BREAST STORIES
Women’s Breasts Are Not For Sale
From billboards to magazine covers, women’s bodies are used to sell products and services, suggesting that their value lies primarily in their attractiveness.
Oftentimes, this becomes quite absurd — the model’s face is missing from the ads, focusing just on her curves, unquestionably digitally altered to attract viewers.
Hyper-sexualization of women has deep-rooted implications for gender dynamics, contributing to the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes, to say the least. This can be traced back to antiquity. From ancient sculptures to Renaissance paintings, the female form has often been from a standpoint of objectification, and reduction of women to mere objects of desire. Through present-day media, generational thought processes, and several clothing stereotypes, our society has ingrained the idea that a woman’s worth (or the lack of it) is linked to her physical appearance, particularly her breasts.
Young girls are exposed to unrealistic standards from an early age, bombarded with slim cuts, age-inappropriate clothing, and glorified celebrity bodies, leading to rising feelings of body dysmorphia. The pressure to conform to this insidious ideal can have severe consequences, contributing to eating disorders, anxiety, and depression.
In cultures worldwide, women’s breasts have long been a subject of fascination and resulting controversy. Though they serve a fundamental physiological purpose — nourishing infants — the historic focus of the male gaze overshadows this, compounded by centuries of gaslighting from colonisers.
Centuries and millennia before “Free The Titty” became a regular phenomenon, indigenous residents of the Indian subcontinent, South America, and Africa recognised a woman for much more than her sexual appeal. Being “top-naked” or completely “air-clothed” just like any other wandering male was not unusual or frowned upon.
Then came the European colonisers.
They imposed their Christian values of dressing on indigenous cultures through various means involving a nexus with cultural domination and societal control. Christian missionaries played a significant role here, along with the administration — they viewed traditional clothing as uncivilized and sought to replace it with European-style clothing, which they believed reflected moral and religious virtues. Schools run by missionaries or colonial administrations often required students to wear European-style uniforms, discouraging or forbidding traditional attire.
Colonial propaganda often portrayed indigenous cultures as primitive, uncivilized, or savage. By promoting European clothing as a symbol of progress and civilization, they reinforced the idea that traditional indigenous attire was inferior or backward. It only took a few years for this to become a normal train of thought for all formerly-colonised cultures around the world.
Ironically, while women’s breasts have been fetishized for this long, the act of breastfeeding is often met with raised eyebrows in public spaces. This disparity reveals a stark contrast in societal attitudes — a contradiction that highlights the disconnect between their natural function and their sexualized representation.
This stigmatization of breastfeeding further isolates mothers, discouraging them from nourishing their children in public and reinforcing the notion that breasts exist primarily for sexual pleasure.
Punishing women for how their bodies are made, a tale as old as time… where do I even start? We can go all the way back to Adam and Eve — women were supposedly cursed with the pain of menstruation because Eve dared to “tempt Adam”. I don’t see any Adam or his successors punished for succumbing to temptation!
Cut forward to present day. Large-breasted? You’re slutty even in modest clothing. If a female gets sexually assaulted, it does not matter how old the victim was, or what she was wearing. She could be anything from less than 1, to more than 60. But somehow, it’s always her fault for attracting the “wrong attention” through her curves, especially her breasts.
Regardless of which side of the gender spectrum the boob-blamers lie on, one thing is clear. Unless we start questioning and reassessing the tropes on which our society runs, we cannot see real changes in the way the world thinks.
The next time you encounter such a character, please feel free to give them a generous piece of your mind. Or a well-aimed milk spray, if you’re in that stage of life.
