Breasts

Straight men really like them. Gay men too, probably, having been mothered by women who have them. Even with all the supposed openness and dialog about sexuality I think most women don’t really get the breast thing for men. We get it on an intuitive level and maybe that’s what the Pink Terror is about; why breast cancer is the scariest even though it’s not the one that kills most women. It’s about loss of power. Since the sixth grade when boys looked for the telltale bra straps and somehow just that was enough to rock them rock hard. What we have done though in our political correctness is silence men on their fear of a woman losing her breasts. Men are supposed to say, “Oh honey it doesn’t matter; that’s not why I love you; I’ll love you with or without your breasts.” But inside they are screaming, “Fuck no, I want my breasts.” (Because they do think they are theirs.) For all our talking about this we still don’t get it. Men go to bars where women don’t wear shirts. They look at magazines and have perfected ways to sneak a sidelong glance at the slightest curve of breast tissue. We laugh at that but there is more to this than the supposed adolescent behavior. It’s primal, primordial maybe, but it’s real.