The Boob Hustle

She looks in the mirror, naked from the waist up save a new Victoria’s Secret bra that promises to add 2 cups sizes. She does a quarter-turn to the right, surveying the smooth mounds that seem to miraculously spring from her flat chest. With a dagger of embarrassment, she notices the gap of space between the warm real flesh smooshed up inside the cup and the top of the foam form that represents what she thinks her breasts should look like. She realizes her expensive trip to the lingerie store hasn’t solved anything. In her mind there is a “click”, like a weight being added to one side of a scale sending it past the tipping point, and she decides to get breast augmentation surgery.

Would it surprise you to consider that the root of this woman’s body dsymorphia and anguish can be traced back to the invention of pasteurization? In the late 1800’s, Pasteur’s discovery of slowing the growth of microbials in food led to a huge whey surplus. Farmers and milk suppliers quickly created demand for all their excess milk by inventing new (and until then) completely unnecessary products with it – most notably, baby formula. As any business or economic model will attest, one of the best ways to attract customers to a new product is to discredit its competitor – in this case, breastfed human milk. And for the past 130+ years, the multinational marketers have unfortunately been immensely successful in their campaign to destroy breastfeeding, one of the fundamental traits by which we define ourselves as mammals. No other animal on the planet feeds its young with the milk of another species - only humans in the past two centuries.

In the first decades of the 1900’s, formula was touted as nutritionally superior to mother’s milk and without argument parents in the Western world who could afford to buy it did. As science advanced through the middle of the century, so too did the recognition that human milk carried immunological benefits that no swamp mix of dried cow’s milk and coconut oil could replicate. Study after study confirmed nutritional, physiological, and psychological benefits to both mother and child through nursing, and breastfeeding rates started to rise again after being nearly beaten to oblivion in Western culture.

The formula companies then expanded to new markets in the developing world where uneducated mothers were easily led to believe that the first world had invented something far superior to what they themselves could possibly produce. Sadly this has only resulted in an increase of infant mortality in developing nation lacking adequately sanitized water to mix formula.

So, as recognition of the benefits of breast milk grows, why are so few babies around the world getting it? The most recent assault on nursing is, paradoxically, the act by which babies are made – sex. Despite the obvious advantages, many women (and their partners) simply choose not to nurse because they can’t get past the notion of their chests as sexual apparatus.
Packed with sensory receptors, female breasts have always been highly sexual parts of human anatomy. Darwinists have gone so far as to suggest female homo sapiens evolved with protruding mammary glands (rare among primates) to mimic buttocks and encourage face-to-face bonding between men and women during sex. They are also amazing dual function body parts, just as the mouth is for eating and talking and breathing. Failing to acknowledge the breast’s role in feeding children is like suggesting men should only either pee or have sex with their penises, but not both.

It is difficult to ascertain the origins of our current hyper-sexualization of women’s chests, and probably a stretch to propose it is part of a formula company conspiracy. Yet the complex and interlinked relationship between how we feed our babies and how we view our bodies is hard to ignore.

Throughout history, female breasts have been revered as objects of beauty, sexuality, and fertility. And the socially preferred size and shape has morphed and altered during this time, from being bound flat in Japanese kimonos to the cone bras of the 1950’s. It is only in the past three decades, as breastfeeding was starting to show signs of a comeback, that unnaturally round, high, and large shapes have become the desired look. And the only way to achieve this form is to insert blobs of silicone or saline into the chest that impair the breast’s ability to function as a feeding mechanism, and ironically, often diminish sexual sensation as well. It’s the modern-day equivalent of Chinese foot-binding – killing the natural function of a body part in order to satisfy a seemingly extraneous sexual fetish. Today, foot-binding is cited as an example of a pathological attraction to disability. What will future generations think of implants?
How and when did we become so collectively deceived and brainwashed about our bodies, to the point that women will pay thousands of dollars to undergo a potentially harmful and even life-threatening surgery? Proponents point to increased self-esteem, but when did having a small chest become such a shameful affliction as to create low self-esteem? Why does a businessman sneer at the sight of a mother nursing in public, yet pay huge amounts of money to watch a stripper bear her chest? Has not our culture’s obsession with melon-like orbs affixed to women’s chests reached a tipping point into absurdity, even danger? Consider the following:

- Stats vary, but over 95% of women CAN breastfeed, and can often supply enough milk for twins and even triplets
- Previous to the invention of formula, infants whose mothers didn’t produce enough milk were supplemented or exclusively nursed by other lactating women
- The majority of men love breasts in all shapes and sizes, and prefer real over fake by a vast majority
- Many women who have undergone augmentation report a loss in sexual pleasure, and increased pain and discomfort in their chests
- Augmentation is not permanent; most plastic surgeons recommend checks every 10-15 years and subsequent surgery is often required due to sagging and pulling of the skin

No one NEEDS to ever use formula and no one, save those dealing with reconstruction, NEEDS augmentation. If your mind immediately starts putting up arguments against this statement, you’ve been hustled.