Witchy Woman

An article at the ever totally awesome Shakespeare's Sister on illusory breasts in architecture got me to thinking about my ample DD's. I realized that it's rarely been men who place the most emphasis on my chest: it's been the women in my life.

When I was younger and thinner, they were still large for my age and size. My mother accused me of "flaunting" them because I chose to wear tailored clothing that demonstrated I did actually have a waist and hips (although where they've gotten to now, I have no idea) as opposed to draping straight off my chest creating an amorphous blob silhouette. Yeah, I have costuming and sewing experience, why do you ask? In her mind (Catholic, formerly of parochial school), not hiding = putting on display. Once or twice in high school, I did get cracks from my male friends about putting my eye out while in track and cross country. But that was about it from them. My best friend at the time, who was and still is slender, expressed envy on multiple occassions.

Now, as an adult, I get it even more. My best friend constantly makes cracks about her falsies (silicone inserts which are fun to throw at people while at the bar) and accuses me of showing off the twins/rubbing it in her face. Most of the time it's in good fun, but after awhile it becomes increasingly uncomfortable. It's at times like this when I honestly do feel reduced to nothing more than a pair of tits.

Either I have developed the ability to ignore men who talk to my boobs because it has happened so frequently, or I have enough force of personality that they realize I am much more awesome than my chesticles alone. I tend to believe it is the latter, although I do only socialize with men who think with their brain as opposed to their hormones.

Men are typically conditioned to think in terms of sex, to want it constantly, to have it as their main goal. Reave once told me of an experiment performed with baby birds. The mom of the species had red on her face and/or beak (don't ask me which type or where or what, I just remember the general idea). The scientists held a red ball, much larger than the corresponding colouring on the mother, over the baby birds. And they went nuts because big ball = equally larger amounts of food. He said that by hitting this trigger over and over with a sledgehammer, essentially, that part of the brain ends up being overstimulated.

Women are taught to provide the bigger ball, and as such, we are much harder on ourselves and each other in order to become the ideal. This lends itself to the myth that women cannot get along amongst ourselves. By seeing someone else with what we think we lack, we focus on it that much more and place a greater emphasis on it. Subconsciously it's easy for us to reduce ourselves to these blobs of flesh and fat, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy of others focusing on the rack instead of who we are.

Sure, it's easy for someone with endowments to say, "Get over it." But if they don't play a large role in my own life, then why should they be so prominent in your interactions with me?