Breasts, Should They Be Allowed?
Breasts are, perhaps, the most important part of the body. Without breasts, we'd have a very hard time feeding our young. We'd probably have to lay eggs instead, and that would be pretty difficult to achieve, evolutionarily speaking. Unless you're a certain type of Christian or ,<Insert God Oriented Belief System Here>, in which case you probably don't approve of breasts and have been praying for an ovipositor for quite some time.
As we probably aren't going to get ovipositors any time soon, (either because our genetics just don't allow for it, or because the big G is being difficult again,) we're stuck with breasts, which means that we're going to have to live with them. Live with them, live with our desire for them, live with the fact that if you have them they will be the focus of the attentions of those around you for the great part of your life. Live with the fact that if you don't have them, you'll be spending a great amount of your life looking for someone who possesses a pair of them.
It's difficult for all concerned and quite frankly, it would seem that in spite of the fact human civilization has been around for five thousand plus years, we have no idea how to handle breasts.
Different cultures deal with breasts in different ways. American culture has thrust them to the forefront of female beauty, creating a multi million dollar industry where women risk their very lives to enhance the flesh lumps on their chest and thereby make themselves more attractive, and one assumes, more worthwhile as human beings. Nobody questions this overtly, and the tacit quiet consent of a nation has lead to more flesh butchering and silicone stuffing than in any period of our history. Behavior that should be seen as a cry for therapy has instead become a condition which can be alleviated by surgery.
In Sweden, on the other hand, as with other parts of Europe, breasts are almost a non event. Many beaches tolerate and encourage nude bathing and in some swimming baths women can swim topless. Perhaps it is Europe's longer history that allows Europeans to take a more relaxed view of the female body. Perhaps because they are not driven almost exclusively by the desire for fame, they are able to accept themselves and others around them for who and what they are. Having said that, European men tend to be some of the most overtly lascivious men in the world, thinking nothing of groping and fondling any woman within arms reach at times.
The Middle East takes yet another approach, covering women from head to toe, creating sin from the female form.
Even in 'enlightened' societies, people react strangely to breasts. Facebook banned pictures of mothers nursing their infants, saying that they were adult in nature. Many women were offended by this, claiming that there is nothing sexually charged about a woman breast feeding her baby. Facebook disagreed.
As humans, we have a strange love/hate affair with breasts. We adore them, we succor from them, we desire them and it would seem that we fear them. Is it perhaps, that we fear our own humanity? Our own raw animalism? Breasts represent the most primal elements of ourselves. Love. Sex. Nourishment. The most basic elements of any animals existence. They represent birth and creation, the giving and sustaining of life. They represent the raw and uncontrollable forces of nature and of woman. In a way too, they represent our fragility, our death, for that which is born must die.
I believe when we begin to celebrate
breasts as they are, for what they are, rather than making them
purely objects of lust or purely objects of sin, we can begin to
celebrate ourselves as we are, human animals living, breeding and
dying amongst the other creatures of this great world. We can see
ourselves objectively, and in seeing ourselves objectively we can be
free.