The Weather Report

Letters

To Keep a Breast

by Eric Robert Morse

The epitome of beauty and grace is the female breast. It is no wonder that so many of us artists have attempted to capture this divinely shaped perfection in our art. The female breast is the finest master work of the finest artistic master ever—God, and although most women have expressed a sincere ambivalence toward the highly functional and sometimes rather cumbersome body part, I would hardly doubt that any rational man would disagree that the female breast is the most invigorating physical thing in the universe. Though decidedly true, it is this premise which seems to me—a highly sophisticated consumer of the breast—to be rejected or even mocked by most men I know and the popular culture in general. This is a contradiction accomplished by an unwavering exaltation of particularly large breasts. I cannot say that any man would claim to hate the female breast, most would claim the opposite, but their actions and ideological footing that maintain their love for large breasts would certainly contradict any such claim. To uncover and renounce this contradiction as well as to express my genuine adoration and respect for the breast and the fairer sex as a whole will be the focus of this essay.

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So, what is a breast?

Positioned on the female chest in paired symmetry, it is the natural milk-secreting, glandularorgan for humans. Contained within each breast is a collection of 15 to 20 lobes which are the source of the milk and a number of ducts which convene and end at the nipple. This structure is supported by fat and connective tissue creating an extraordinary shape in nature—a semi-sphered base topped by a semi-cone.

The breast’s purpose is of interest to me. The obvious function of the organ is to feed human offspring and thereby to facilitate reproduction. Until the 20th century, it was rare that a mother would feed her child anything other than breast milk, especially in the first year of her child’s infancy, but modern civilization has found alternatives agreeable to many women and families. By replacing breast milk with packaged formula, the mother can spend time away from the child when he or she needs food thus offering the mother greater freedom in an era of two-parent incomes and single mother households.

In effect, it is possible that the breast could be rendered useless if all women decide to stop the natural feeding of their children and there is no other use for the breast. To my confident happiness, many women still find virtue in breast feeding so as to perpetuate this particular use, but in addition to this, as I’ve discovered, there is a persistent value offered by the organ that will never lessen regardless of technological advance.

The female breast, in addition to many other prominent female attributes, serves as a physical mechanism by which we can realize the alterity of the genders. Just as the relative easure of the male body presupposes a strength and speed superior to that of the female, so too does the curvature of the female body—particularly the breast as well as the waist-to-hip sequence—presuppose a grace and beauty superior to that of the male. The everlasting value of the breast is that it is nothing less than the representative of femininity and all things feminine.

This particular value of the breast is one that is more sophisticated than the functional value proposed above and quite abstract and for these reasons, it is often neglected and terribly distorted to a point where the breast is despised or rejected or at best objectified in lust.

To explain this blasphemy, I will first explain the more abstract value offered by the female breast. Aesthetically, it is superb. Like a raindrop lying gently on the chest, it drifts ever so gradually outward from the collar bone and superior pectorals down to the nipple where it redirects back toward the torso forming a fully distributed reservoir. The shape is geometrically compelling as if it were a part of some fundamental mathematical law of nature.

Is it a coincidence that we are presented with this form of perfection? Many would say yes, but with a more intricate study into human development, we may have a clue to the intentional nature of this shape.Specifically, it is still unknown why humans began to stand upright as opposed to crawling around like monkeys. But without an upright woman, the female breast would dangle about without support not unlike what is seen in four-legged mammals and thus, the perfect form seen in her breast would be lost. Perhaps we became upright in order to witness this wonderful aesthetic.

Perhaps, by chance a prehistoric woman was reaching up for some berries and offered a glimpse of the breast the way we see it today. Her beauty attracted the most capable potential mates and she attributed it to her uprightness. Other females saw this and mimicked the behavior. Soon enough, all the women were upright and they demanded the men to stand up as well and here we are, with the most productive race ever.

Without further speculation that I am unwilling to substantiate, it should be said that the female breast has always served as a tool of attraction. Whether we see it in the early Egyptian or Italian wall paintings or we consider fashion of primitive tribes that has lasted for millennia, the breast serves as a focal point for the interaction with and attraction to males. The question is why is there such attractiveness associated with the breast?

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What Makes Breasts Attractive?

It could be due to its uniqueness as alluded to above. Many unique things in nature are generally considered beautiful, such as the fjords in Scandinavia or the majesty of the Swiss Alps. Nowhere else in nature are these things found, and likewise, nowhere in nature is the form of the breast seen. With regard to breasts of other animals, even other primates, none possess the same structure as the human breast, most are flimsy and hairy. Moreover, in comparison to other animals, the human breast is the only one with a distinct areola, the circular field surrounding the nipple.

There are, however, things unique in nature that are unattractive. Consider the 3-toed sloth or the Great Plains in the central United States. These things have no aesthetic rivals but are found to be less than attractive. And so, since we cannot rely on uniqueness for beauty, there must another cause for the attraction to the breast.

In order to find this cause, I will next examine the popular male preference for breasts in order to determine what characteristics make the form so appealing. Currently, the general breast preference for men is simple—large. The larger the better, for some reason, is the rule of thumb for any dancing male at a drunken discotheque. If possible, overwhelmingly large, offensively protruding aerostatic balloons would be necessary to satisfy most men.

So, is it possible that breasts are attractive to men because they are large? Does beauty lie in things that are relatively large? Although the immensity of the Rockies is breathtaking, I would hardly consider everything that is unsmall, including professional wrestlers and hippopotamuses as beautiful. Indeed, it seems that the beauty of breasts is actually lost when girls and women contort their chests and backs or actually stuff their breasts with some foreign package to promote their breasts a couple ranks. There is no aesthetic value in breasts which portray volleyballs glued to a woman’s chest by rippled skin. Spherically rounded milk melons with exhausted nipples do not a pretty sight make although many men might tell you they do.

It cannot be that largeness of breasts is what attracts men to them, but why, then, do men desire large breasts such that only large breasts will satisfy them? Why do they disregard their innate appreciation for true beauty in order to crave the aesthetically offensive and how does this tie into the true beauty and relevant attraction offered by breasts?

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Why Men Like Large Breasts

In my extensive intuitive research into the breast and the attraction thereof, I have found a very interesting nugget of information. Specifically, when a man suggests that he prefers large breasts over small breasts, he will always say with enthusiasm that he would rather have a mate with a perfect face and average body over a mate with a perfect body and average face. To the lover of large breasts, it is a no-brainer to take the perfect face over the perfect body.

The consequences of this finding are intriguing. Uncovered is the notion that the lover of large breasts sees the body as subordinate as if to say that the beauty of the body cannot meet the absolute beauty of the face. The face is what matters and the body, of which the breast is an integral part, is just auxiliary. If this is the case, then the lover of large breasts cannot be a true lover of breasts at all if only because to love something is to embrace the absolute virtue in something, not to consider it an extra. The love of large breasts, then, is not one of a sophisticated adoration, but rather, as I will explore below, an unsophisticated hankering.

Many men who have tried to justify their wantingness for large breasts may suggest that a man’s urges somehow look out onto the potential mate and give the old thumbs up for women with large breasts because the urges are for reproduction and large breasts imply a healthy, motherly mate. This may hold weight for some, but there is a much more convincing argument available.

Sexual urges are very open-minded when it comes to their satisfaction. That is, they don’t really care if they are gratified by a beautiful, healthy woman or by the employer of the urges himself—the urges are satisfied either way. If it was our urges or our genes, the conductors of our urges, which dictated a man’s desire for large breasts, then it would be safe to say that those genes would also dictate an urge for anything that could satisfy the sexual impulses. In some cases (see American Pie or Will & Grace) men are limited to this shallow urge and do allow anything to satisfy their urges.

However, due to a generally accepted decorum, up until recently, most men who followed those urges led themselves to a single, established destination—women. With that being the case, a man will normally look to satisfy his urges with a woman as opposed to any other means.

Likewise, our generally accepted decorum states that no man can do this without some established process of courtship. Stemming from this process, a spectrum of types of women concerning the willingness and dispatch at which they satisfy their mate is realized. There are those who are unwilling or austere in this function, and there are those who are quite opposite as well as those in between. Using a Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot or Britney Spears as evidence in opposition to a Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn, the women who display large, accentuated breasts in addition to excessive makeup and other things are the ones who are more likely to be sexually forward.

As they are more sexual, the man whose driven almost completely by his sexual urges will desire the woman with this persona. Over time, the sexual persona has been simplified and skewed a bit to equal large breasts and therefore, the man who is controlled by his physical urges is attracted to large breasts as they imply satisfaction of his urges.

The man who is controlled by his sexual urges, however is not very sophisticated. On the contrary, that man declines his mental and spiritual being in order to grant credence to those powerfully urgent urges. And so, the man who lusts over large breasts is unsophisticated.

If, somehow the proof is made that it is a non-sexual desire for a healthy, motherly woman that dictates his preference for large breasts, I still cannot accept it as sophistication. The man who desires this motherly comfort must need someone to take care of him just as a mother would a child. In this case, the man is without self reliance and, depending on the situation, may be without the intelligence or maturity to provide himself with that self reliance. If this is such, it should be said this a man is not sophisticated because to have intelligence and maturity is to be sophisticated.

One other more recently widespread reason men might give for a desire for large breasts is the notion that the larger something is, the better it is, a concept popularized with the excesses of the 1980s. This is quite obviously an unsophisticated desire and should be categorized with shock radio, gross-out humor and ultra-gory movies.

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The Appeal of Small Breasts

The lover of large breasts is unsophisticated for the reasons above. If it is the lover of large breasts that lacks a sophisticated appreciation for the entity for the fact that they are large breasts that he likes, does it follow that the lover of small breasts is the one who possesses this rare sophisticated taste for the fact that they are small breasts he adores?

The level of sophistication I have associated with small breasts is so far dependent on the fact that men find large breasts to imply sexuality. This fact stemmed from historical icons who were both large breasted and sexual. If it were possible that somehow small breasts become related to sexuality, would not large-breasted women then become intrinsically more sophisticated leaving the small-breasted women to work harder in order to earn intellectual respect?

There are two reasons why it is not possible that small breasts become associated with any unsophisticated level of attraction, the first of which concerns conspicuousness.

A woman with large breasts, even without accentuating them or showing them off, cannot hide them. She is unable to get around the fact that they will play a major role in her physical being as it is seen by others. With this being the case, she will be unable to conceal their presence, even with layers of clothes. This is true in social situations as she will be forced to use them in her attempt to attract a mate. This consequence of large breasts is not necessarily unwanted as described above-—many men will enjoy it if a girl uses her large breasts to market herself and she will find herself with the upper hand in most social markets.

However, due to the unavoidable presence of large breasts, they will also be noticeable in non-social situations, that is when attracting a mate is not the goal—situations like work or academia. Even if she employs a style and demeanor appropriate to the situation, the large-breasted woman is still unavoidably seen as a social, sexual, physical being to members of the opposite sex, thus detracting from the appropriate perception of her as a professional or scholar.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that a subject with small breasts will avoid this inappropriate perception, especially with the proper professional or academic fashion and demeanor. If it is so that she can avoid the unwarranted perception, and still attain respect, it must be because of something other than her physical being. The small-breasted woman, therefore is respected for her mental ability whether it be personality or intellect. Do we not, then consider this subject to be admired on a more sophisticated level as personality and intellect surely offer a more cultivated appeal than does the physical level?

The second reason that small breasts will never serve unsophisticated, sexual attraction concerns the essence of the beauty represented by the breast. To explain this, I must first explain the essence of sexuality and exactly what is sexy. The straightforward definition of the word ‘sexy’ would be as simple as arousing sexual desire or interest. So what is it that does this? Anything that ignites the notion that one might relieve one’s sexual urges would be considered arousing sexual desire, not unlike the reason many men enjoy large breasts as explored above. This is evidenced as such:

It is not necessarily true that anything specifically used for sexual activities can perform sexual activities as in the case of a nun. It is known that nuns do not perform sexual congress so a man will not allow himself to assume that she will satisfy his urges and therefore she cannot be considered sexy even though she possesses sexual organs.

We will also find that things not meant for sexual pleasure actually can fulfill our urges as evidenced in modern pop culture media. In fact, anything physical can probably replace the parts meant for sexual activity and therefore, anything that implies the usage of those replacements should be considered sexy by our definition.

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What Is It to Be Sexy?

It makes sense, to some extent, to consider large breasts to fall in the category of sexy, as breasts are bodily organs used in reproduction. But other things, like makeup and clothes can similarly imply sexual activity thereby arousing sexual desire even though they are not organs or even related to reproduction. Things like deep, sultry voices do the job for many for some reason as do belly rings, nipple rings and tattoos placed on the small of a girl’s formerly pure back. These things are obviously not related to the act of intercourse, but are promoted in society to be attractive, curiously enough. In an even more ironic state of affairs, a girl who smokes or does drugs, though these activities may indeed destroy her ability to reproduce is also encouraged as attractive these days—that is, women who do these things attract men.

The cause for these contradictions is simple. If a girl does promote the usage of drugs, smoking or possesses tattoos, nipple rings and especially a belly ring these days, a very important consequence becomes implicit.

Upon doing these things, she joins the socially acceptable. It is cool to be a part of these trends today—do not all the coolest pop stars promote belly rings, tattoos and drugs? If the subject subjects herself to the described defamation, she will be like these cool celebrities and therefore attain the exalted stature of cool.

As the girl becomes more socially acceptable by doing what everyone else is doing, she also becomes more attractive to the opposite sex. This is due to two things. First, males, just like females are not interested in challenges when it comes to relationships, especially when it comes to emotional or mental disruptions. If a man mates with a socially acceptable woman, he will be assured of some prosaic personality of which he is familiar and with which he can deal on a comfortable level. To gamble on a girl who is socially unacceptable is not preferred particularly for a man with a quick “hooking up” on his mind.

Secondly, the reason things like drugs, smoking, tattoos and belly rings are popular is because they directly imply sexual engagement. Belly rings would be the most obvious in that to display them, one would have to also display more flesh which by tradition suggests a desire for sex. But generally, all of these elements imply sex for the reason that they are the sign of a specific kind of girl.

In direct opposition to the goody-two-shoes, clean and pure Donna Reed types, tattoos and piercings represent a wildness or adventurousness. Drugs and smoking represent an iciness towards the proper young lady ideal set forth in the ultra-chaste Victorian era. It is this antithetical attitude that also says that a woman is free to do what she wants, to be who she wants without the dictation of some overbearing man. This freedom, no doubt, began as a trend counter to men’s will with the move from housewife to professional or scholar, but was expanded to the social arena and ultimately sexual arena, an expansion that was surely accepted by men. This push towards personal freedom, which may have had virtuous beginnings, has led to the careless, antithetical woman who is imprisoned to an urgency of sexual activity for the sake of her social health.

This is how things that don’t rationally seem to be sexy,become sexy when we use the popular, aforementioned definition of the word “sexy”—that which implies the relief of one’s sexual urges. Obtrusively large breasts fall into this category of sexiness. The question at hand is whether small breasts might fall into this category at any point in the future and therefore reverse their status of sophisticated. To answer this question, let us examine another meaning of sexiness so as to avoid the contradiction revealed by the one explained above.

If sexiness cannot be defined by the ability of something to satisfy the recipient of sexiness, or the ability for something to satisfy one’s sexual urges, perhaps it is based in the presenter of sexiness. That is, what is sexy should not be a benefit for the observer, but a quality of the observed—the observer is actually insignificant when regarding the true definition of sexy. With this rationale, sexiness cannot be defined by what one offers others, but rather what one is independent from others. So, in order to find what is sexy, we must regard what one consists in first.

So, what is in each human that may make them sexy? With respect to sex and sexiness, we have two distinct categories by which we can identify what each human consists in and this entity would be different for each. There are males and there are females. Since our new definition of sexiness is based in what a human is, sexiness will be based in femininity for females and masculinity for males.

If a woman is feminine, she is sexy and likewise, if a man is masculine, then he is also sexy. Two interesting points arise from this assertion. The first is that what is natural is sexy. Since each one of us is either man or woman by nature, then each one of us possesses a natural potential sexiness. All these things that we do to be sexy like smoke, get tattoos and breast implants are counter to sexiness because they are unnatural additions to our persons.

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Naturalness Begets Attractiveness

The second point is that what is feminine or masculine, or for that matter, what is natural in each human is quite ambiguous. Every biologist would consider hairy legs to be natural for women, but most men and I would consider smooth legs to be ultra-feminine. This twist makes our quest for the truth about sexiness at least very interesting. It is not an unattainable truth, however, but the notion that it is ambiguous implies that it is an abstract and possibly highly conceptual entity which defines natural femininity or masculinity and not one that is eagerly accepted by the masses. So, to really unlock the meaning of sexiness, we must explore the notion of naturalness.

Is naturalness what we see around us, the physical things that make up what we call nature? If this is so, then we humans are certainly a part of that nature and our naturalness would consist in the physical things that we have. But we live in a world when these things change. Unfortunately, some people’s urge to be socially acceptable have led them to alter what was provided them. Even if science wasn’t a force between the genders, what makes a man or woman at one stage in life is certainly different than that composition in another stage. Is the fact that a small, scrawny boy can turn into a brawny man and then back to a scrawny old man indicative of a changing masculinity? Is the fact that a woman can possess a pair of small breasts one week and double-F cup breasts the next indicative of a changeable femininity?

We are either to accept the notion that what it is to be a man or woman is changeable and pliable at the whim of a fickle trend-follower, or we must look to a place other than our physical universe in hope to find the naturalness that I pose.

If it is the case that the significance of a man or woman changes depending on the current trend, would it not also be the case that over time these meanings would change to an extent that they do not resemble what they do now? While we do not have the luxury of exploring the meaning of men and women as it will be in the future, we can look into our past to see how they vary over time. But as we do, we can see a distinct consistency in what makes a woman or man. Since history began, men have always been portrayed as the strong, capable sex while women have been portrayed as the gentle, beautiful gender. And this is not simply a matter of physical doing, it is portrayed in the behaviors of men and women as well as their more abstract auras. What makes each gender what it is has not changed in humankind’s history, and therefore, we are not able to accept just because we have at our behest the otherwise promising sciences to change our physical makeup, that we can change what it is to be a man or woman.

We must, then, look to a more conceptual realm for the definition of masculinity and femininity. If we have concluded that this definition is not to be found in our current, physical universe, or more precisely, what one is; we must also conclude that it should be found in our prospective, ideal universe, or what we are meant to be. Naturalness is what one is meant to be.

The ideal woman or ideal man is what is natural and therefore what is feminine or masculine. If a man achieves his ideal or if a woman reaches her’s, then and only then can they be truly sexy. The question then is what is the ideal man or woman? And, if ideals are supposed to oppose the physical (see Amazement), then how can one’s body, including those with breasts, be considered sexy at all as we know that bodies are physical? The answer is that though the feminine ideal is not anything physical, the physical form is responsible for representing that ideal. If it is successful, then it could be said that the individual is sexy, if not, then such an assertion cannot be made.

Due to the physical limitations of the human body, we can conclude that before the age of adulthood, no one can possess a body which reflects the ideal, whether it be masculine or feminine; and the same can be said for the elderly although that limit is not as concrete as the lower one. This is appropriate, seeing as how it is impossible to rationally consider the elderly sexy and also absurd to consider children so.

So what about bodies during this middle age makes them at least potentially reflective of the ideal? It is here where the true femininity and masculinity is achieved. It is here where the true dichotomy between the two sexes is realized. Man is at his strongest, tallest, quickest during this time while woman is at her most shapely, most graceful and most proportionate. This age, when the dichotomy between the sexes is most distinct, is when the long-lasting auras of masculinity and femininity are best reflected in our bodies.

With that being said, how is this femininity reflected in the breast? That is, what kind of breast reflects best the ideal femininity? In agreeance with the above argument, the female body, including her breast, which reflects the ideal femininity is the one which best opposes the male body which reflects the ideal masculinity. And since it is masculine to be larger, stronger, more rigid and forceful, it is therefore feminine to reflect subtlety, grace, flowingness and curvilinearity.

It is the small breast which possesses all of subtlety, grace, flowingness and curvilinearity, as opposed to the larger, stronger, more rigid and forceful large breast. Therefore, it is the small breast which best reflects the feminine ideal. The lover of the small breast is the sophisticated, and this unwavering truth will disallow the ingenuous from lusting after it or true beauty to escape it.

--Eric Robert Morse, 2002