I just celebrated my 52nd birthday. You would think I would know all there was to know about breasts by now.But no, I am still learning. Today was good breast weather so we were all down at the beach again. I was re-visiting my recent thoughts regarding women being allowed to go top-free on the beach.
"What is it about breasts?", I asked myself. "Why do we make so much fuss about them? Why can't women just be top free whenever they like? Why have we made breasts 'private parts'? What would it be like if women were commonly top free?"
I'm sure we would get used to it. If we (boys) grew up just seeing breasts as 'normal' we wouldn't make the connections we do and we wouldn't attach so much significance to them. But then I thought a bit more about it. Women have breasts and men don't. Doesn't seem like such a radical observation. I think I have known that for quite a while. But even if breasts were 'normal' they would still be something that powerfully signifies woman hood. We look at the curve a woman's hips and they signify womanhood and it attracts us to them. Even though we see hips almost completely bare at the beach. Similarly a woman's waist. Breasts are a part of the traditional hourglass figure and that is part of what draws us to women.
Breasts are however, the most obvious feature of womanhood and there they are sitting right out front most of the time. There is nothing about men and our sexuality that is on display all the time. But for a woman it is. Even if we were to regard breasts as non-sexual objects in themselves, they still mark the sexuality of the person they belong to.
So I have learnt a little more about how I feel about breasts. In themselves they mark the comfort we as young boys received from them. But they also mark womanhood and there stirs our deepest feelings about being comforted. In a world where we get hurt by other boys, it is first our mother we turn to for comfort and protection and then as we ggrow into adulthood, mother is replaced by women. That is deep within us.
