Breasts have been dependant on religion, politics, public moral standards and personal satisfaction. Breasts have been shown and been hidden away from sight. Today, breasts emerge proud and sensual and are here for a while.

A moment of silence for the Double Whammies please.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Addition to Enlightment

Please note that the observation in the below blog is the inital reasons for survival. We all have to conform to others and that even business people conform to others. It is just the initial reasons we conform to whatever survival tactic we chose.

Things that ENLIGHTEN me

Through the course of a single day I observe many things that I never think twice about. Sometimes something may intrigue me and I will try and figure it out. I may over analyze the situation or I may misinterpret it. Who knows? But this is what I do. Sometimes I feel I need to do this and correlate it to myself and see how the pieces fit. Some of the time I get nothing from it and sometimes I gain huge insight that aids my self growth. Here is one situation I found interesting that I had not really considered.

Situation: A panhandler, a bartender and two business women.
At first glance they were very different. Yet on this particular day I realized how similar they all really were.

It is November 1998, in San Diego California. I just moved to San Diego from Hawaii and I had absolutely nothing to do so I decided to hang out with a friend. She was bartending at a small pub. It was a beautiful day so I decided to walk there. On my way, I saw a man panhandling for money on a street corner. This is not an uncommon sight for this town but for some reason I felt compelled to watch him.

His shoulder length hair was tangled and dirty with a hint of gray. His clothing was tattered, torn and extremely dirty. Looking in his eyes, you could see pure emptiness. Void of any emotion, value or self worth. His day was just another day for him to stay alive. Oddly enough, his actions were calculated. When I first saw him, that latter panhandler description was what I saw. That is what had me caught in his “I am so pathetic” web. He knew how to look and what to do for each possible contributor. When no one was around he regained some personal spark.Then when someone came walking by he bounced right back into the panhandler mode; the mode that made him the most money.

His ambitions in life were to merely survive and that money he begged for was the only way for him to survive. So the personal tools he had were to be as sad and pathetic looking as possible to capture the emotions of the passersby. I sat there and wondered where his drive to achieve had gone.

I continued on my way to visit my friend. When I walked into the pub I realized that a visit was out of the question. At 11am, the pub was packed. I sat at a table on the back wall and started noticing yet another game of survival. I started to realize that survival is situational. My friend has to be situational and her emotions must change with each customer. She’s average looking with brown hair and dressed in regular mall type clothing. She is perfect in this job because she is very similar to the customers she is serving. Her ambition is to be liked because her tips are her way to survive. Not far from the panhandler, the bartender changed her actions for each possible contributor. It was not hard to see how they both knew how to survive in their own situations.

I decided to leave the pub and look for a place to have lunch. On my way, crowds of people walked quickly past me. I decided to stop for a moment on the corner of this busy sidewalk. I began to watch the business men and women quickly walking to their destinations. Not paying any attention to their surroundings because they had an agenda that had to be met. Two business women walked past me and into the corner bistro. They were in nice tailored business suits and had organizers in hand. As they passed, they were talking so intently, I am not sure if they even knew anyone else existed. I also decided to go into the bistro and eat.

As I sat at the table, I wondered how much different these two women were from my friend and the panhandler. They did not have to interact with the surrounding public and this suit them just fine. I wondered what their survival tactics were. Then it hit me. Their survival tactics were to utilize their knowledge and not themselves. They could achieve their goals by what they learned getting an education and not by their living experiences. Their ambitions were to survive through achievement. They needed no one. They only needed the strategy they learned in the business world. However, all the outcomes were the same. It was to make money the best way they knew how.

So one survival tactic was sympathy, one was charisma and the other was educational achievement and yet all the outcomes were the same; MONEY. Of course they were at different levels but they were all the same.

We all need to survive in our own way and one person’s way may not be the next ones way. It’s kind of funny, I always thought survival was a way to get along and I guess that is a part. But a much large part is that survival in this world means money and the term ‘survival of the fittest” really does not fit into our world anymore. It has become survival of the smartest. So all of our ambitions come down to how we survive and that is to make money. I guess the way in which we survive is directly related to the choices we make in our lives.

People watching is a past time I have always enjoyed. It gives me insight into my world and when I observe certain situations, I like to see how they fit into my life. What happens to my finding will become part of me. I will grow to become a better person if I can somehow sort out the things I cannot understand. Its called compassion; compassion to others in my world that are not like me.