Coping with Cleavage

Women have breasts. These are the cute little bumps on their chest that nature devised initially to produce food for their infants. Somewhere along the path of evolution they got poofed up a little bigger than they need to be purely for lactation. Evolutionary biologists surmise this is a visual sexual dimorphism feature such as a man's beard. These distinguishing features help us to sense at a very primeval level who to mate with and who to be wary of.

Sometimes evolution runs amuck when competition for mates pushes sexual dimorphism to a ridiculous extreme. This is most evident in birds where you have animals like male peacocks with gorgeous, gigantic, and aerodynamically disastrous tails.

An extreme of dimorphism has not affected the human female breast, which though quite variable, on average only adds a couple pounds of purely decorative body flesh to the dairy tissue. This was completely sufficient for our ancestral female hominids lolling around naked on the African savannah. They needed only to approach their favorite male and say, "Honey (wiggle jiggle) can you go kill a wildebeest or something so little Thaggy and I can have something yummy to eat (wiggle jiggle). Then I'll feel real good and want to make you feel real good too (wiggle jiggle)". Off runs big Thag, 90 miles per hour with his club and spear.

The normal breast size worked pretty well for countless millennia until disaster struck. The ice age came and the shirt was invented. There was a decline in human population long attributed to direct affects of the cold. In fact a decline in fecundity was more likely the cause. "Honey, please go kill something because little Thaggy and I are hungry." Thag replies, "Oog! Go kill your own mastodon…and bring me the liver."

Fortunately the ice ages subsided, shirts disappeared again (at least in tropical climates) and humanity was saved. However a big problem developed in the Middle East Fertile Crescent area. There was a religious myth that the first woman on earth tempted man to disobey God by offering him some forbidden fruits, which he of course slurped up. Somehow as myths do, this story got distorted into the notion that the forbidden fruits were actually the woman's own round and delicious bodily adornments. No less than three major world religions branched off with this perverse myth of original human sin. The shirts stayed on.

With the shirts on, suddenly normal size boobs were not sufficient. They needed to be big enough to bulge through the shirts if Thag was to kill anything. Women with naturally big ones had a reproductive and survival advantage. For the lesser endowed, in order to get Thag off his ass, some modification was necessary. Given enough millennia, evolution would have boosted all women's boobs up several pounds larger but women were impatient. They invented all manner of squeezing corsetry and wads of padding to push their breasts up, exaggerate their apparent size, and make them nearly spill over their shirt tops.

The shirt and corsetry phenomena, though ridiculous, was rather harmless. People reproduced and the world continued to turn until (begin background music theme of movie "Jaws") cosmetic surgeons invented themselves.

Cosmetic surgeons have become a disaster for the female breast, mutilating them and stuffing them with plastic bags of chemicals until they are distorted and stretched to almost bursting. I am an expert on this problem because I live in Venezuela and watch television. Most TV shows in Venezuela are either government propaganda channels that show constant speeches by Chavez and his supporters but quite a few others are private channels with constant programs glorifying or promoting glamour as an essential feature of women.

On my Supercable (pronounced "SOUP'-pear-cobb-lay" and sure to deserve a very special rant from me at another time) channel lineup there is a show about plastic surgery on the English language E! Channel, which also is a channel in the US. It mostly features a steady stream of celebrities and their shenanigans. When you tire of boring CNN International drivel like discussions on whether water-boarding Iraqi suspects is torture, you can turn to E! for the really important stuff. You can peer deep into the lives of people who do not know you exist, nor do they care. You can find out who Brad Pitt is fornicating with, learn how ugly the dress was that Nicole Kidman wore last weekend, hear speculation on why Britney Spears doesn't wear underpants, and watch yet another memorial service for Elvis Presley.

OK back to the E! Channel plastic surgery program. This show is sort of a reality documentary about a couple of plastic surgeons and all the people they rescue from the humiliating horror of being…well… normal. You also get to peer into one plastic surgeon's tortured home life wherein his wife is falling to pieces because her 1600 square foot kitchen "doesn't work" for her. Granted sometimes it's a real touching rescue that happens. Some guy who caught his face on fire in an accident and had to beat it out with his own track shoe gets a nose and a new face and his children no longer cry when they see him. But, most of the time, it's about boobs. Yep boobs. It makes you want to cry. Typically some woman has lost all her self esteem, can't keep a job, her kids don't respect her, and her marriage is falling apart because... You guessed it. Her boobs are too small or they have dropped down a notch because she has experienced the shameful state of having passed 35.

In the typical case study of this educational program you see a first visit to the plastic surgeon who is typically dressed in a purple business suit with lots of grease in his hair. Somehow in spite of the great shame these women feel in their body, they are presumably persuaded by large payments to bare all for science and millions of TV viewers. The plastic surgeon pushes, pulls, and lifts their breasts and tummies and writes purple guidelines on them. In the US they have to put big pixels or blurring clouds over the most taboo parts of their bodies but this is either not a legal requirement in Venezuela or is, like most legal requirements, ignored.

After the examination, you see the actual surgery which looks something like cleaning a chicken. The nipple is sliced nearly completely off, a hole is made and the flesh of the breast surface is sliced and burned away from the underlying breast tissue. Then the surgeon stuffs plastic baggies full of salt water or liquid silicone (whatever that is) into the hole like someone stuffing a turkey. Usually it’s a big stretch but they always get it all stuffed in and somehow stitched back together. Several weeks pass during the commercial. Then you get to see how she looks all healed up. Her normal soft jiggly breasts are replaced with tightly bulging stiff mounds that look like more like the nose of a submarine than a breast. They are a bit comical, and seem to fit the name "boob" much better than breast. In truth they look quite unrealistic and unappealing to all except the tearfully joyous patient whose self esteem has been miraculously restored and the ecstatic surgeon whose wife can now have a 2500 square foot kitchen.

In one particularly poignant case study a woman had some issues with her breasts which had already undergone augmentation in the past but were in need of routine renewal. They had migrated to a different shape and different location from where the originals were and where the last modification had relocated them. This was a serious career threatening thing for her because her noble profession was strip club dancer. She and the doc had agreed to 650 milliliter implants. When surgery time came the surgeon went to his closet and could only find 600's and 700's. Tough choice, but she made the right decision. She informed the surgeon to go for 700 and stuff 'em in any way he could. It was truly gruesome to watch but she was so proud of her two projecting submarines when all was over and she was sure to get another five years out of her lucrative career.

In another even more poignant case, there was a beautiful young woman who relied for personal fulfillment and self esteem on competing in beauty contests. Apparently unlike performance enhancing drugs for athletes, fake body alterations are not illegal in beauty contests. She had a perfectly lovely pair of perky little B-cup teacups, nicely sloped down the top, pointy at the tips and gently rounded under the bottom. But, in her opinion and her plastic surgeon savior's…TOO SMALL. When all the slicing and dicing was over, this normal pair was mutilated into two boringly spherical submarine noses that made her look so top heavy you thought she might topple over on her head at any moment. To dramatize this (ahem) improvement they kept flashing back and forth between two overlaid before and after images.

OK time for a sidebar on "cosmetic surgeons" the sleaze balls of the medical profession. These guys are all sizzle and no steak. That's what they are. That's what they want you to believe life is all about. As an example, I offer you a picture below of my neighbor Doctor Bruno's plastic surgery clinic as the patient sees it.

Now, below this paragraph is the true view of the clinic as I see it from my office window. (I see nearly everything from my office window but that must await another rant.) As you can see, it is a dump. People are running out the back door with buckets all the time. My wife and I speculate they are filled with grease from liposuction. We would go down and suggest that they render it into bio-fuel but with gasoline at 14 cents per gallon, maybe it could used to deep fry empanadas.

Now, getting back on topic… All of this breast up-squishing and augmentation leaves Thag wondering what is the proper etiquette when encountering the enhanced display, particularly if obviously recently enlarged. Is this like a new hairdo or new dress, and he is supposed to say, "Wow; nice new knockers! Who's your surgeon?" or should he just look dumb, run out, and kill a wildebeest.

Of all nationalities, Venezuelan women are particularly generous with the bust cleavage. Many are amply to excessively endowed and many others use uplifting lingerie or surgery to create an in-your-face dual spherical display of their endowments. This leaves an old southern boy struggling to react with proper manners.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't get fired into uncontrollable lust with such displays. Thirty two years of marriage to a beautiful woman, ten years living next to a nude beach, and (sigh) maybe even a slightly age-diminished testosterone level mean that a couple of mere bulges are not going to send me out killing wildebeests. Heck, in just a couple clicks on this computer I could reach a site that would fill my screen with the most gorgeous women in the world, totally displaying all their corporal morphology. Of course I don't do that. No, the problem is perception. That is… my perception of their perception of what my perception might be.

I'm talking about eye movement. Eye muscles are almost under involuntary control. Any large, bright, or uncommon object in the peripheral field can cause the eyes to snap involuntarily to that direction. I worry, lest that cause the lady displaying to think I am trying to drink up the view in a most boorish manner. To avoid the eye reflex I try to keep my eyes locked above her cheek bones and not allow any thought of what lies (or projects) at the bottom of my peripheral vision. This is easier said than done. There is a famous tale of an Indian businessman who admired a certain mystic for his ability to walk on water. Thinking such a trick could be useful in business, he asked the mystic to teach him how to walk on water. The mystic explained how he must follow certain discipline in diet, exercise, and meditation. Then the mystic said, "Oh, one more thing. You must not think of monkeys". From that moment on, every time the businessman even glimpsed water, his mind filled with monkeys racing to and fro. My monkeys are boobs. When I gaze at a displaying woman's cheek bones my mind keeps alarming, "Boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs" and in a split instant's lapse of control my eyes can snap down to the forbidden zone.

This isn't really too much of a problem with a Venezuelan woman. In fact you could probably gaze right at the forbidden zone and say, "Rrrrrow! You look splendid today" and she would be touched that you thought to compliment her in such a sweet manner. The problem is with gringo women who, inspired by the greater openness of the Venezuelan women, start to emulate them in dress. The gringo woman is unfortunately much more self conscious, even though she may be feeling deliciously naughty with her new freedom to display herself. This is apparent because with even one microsecond of involuntary eye snap on your part, she will begin nervously checking her top button and tugging her blouse up. Worse yet, the gringo woman often has a chip on her shoulder and is just waiting for a man to behave like…well…like a man, so she can be righteously disgusted.

This is my advice. Relax with the Venezuelan women. It will be OK. However, when you encounter a cup-runneth-over gringo woman, never look below her forehead so as to remove any perception of improper thought. Keep your conversation strictly to business. If you must compliment her, your compliments must be something like, "My, your hair looks very nice today" or "Those are beautiful earrings" or "Great shoes" or "You have lovely boob eyes…I mean blue eyes".