First week of No Cones. I’m floundering on Twitter, surprised every morning when I Google news citing “breasts”, and have already been called a hypocrite by a neighbour because I wear a push-up bra. Sigh….so far to go…
This week Disney made an unprecedented casting call for their latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment – no implants allowed! The explanation is that audiences have become more discerning and implants are too obvious to be believable in an 18th century setting. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that there must be another reason behind this (after all, surgically-altered actresses seemed fine for the first three movies; Kiera Knightley aside who is gloriously and unabashedly natural). Publicity is probably the answer…and it’s working.
Whatever the reason, I applaud Disney and Rob Marshall this decision. To have a motion picture powerhouse use a wildly popular franchise starring one of the sexiest men alive say “no cones” sends a huge message to all the young actresses and wanna-be’s out there – you don’t have to go under a knife to make it. In fact, it might hinder you. In fact, those DD’s might weigh you down (literally) as a porny typecast, unsuitable for period films, and paying off those surgery bills. And as we sadly know, what the young celebrity set does if often emulated by other women. However in this case it’s a good thing.
What has been unsettling is reading some of the commentary on the story. One writer at the University of Alberta’s newspaper called it “discriminatory” and that Disney shouldn’t exclude women who’ve had “harmless enhancement”. Since when is going under potentially life-threatening anesthesia to put a product inside your body that could cause all kinds of pain and disfigurement, not to mention destroy one’s ability to feed her children “harmless”? The terms “surgically-enhanced” or simply “enhanced” are frequently used in these stories to describe women who’ve had implants, and I’ve got a REAL problem with referring to this unnecessary procedure as an enhancement. Then of course there are the yokels asking how they can become casting agents for the film, a reference to Disney’s assertion they will test to ensure extras indeed are 100% natural.
Then again I should also want to applaud these yokels…as they are a group of men VERY excited at the prospect of surveying hundreds of natural breasts. A bodice-ripper indeed!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Questions...
Today I am embarking on a project I have been wanting to for over a decade, one that until recently seemed impossible to tackle without heaps of money. How do you sway people's perceptions about beauty and body image - what's normal, what's sexy, what's functional? Where did these perceptions orginate anyway, and are they harming our world or enhancing it?
In particular, I'm talking about breasts. Women's breasts - big ones, small ones, droopy ones, perky ones, even ones that are missing. We'd be hard pressed to find a body part on the female anatomy that stirs so many images and emotions in both men and women of all backgrounds. From adoration and fawning over by men in strip clubs, to self-loathing and disgust among extremist feminists and women who feel they don't "measure up", to fear in breast cancer survivors. Imagine thinking about elbows the same way we think about breasts....constructing garments to make them look a different way, dedicating magazine spreads to show beautiful ones, keeping ones considered ugly constantly covered.
Of course this analogy sounds ridiculous. But remember it was only a generation or two ago that women in China suffered bone-crippling bindings to feed the fetish of small feet. The destruction of a body part's natural function in order to appease some arbitrary definition of beauty...is this not what we are doing when we go under a knife to insert foreign matter into our chests? How and when did large round orbs become the beauty ideal?
Theories abound on why the human animal developed to include external mammory glands. And there is no denying that breasts, in both men and women, are erogenous zones primed to be part of our sexual selves. But clearly there has been a tipping point sometime in the past two decades where the natural form and function of the human breast has given way to the Barbie caricature. When girls ask for augmention surgery for their sweet 16th rather than a car...when, as PC as it is, both men and women turn their head in disgust at the sight of a woman breastfeeding in public...when lesbians risk developing cysts and infection by binding their chests so tight, thinking this flattening is their symbolic gesture against the sexualization of the breast. How did this happen, and when will we collectively say "enough"!
It's natural to love breasts. Love natural breasts.
In particular, I'm talking about breasts. Women's breasts - big ones, small ones, droopy ones, perky ones, even ones that are missing. We'd be hard pressed to find a body part on the female anatomy that stirs so many images and emotions in both men and women of all backgrounds. From adoration and fawning over by men in strip clubs, to self-loathing and disgust among extremist feminists and women who feel they don't "measure up", to fear in breast cancer survivors. Imagine thinking about elbows the same way we think about breasts....constructing garments to make them look a different way, dedicating magazine spreads to show beautiful ones, keeping ones considered ugly constantly covered.
Of course this analogy sounds ridiculous. But remember it was only a generation or two ago that women in China suffered bone-crippling bindings to feed the fetish of small feet. The destruction of a body part's natural function in order to appease some arbitrary definition of beauty...is this not what we are doing when we go under a knife to insert foreign matter into our chests? How and when did large round orbs become the beauty ideal?
Theories abound on why the human animal developed to include external mammory glands. And there is no denying that breasts, in both men and women, are erogenous zones primed to be part of our sexual selves. But clearly there has been a tipping point sometime in the past two decades where the natural form and function of the human breast has given way to the Barbie caricature. When girls ask for augmention surgery for their sweet 16th rather than a car...when, as PC as it is, both men and women turn their head in disgust at the sight of a woman breastfeeding in public...when lesbians risk developing cysts and infection by binding their chests so tight, thinking this flattening is their symbolic gesture against the sexualization of the breast. How did this happen, and when will we collectively say "enough"!
It's natural to love breasts. Love natural breasts.
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