boobs

CultureSex

I love boobs. All sizes, shapes, colors, big nipples, little dime nipples, hairy boobs, round boobs, perky or saggy, squished in a bra, on my face, or naked in the sun, I love boobs.

It is strange to me how a part of the body is so obsessed over as these bags of fun are. They are mother’s milk, sacred life giving pillows, warmth, comfort, safety, and love.

I share my boobs for a living, I promote their loveliness and love the unique breasts I am privileged enough to see on a regular basis. I touch my boobs in my shirt often. I haven’t worn a bra in over a year, and the only one who has ever called me out on my nips showing is my own mother.

Boobs are so hypersexualized and that often times a woman’s “worth” is placed on what her breasts look like. I want to compile every kind of human’s thoughts on their own boobs/chest and how society fetishizes them in general.

It is important to think about how others view their own bodies and strive for things that some of us take for granted- trans woman, women with implants, a non binary human who binds their breasts, and a transman who had top surgery. It must be an incredible feeling to have your body finally match the gender of your soul.

My grandmother had one breast, she was a cancer survivor. She told me the story of how she went in for a routine check up and then that day was under the knife, she was so confused and scared. My grandfather didn’t know how significant this was. It was in the 1980s.

No woman should ever have to feel so scared. I have seen burlesque dancers with one breast proudly swinging their tassel. It means they survived, they are proud of their body no matter what people say.

Dahlia Dubois- Stripper, Artist, Badass…

On being a stripper with natural breasts:

“I feel like it really depends on what area you’re working in and what type of club you’re at. Like if you were working at the Hustler club it would be almost expected that you would have some form of breast augmentation. But as far as my experience here, it’s really a 50-50 crapshoot. I’ve only ever had one customer tell me my breasts were too small and that was as I was giving him a lap dance so clearly I must’ve not been that bad hahahaha Although I feel like I do want to get augmentation done but not to an excessively large level. Because I do feel like that would increase my profits.”

 

 

Colleen Dunphy- Writer, Burlesque Dancer , Model…

“I had my breast reduction 11 years ago and I know without a doubt that if I hadn’t done it I’d never be doing the things I do today. I would have never become a half marathon runner, I’d never have done nude modeling and I definitely wouldn’t perform burlesque.

My breasts made me very uncomfortable with my body, and especially the attention I got. I still get some of that now because I am still a DDD, but it’s not like it was before.

Getting the reduction took a huge weight off my shoulders, literately and figuratively. I had some body dysphoria right after my surgery, because it was such a big change so quickly. I lost 4lbs from each side. But eventually I was able to become comfortable in my skin.

I have some mental sensitivity with the scarring when I am first with a new partner, because I had someone have a really negative reaction right after my surgery, but that was the only one. I am actually working on getting the worst ones tattooed over now.

I still have some nerve damage, where it doesn’t feel the same as it does in areas above or below. But I actually have more nipple sensation now than I did before surgery.

I’ve been told I won’t be able to breast feed, and that was something I willingly gave up. Even through everything I’ve never had any regrets about my decision and I know without a doubt I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I welcome anyone that wants to talk about it, or is interested in having one. I wish I’d had more people to talk to before I had mine. But it was before the major rise of social media and I just didn’t know where to go for that.”

Janna Willoughby-Lohr – Mother, Poet, Rapper.. 

“My view of the world as a woman as it pertains to my body has changed dramatically throughout my life…from a pre-teen girl when I didn’t even have enough boobs to hold my training bra down, just begging the great beyond to gift me with some curves…to a supple 20-something with cleavage for days who could (and did) rock any low-cut top I could find and often found myself admiring my own boobs in the mirror…to a 30-something nursing mother with 34G breasts that are no longer the same as they were, trying desperately to find a bra that actually fits and longing for the days where I could get away with low cut tops.

I used to want to be wanted for my body, before I knew better. Now that I’m a mom, I see how many ways the world blames women for being too sexual…or not being sexual enough…all at the same time.

I am proud to be a woman, and I’m proud of my boobs that have been able to feed my child for almost two years and even though I sacrificed my amazing cleavage to do so, I still love my body. As Baz Luhrmann says, ‘Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It is the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.”

CultureSexThe Morning After

#Mamming is the act of laying your (clothed) boobs on a flat surface. Like a counter. Or a bench. Or a person who is #planking. –www.thisismamming.com

Yes, apparently this is a thing now: posing your boobs on top, snapping a photo and posting it to Instagram, all in the name of breast cancer awareness. It’s called mamming, ahem I mean #mamming, a cheeky little term coined (rather unsurprisingly) by two ad executives from New York, Michelle Lamont and Michelle Jaret, in an attempt to break through the clutter of breast cancer awareness month. It’s a pretty easy sell, I mean, who doesn’t like pictures of tits, even when they’re covered?

The goal of the mamming campaign is twofold: to remind women to get screened for breast cancer as well as show solidarity by embracing the awkwardness of actually getting a mammogram. Lamont, herself a breast cancer survivor, credits early detection and prevention as crucial for beating the disease. The website thisismamming.com features an array of brightly colored photos of mostly younger women, accompanied by a barrage of whimsical fonts and ever-present hashtags.

mamming1The lightheartedness of the campaign came under fire in the media for trivializing the issue. As Mary Elizabeth Williams argues on Salon.com, “posting your cleavage on Instagram does nothing to fight breast cancer”. She voices her exasperation and disgust that women’s health issues like breast cancer awareness are framed in ways she deems cutesy and ultimately not very helpful. It’s almost like a slap in the face for survivors of the disease, especially as the issue is hotly contested whether early detection actually does save as many lives as it is purported to.

As North American women embraced the mammogram as the most important tool for early detection, scientists’ understanding of the disease itself was changing, especially where younger women are concerned. Their denser breast tissue subjects them to a disproportionate number of false positives, and almost more alarmingly, false negatives, where the cancer was missed altogether.

Furthermore, the direct effect of cancer marketing campaigns like mamming, Movember and the ubiquitous Pink Ribbon are being called into question. While they do admittedly draw the public eye to the existence and pervasiveness of the disease, they have also been accused of lulling us into a false state of accomplishment. Sure, I can post a picture of my breasts resting atop my bookcase or my friend who’s passed out on my couch, and that can make me feel like I’m contributing in the fight against cancer when I’m actually doing absolutely nothing to help the cause. And how many of those women who are mamming their breasts all over the place will actually end up going for a mammogram? Mamming reeks of poor execution of good intentions: they certainly tried to inject a little humour and style into mammogram awareness, but ultimately ended up sacrificing the graveness of the illness that has cut short the lives of countless women.

CultureHumour

When I was about 12 years old I was climbing a particularly tall tree in my neighbourhood and, after reaching a never before achieved height and looking down proudly at all which lay below me, a branch buckled and I fell from the tree. As my panicked brain tried to process what had happened, branches assailed me from all sides, and the ground rushed up at me, my life flashed before my eyes. At that point my life consisted mainly of pooping and trying to see ladies’ boobs, but it was all there. With a lot less boobs than I’d have liked.

I was snatched from the waiting maw of death, though, by an especially sturdy branch about six feet from the ground, which the hood of my jacket happened to snag on, and I hung there for a few minutes letting the entirety of the situation sink in. I realized even then that this was something I’d never forget.

So it frustrates me to see so many parents today coddling and over-sheltering their kids. How are children supposed to learn valuable life lessons and grow to have a knowledge of actions and their consequences? If you don’t let a child run around and play outside because you’re afraid they’ll scrape their knee, how are they supposed to ever really learn about safety? About pain and how to cope with it? If you don’t let a kid jump off a tire swing into a lake, how will they ever learn about the exhilaration of taking bold risks? And the rewards that can come from taking them, like landing on a fat, juicy trout? If you never let a child choke themself until they pass out, how will they learn the delicacy required to do it later in life when they’re also in the throes of orgasm?

The tree incident could have ended very badly for me, but it was that very danger of harm that helped shape me into the man I am today. A man with an intense hatred for trees, and habitual and criminal attempts to burn down national parks.

Entire generations of kids are being raised to be weak-willed, meek, scared, politically correct adults who will never know the simple joys of eating an entire tray of cheese cubes on a whim, boxing a kangaroo, or having sudden, unprotected sex with someone you just met, who just 45 seconds before you had been physically struggling with over a cracked onyx panther statue you had both climbed into the same dumpster to retrieve.

When I was falling from the top of that tree, I wasn’t thinking, “What have I done? Why didn’t I just stay inside with my Pokemans, or whatever kids are playing with these days?” I was thinking “I did it. I may fall to my untimely death without seeing a whole lot of boobs, but I set out to climb to the top of that tree, and, by gol, I did it. I climbed as high as my soul could carry me, and slapped the face of God Himself with my little, embarrassing child-dick.” (I was a precocious lad)

So, parents, let your children run free. Let them play and have fun and discover all that life has to offer; the good and the bad. Let them get lumps on their heads and dislocate their shoulders and pop an eye out of its socket and lose a few fingers. They may be in pain for a while now, but you’re doing them far more harm in the long run keeping them cooped up and coddled.

I wonder sometimes what kind of man I would have ended up being if I hadn’t had the freedom to fall out of that tree. Likely not the adventurous, risk-taking, barrier-busting dynamo I did turn out to be. Possibly still emotionally crippled and afraid of intimacy, though. And the whole waking up every night screaming thing is kind of a toss up. Maybe wouldn’t have punched that street performer yesterday.

But one thing is for certain; the next time an opportunity to do something awesome comes along, I won’t balk at it just because I could potentially get hurt. Life is meant to be lived, and when I finally do die as a result of some harebrained caper, I don’t want there to be any regret in the scenes of the movie of my life flashing before my eyes. Although at this point it’s still mostly just pooping and trying to see ladies’ boobs. And I really haven’t seen as many boobs as I’d like.

 

Photo by Sean Perkins

CultureHumour

Who’s bright idea was this Daylight Savings Time thing anyway? What, we just lose a whole hour? It just disappears? Who has the authority, and the gall, to make this happen? The government? Dark wizards? Monsanto? So many unanswerable questions. Well, anyway, you’re no doubt, like me, reeling from the sudden vanishing of this sixty minutes from your life. I mean, I’ll probably lose at least another hour just trying to comprehend this theft and get my life back on the rails. An hour may not seem like much when you’re just whiling it away with an episode of Intervention and a bag of margarita, but when you have one stolen from you, you begin to realize what you could have accomplished in it, had you not been callously denied the opportunity. It looks like I’ll be spending the rest of my truncated day thinking of what might have been.

In an hour I could have finally wrote the first chapter of that novel I’ve been meaning to get around to starting. Who knows when I’ll get another opportunity to sit down and really work out the themes and lay down the foundations for what will undoubtedly turn out to be my most sterling opus. Now it may never get started. I mean, that hour would have been perfect for it. I can’t do it any other hour today because I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do. So, essentially, Daylight Savings Time may very well have robbed us of not only an hour of our lives, but also one of the greatest works of erotic fiction this decade. Think about that next time you can’t find anything good to read, or the book your reading isn’t full of really rad descriptions of boobs.

I could have done something noble like some charity work or something. Like gone down to a mission to give out soup, or distribute clothing and shoes, or cleanse lepers, or whatever they do at missions. I would be doing a great service to my community and my fellow man. I could have taught some disadvantaged inner city youths how to play basketball, and in the process taught them some valuable life lessons that helped to make them believe in themselves. I don’t really know how to play basketball, but I’m pretty sure I could swing this. As long as I was just a little bit better at it than the kids, no one would be the wiser. And it would be easy to come off as knowing what I’m doing, because I’d be bigger than them and could just push them around a bit if they started getting too good at it. But no. Because someone Houdini-ed this hour out from under me those kid will never benefit from the unparalleled streetwise advice I could have dished out and will now most likely end up in gangs and people will die. So next time you get stabbed to death by some twelve-year-old street-tough maybe it’ll make you think a little bit about how much difference an hour can make.

With an hour I could have effectively and efficiently sexed a woman. Yeah, you heard me ladies, an hour.

The possibilities that have been quashed are virtually endless, really. I could have done my taxes finally, but I guess now they’ll have to wait yet another year. I could have cleaned up my apartment, but it looks like I’ll be continuing to weave my way through the towering, labyrinthine stacks of pizza boxes and cases of empty beer bottles. I could have taken my cat to get that operation that’s been so desperately needed these many months now, but nope, little Sneezy is going to have to keep taking one for the team. I could have went to my mother’s birthday party and given her the gift of having the family all together for once, but thanks again to Daylight Savings Time I’ll just remain estranged from her indefinitely. Heck, I could even have finished writing this article, but

 

Photo by Dave Stokes via Flickr