Boob Politics: The Cleavage Issue

There's been a lot of breast-related news lately, from a controversial bra ad to a popular Internet meme. What's the big deal about boobs? Molly and Cristen explore the history, politics and symbolism of breasts in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?
From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Christen, I'm Molly. Molly. This week breasts have been

(00:23):
in the news. They had a lot, a lot. Yeah,
this was as you guys know, we we don't record
our our podcasts and published in the same day, so
this will have already happened a few weeks ago by
the time you're you're listening to this. But the Monday
that we of the week we're recording this podcast, boop
quake happens. Boop quake. Yes, Molly, would you like to

(00:45):
tell everyone a little bit about boop quake since probably
by now it will be that, you know, in the
distant news past. Sure. This uh feminist blogger, I think
it's where it started as a joke. She was responding
to something that this very conservative Iranian Eric It's said.
He had basically said that women's immodesty and dress was
causing earthquakes, that you know, by becoming this deviant force

(01:09):
in society that was tempting men and uh, demoralizing society,
they were causing natural disasters. So this blogger said, hey,
let's all wear our most you know, out their shirts,
short short shorts, if that's your thing. Like, let's just
be a modest on this one day and see if
an earthquake happens. Let's see if we can really just

(01:30):
get our our our boobage out there and and start
an earthquake. And she started, she posted this on her blog,
blag hag, and then she started a Facebook page, and
of course it blew up and next thing you know,
it's the number one Internet meme. It was everywhere, and

(01:51):
you know, people on my Facebook page were saying things like, well,
my boobs aren't big enough, They're not going to start
an earthquake. So there was even some backlash about the
body issues inherent in boop Quake. And you know, there's
been some controversy because there was an earthquake in Taiwan
the day of boop Quake, but they're saying it doesn't

(02:12):
count because the original bloggers said, you know, boot quake
class from this time to this time, and the earthquake
was like right after or something like that. So a
little bit of controversy. There was an earthquake. We don't
know if it counts. But there was also controversy among
some women who didn't really take the issue that lightly.
For instance, Beth Man at salon Um wrote a wrote

(02:34):
a column about why she wouldn't participate in boot quake. Um.
And it's not that she, you know, didn't didn't understand
the humor of the situation, but she was a little
more concerned that the feminist response to this Iranian cleric
is to show off our bodies, because of course there
are a lot of Men's response to boot quake was yeah,

(02:56):
bring it off. I'm about them. I'm gonna go get
my camera phone. Well, carrow you some yeah, you know,
Marty Gras, Marty grow two point oh great, I'll take
boom quick um. And she, you know, for instance, from
this column, she says women she should be able to
wear what they want. That's a given women she'd be
able to sexually express themselves as they see it. Of course, unfortunately,

(03:18):
we live in a world that sees that kind of
freedom of expression as a photo opportunity or another cheap thrill,
which I think brings us into the second big boob
story of the week, if you will, and that was
the Lane Bryant ad. Yeah, this was a commercial Lane
Bryant had shot and what I can't remember which networks,

(03:38):
it was ABC and Fox. ABC and Fox did not
want to air this commercial, which featured you know, one
of their plus size models in Lane Bryant bra Uh.
They didn't want to share this commercial because they thought
that it was indecent exposure. Although have you seen a

(03:59):
victor a secret commercial? Molly, Well, there's that. And also,
according according to the blog that Lane Bryant wrote about
this issue, one of the shows that wouldn't put the
ad on during their network time was Dancing with the Stars,
which features a lot of skin. He knows dancers take
some clothes off. So I think for them to say
that Lane Bryant can't air this commercial, they're either making

(04:22):
some sort of statement about a big body since Lane
Bryant's plus size, or just big boobs in general. They're
basically saying that some boobs you can see in a
broad the Victory's secret kind, and some of them you
can't because they're just they're too big. It's too crazy. Yeah, Fox,
they said. Fox demanded excess. And this is from the
inside Curves. Lane Bryant blog. They said that Fox demanded
excessive re edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting

(04:45):
to air it during the final ten minutes of American Idol,
but only after Lane Bryant threatened to pull the ad.
By so Kristen our cups runneth over with breast news
this week. Well done, breast fun. Uh, let's unpack it.
Let's talk about breasts. We've talked about breastfeeding a little
bit in previous podcasts, and we talked then about how

(05:07):
they're sort of this conflict between a sexual breast and
a maternal breast. But this week we've got some really
cool information on that. Yeah, we really Molly, I really
wanted to talk about, well, what what's the big deal?
What's the big deal with cleavage? You know, a an
A cup woman can wear a low cut top and

(05:27):
get away with it much easier than say a D
cup woman simply because you know, they might be showing
the same amount of skin. But but she's not. You know,
the small breasted woman is not showing cleavage, and small
breast woman is not going to cause an earthquake. Apparently
precisely so, Molly and I want to dig a little
deeper into this and figure out, you know, what is

(05:47):
the deal with breast? I mean, come on, we know
that we know everyone likes to look at him. And
I'm and I and I do say everyone. I say
men and women. I mean obviously, you know, men might
be a little more titilated by it, um then women.
But I think that breasts naturally draw our attention. But um,
you know, what was it? What's the big deal? What's

(06:07):
a big deal? What's the big deal? So there's a
book by Marilyn Yalum called A History of the Breast,
and it really traces how sometimes there have been good
breasts in history and bad breasts in history. Sometimes breasts
have been in vogue and very stylish and very um sacred,
and then sometimes they've been signs of indecency and a modesty.

(06:31):
And I think right now we're sort of in a
clash of those two and we don't really know which
way to turn. But it was a little bit more
clear cut at certain points in history. So if we
look back in art, it becomes very obvious that human
kind has always been very fascinated by the woman's breast,
and understandably so, because the woman, you know, we produce milk.

(06:52):
It is the life giver to our offspring, etcetera. If
we go back even as early as twenty BC to
the Grimaldi venus, this statuette is portrayed, as you know,
very large breasted, kind of potbellied woman um and is
obviously a very sacred relic from back then. And the

(07:14):
theme of these prominent women's breasts still continues in ancient art, right,
So we jump a little bit further from people and
we can move up from So, yes, we go from
these very ancient statues of the big breast of woman.
Let's talk about the ancient Creeks. They weren't so much
They weren't so much breast men, if I may use
a common term. They liked to celebrate the fallast. And

(07:36):
part of that because the breast became a little bit threatening.
With the legend of the Amazons. According to Yolam, the
Amazons were these powerful warrior women who chopped off one
breast so that they could shoot their bows and arrows.
So they were killing men with the bows and arrows,
and they were only breastfeeding their female children with the
other breast, so the legend said. So that's why the
Greeks were a little bit more about celebrating the fallast

(07:59):
and in if we take a big old leap while
and I are just hot skipping and jump in through
art history, so bear with us. Um. But then if
you've moved to let's say, the Middle Ages, with the
rise of the Catholic Church, you have so so much
iconography of the Virgin Mary portrayed breastfeeding the baby Jesus,

(08:21):
and the breast becomes this very sacred thing. Even though
you're seeing the breast, there aren't sexual connotations to it,
because this is the Holy Mother. The breast is something
very sacred, very maternal, very natural, beating the Savior and
thus by extension, feeding all of us. Yes. Uh. Then
along comes the Renaissance, where the breast becomes, you know,

(08:41):
even fleshier if you can imagine something, because the skin
and the human flesh was very sort of emphasized, pink,
very pink in those paintings. Um. But it's also when
despite all these mother and child paintings, we do see
a little bit of the signs of the sexual breast
and art Yes, and Yolam in the History of the
Breast points to a painting of Charles seventh Mistress Agnes

(09:07):
sorel Uh. This is it's a painting known as the
Virgin of Maloon and I'm probably I might not be
pronouncing that right, but it's m e l u N
and it's a depiction of her. She has one breast
out and obviously it's probably about to breastfeed her baby
who's sitting there. But the child is not in the
act of breastfeeding. In fact, the baby kind of looks

(09:29):
like he could he could care less this large teeth
in his face. Um. But but she says, this is
really the turning point for when we move from the
sacred breast to the far more sexualized breast that is
highly celebrated in Renaissance art and also in the fashion
over the the next couple of centuries, as necklines drop

(09:53):
and breasts really come out, and they come out as
fruit basically because all these poets that's when they start
writing things about a woman's apples and strawberries and sherries
and globes and orbs. So it's both global and fruit. Yeah.
And also if we're thinking about the fruits today, you know,

(10:13):
you might think it we might hear a lot more
about say cantelopes and melons. But back then the ideal
breast was perhaps a small apple. They were depicted as
a lot um smaller and a little more new bile.
I guess then we might think of them today. And
that's largely because women in the Renaissance upper class women

(10:37):
at least would try to preserve the delicate shape of
their breast by sending their children to wet nurses so
they wouldn't have to breastfeed, and Renaissance husbands actually would
not sleep with their wives while they were breastfeeding. They
thought that it was um just a bad thing to
do and so um. So, yeah, the emphasis was on

(11:00):
these these more youthful, very young, smaller breasts than you know,
say a Playboy centerfold. Right though, men are starting to
show their you know, affection for breasts. I gus, you
could say in art because you see a lot of
pains from that time when the man is cupping the
apple apple size breast as a sign of ownership. Yes,

(11:20):
because there since I've ever said, yeah, they're there are
plenty of of depictions. I think there's a vermeeror that
Yollan points out of a husband coppying his wife's breast
saying look, this is this is my beloved, and you
know this is but this is my breast, not your breast.
Hands off, right, So it's a sign of ownership. But

(11:40):
it wasn't really thought of his crewd it was you know,
that was just the way things were. But eventually the
eighteen century leists take another leap forward, that idea of
sending your kids off the country to be breastfed. It
went out of boat. Yeah, there was this huge shift
UM in the I think around seventeen fifty um yollom
estimates around Parisian children were wet nursed by eight hundred. However,

(12:07):
all those kids were being UM well obviously not the
same kids, but the trend completely shifted towards UH mother's
breastfeeding their own children. And this really started in England.
And interestingly, this notion was not UH instigated by women.
It was started by UH lots of prominent men at

(12:28):
the time, including Daniel Dafoe, Rousseau, Linnaeus, all these men
saying no, women, you must breastfeed your children. And so
we have the shift from the sexual breast back to
the maternal breast. But interestingly, also UM a fashion of
the time still allowed for women to show their cleavage,

(12:51):
put their put their breasts wanted display with these these
low cut dresses that they were wearing. And so y'allen says,
it's that it's also around this time that we have
the murdering of the maternal and the sexual at the
same time, so that at this point in history, the
lactating breast becomes sexual. So we moved from the Middle Ages,
where the lactating virgin mary is seen as something completely

(13:14):
sacred and separate to now, you know, the sexual new mother, right,
So I would I would say Kristen that we've been
struggling with that joining of the maternal breast and the
sexual breast ever since. I mean, you look at the
debate over breastfeeding, which we've touched on another podcasts, and
people have a problem seeing women breastfeed because they've been
trained to think of breasts as these sexual things. And

(13:36):
it wasn't always So, I mean, even though we sort
of jumped through our history, we do have evidence that
there were points in which women sort of walked around
topless and it didn't mean anything. It didn't mean a
that she was selling herself, and it didn't mean that
she was anything less than royalty. It was just breast
weren't loaded with everything we've loaded them since we've loaded
them right up with all that sexual and maternal innuendo, right,

(13:59):
And think we also have to keep in mind that
we're talking about Western culture right now. In other parts
of the world, a woman we're walking around topless is
no big deal at all. I mean, it's just it's
part of you know, daily life. Um. But it's interesting, Uh,
you know, we we generally think of breasts, like you said,
is either something that's completely maternal or completely sexual. But

(14:21):
y'allum also points out that they have been used, um
for political symbolism as well, especially around the time of
the French Revolution. You have many depictions of women like
bare breasted women as uh lady liberty, you know, leading
leading the people onward. And even during World War One
and World War Two, we have depictions in the States

(14:43):
of lady liberty, Lady liberty with more prominent breast um
because I think that, uh, they're still seen as symbols
of women's power and also something separate from men like
it's at one point, she makes uh the argument that
during World War Two, American troops sort of had a

(15:05):
breast fetish because the female represented everything that um they
were basically destroying in this war, which is you know,
love and compassion and um intimacy, things that are fighting
for in the war, or that the war was destroying. Well,
I mean it's well, those things were the antithesis of

(15:25):
the warfare going on. BATCHA. So how do we get
to today, Chris, And I mean, how do we get
to a world where you know, men in World War
two are essentially I mean to just over oversimplify it
inspired by breast to fight and that again it's a
very big oversimplification to today where you know, women are

(15:45):
you know, wearing low cut tank tops. To make a point, well,
I think the the tricky issue, the boot politics, the
cleavage issue that we have to deal with is the
fact that I don't think that we can ever divorce
the sexual from breasts. You know, I mean, as as primates,

(16:08):
we have perpetually engorged breasts. Some scientists have theorized as
a sign of sexual maturity. And I think that it's
different for women because it's this immediate outward sign of
her sexual maturity, whereas for men, you know, we have
things like facial hair we've talked about facially here before.
And how you know, stubble is very attractive to women

(16:31):
because it's also you know, their initial outward sign of
sexual maturity. Because um, usually you can't exactly um spot
from a guy's outward appearance whether or not he is
well endowed as well. So perhaps it's the fact that
women just have to deal with the fact that they
have them because you know, let's go to an issue

(16:53):
cleavage in the workplace. That's a tough one, Molly. So
there have been studies reports that both men and women
judge a woman who is showing ample cleavage in the workplace.
And as you said earlier, a woman who has smaller
breast can easily wear a low cut shirt and not
be seen, you know, as as scandalous. But if a

(17:16):
big breast a woman wears the same shirt, then you know,
people's perceptions of her professionalism and her capabilities immediately dropped. Right.
The more clevange you have, um, you know, the more
the more attention that you're gonna get, and it's probably
not going to be positive attention if you're in the workplace. Um.
And we ran across a few articles about this on

(17:38):
Huffington's posts and in the Wall Street Journal trying to
advise me in the workplace about what we should do.
And there really were a lot of a lot of
double standards. I think. Um, for instance, let's go to this, uh,
this column Huffington Post from Karen Salmonson on the Power

(17:59):
of Cleveland and and she said, listen, she's talking about
how much breast you can display in the office. And
she said, it's like pornography versus art You know the
difference when you see it. Well, if you're honest with yourself,
you know the difference between pornographic cleavage at the office
and artistic cleavage at the office. And I stay to Salmonson,

(18:22):
first of all, lady, what's you talking about, um, pornographic
clean cleavage of the office versus artistic leavage of the office.
I mean, no, Salmonson, it's the difference between an A
cup and a D cup. And you know, one button
or two unbuttoned. Well, that's the thing is now we've
been trained to think that big boob equals stripper because

(18:44):
the women who have made successful lives for themselves as
strippers probably again to generalize, have really big boobs. Well,
and then She goes on to you know to support
her argument, she calls out the study from the University
of Central Florida where researchers were testing out how people
would men and women would perceive a woman giving a

(19:06):
speech based on her breast size. So they saw this
woman um at separate times as an A, B, C,
and D cup, and then they rated the actress on
her professionalism, and she says the majority of males perceived
the actress to be the most professional when she had
a medium cup breast size, whereas females were generally not
influenced by the actress's breast size at all. That's fantastic. Well,

(19:29):
what are you supposed to do if you are, you know,
a D cup woman like you know, we can't exactly
control well, I mean, I guess we can control, but
we don't. We can't naturally dictate our breast size. So
which gets to why banning an ad for Lane Bryant
is so ridiculous. I mean, if you really do want

(19:50):
to teach a woman about the products that are available
to help her keep a D cup in line so
that you don't immediately think stripper as soon as you
see her, perhaps she should know about Lane Bryant's products. Well,
I mean if we are talking about like what kind
of cleavage is acceptable in a professional setting and what's not,
I mean, yeah, I've sort of taken Salmonson to task

(20:10):
for her her this Huffington Post article. But then if
we head over to the Wall Street Journal, I mean
kind of similar tones are echoed where it's like, yeah,
I mean cleavage in the office is still, you know,
extremely taboo. Like the column quotes one woman who says
there's no greater crime than to show cleavage, period, No

(20:34):
greater crime, no greater crime. I mean it was basically
it's making the point that you know, if if you
want to make a lasting impression, yeah, you show cleavage,
but that lasting impression is going to be of you
as um, you know, the sexual object, rather than an
intelligent professional, especially in a male manager's mind, because um

(20:55):
as uh. As one psychologist has put it, men have
men go into a man trance whenever they are around
breast and they can't help look at them because it
all goes back to basic biology of you know, this
display of our sexuality. So we should just cover them
up unless we want to attract all these all these

(21:17):
stairs now, Kristen. The woman who coined the term man
trance is a woman named Luan Brisandine, and she taught
she has a book, The Female Mind and the Male Mind.
And I kind of take everything she says with a
grain of salt because she's been called out for kind
of shoddy research, like taking one isolate study and uh,
just blowing it way out of proportion, or misreading her
results altogether. But you can't ignore the fact that man

(21:39):
trance is an interesting term. And as if we weren't
short arm research dollars, people like Brisandine and other scientists
are doing all these studies about just how much men
loves You wouldn't believe the number of studies that have
been conducting just to see if if, in fact, men
do like looking at boobs. It's ridiculous. I mean, we've

(22:04):
got we Molly and I found studies about how, hey, surprise,
the larger the cup size, the more hitchhiking rides a
girl can get. Um, Hey, men seem to rate women
with larger breast sizes is more attractive than women with
smaller breast insane, you know, I mean, it's just it's
kind of funny actually, So then we've got again, let's

(22:25):
try and bring it back to this weekend breasts. As
I termed this week, you've got boob quake, You've got
Lane Bryant. We're at clearly at this point in history
where the sexual and the maternal of merged is boob
quake a positive thing a negative thing? Can you even say,
do we need to take more into account the fact
that we're judged constantly on our breasts or you know,

(22:48):
do we if we've got it flaw on it? I mean,
that's sort of the question. The day it's it's unanswerable.
We're not going to claim to answer it, but that's
sort of what we're grappling with. Well. I would say though,
that I think that this is you say, are we
judge for our breast? I don't. I think that that
is more of an issue for large breasted women. I
don't know that small breasted women really are that much.

(23:08):
I mean, unless you might get snarky comments about you know,
um how they don't exist. But since they're not, they're
not quite as out there. I think that the stakes
are so much higher for large breasted women. For instance, um,
we ran across a column in Washington City paper in
response to the Lane Bryant issue, and the headline was,

(23:31):
with great cleavage comes great responsibility, you know, And I
think that that that really kind of sums it all up,
you know, like, I don't think that women should necessarily
have to cover themselves up if you're if you're dcup
or larger or smaller whatever, you shouldn't have to wear
a turtleneck to the office. Um. And it shouldn't be

(23:51):
more appropriate for an a cup to wear a deep
V than you know, a dcup. Um. So anyway, this
is also the prime point when Molly, I think it's
time to turn it over to our wise and wonderful
listeners to let us know what they think, because it
really is kind of an unanswerable question. I mean, yeah,
brusts always are going to attract people's attention, no matter

(24:12):
what I mean. If I see a large, busted woman
wearing a low cut top, do I look, Yes, I do,
and you probably do too well. I don't even try
to lie. Um, but I didn't say that anything. And
I'm sure it can be a difficult challenge for guys
who don't want to seem smarmie at all, and yet
you know they're gonna look. They're gonna look as well,

(24:35):
So I don't know. You'll help us answer. I'll us
answer this question, help us settle the cleavage issue. Alright.
The email address is mom stuff at house stuff works
dot com and we will read a few quick emails.
First up is a correction from Valerie and our Sex

(24:56):
a Sex Addiction podcast. We reference an article called facing
My Obsession in the Flesh and we said it was
by Bennoit Dennisit Louis and Valery. Let us know that
the name is French and pronounced ben Wall ben Wah.
I knew Bennoit sounded wrong. Did sound a little unaaletic?
Oh all right, We have another correction here, and you

(25:17):
guys have been so on the ball, and uh, this
is in response to our podcast about tattoos, and we
talked about an ad cat Vondie of reality show Fame
did she's covered in tattoos? For you guys who don't
know who she is, she's the lead personality on l

(25:38):
A Inc. And she is a lovely woman who was
just covered from head to toe for tattoos. And at
one point she did this ad campaign where they used
cover up to essentially like remove all of her tattoos,
Show what, show you what she looks like, tattoo list,
And we made the point that you know, by doing that,

(25:59):
we were it was removing her power, etcetera, etcetera. And
a number of you guys wrote in to say that, um, actually,
Cat Bondie was exercising her own power because that was
an ad for her makeup line to advertise tattoo concealer.
Wa wa, So you can get a little circular, you
cane a little circular with it. Why did she need
a makeup to cover up tattoos if society was a

(26:22):
little easier on tattoos. Yeah, but that I'm justified the
mistake main But we were we were wrong in the
that pop culture reference. Whoops. And I will say some
of you are strangely mad that we would get a
Cat Fondie fact wrong, really angry. Let's do one more.
Let's do one more, mom, all right, this one is
not signed, but really a great email that I like.

(26:44):
I'd like to thank you for podcasting about androgyny. I
identify as androgynous, and it's a continual frustration to feel
so invincible, unaccepted, and judge for something that is not
a choice. But as an accident of my genetics and
our brain development, like being gay is for some you're
handling of the top. It was very respectful, if sometimes
a little clumb see and confusing physical sex male female
with gender mask and feminine. I wanted to add that

(27:04):
there are people who have a clearly defined physical sex,
such as female in my case, but who still identify
as androgynous. Just as some people bore male have the
conviction that they should have been born female, I was
born female, but have the conviction that I should have
been born some combination of male and female, and most
I am most comfortable with a mixture of gender roles
and behaviors. If it were socially acceptable to reassign my
physical sex to be androgynous to match up with my

(27:26):
gender identity, I do it in a heartbeat. However, our
society is still so stuck on gender and sex binaries
that note therapist or doctor will allow the middle of
the road sex reassignment. I'd love to hear if any
of your other listeners identify as androgyust and I hope
that if you read this on the podcast, that this
note helps them feel a little less alone. So there
you go. Since sol of you for writing in again.

(27:46):
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(28:28):
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