Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Having a look
While looking for reading material at our rental house on vacation, I came across an article about how men really feel about "fake" breasts. In it, the author writes:
"In point of fact you're supposed to look. For men, that's the best part. ... You don't have to be an evolutionary biologist to know that men are visually stimulated. So the tacit invitatation to have a look at a woman's breasts is, in itself, a wonderful thing."
Now, I 've lived my life thinking I wasn't supposed to look at a woman's breasts, though we certainly all do. It would violate them or at least dehumanize them or some such thing.
This lesson was painfully driven home in the seventh grade when I was, in fact, completely innocent. I was in front of a student desk with a girl on the other side. She was busy stacking papers or something, standing on the other side but looking down, perhaps even leaning down. However, she was in a striped collared shirt, as I recall, and she didn't have much of a chest or any chest at all at this point in her life. I was there to tell her something, something of a message or an instruction, because I rarely talked to this girl. She was neither friend nor enemy, just someone I didn't interact with much.
"Why don't you tell it to my face instead of my tits," she said pointedly.
I may have physically reeled. I certainly did mentally. I wasn't, I hadn't, I was certain. But I was speechless. It was an attack from left field. I stammered that I hadn't and somehow slinked away.
Now women have always claimed with absolute certainty that they know when a man is talking to their breasts instead of them or having a look, in any case. But this experience has made me doubt their claims.
But it also made me learn that I should not, not in any way, ever be caught having a look.
The author's suggestion then that fake ones actually carry with them the invitation to have a look is a different take, and it goes with something else I overheard recently. One woman was saying to another, "Can we talk about how big your boobs are looking?" and the other responded, "Yes, please." They were a point of pride, not just a fact of life or some kind of embarrassment. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, seeing how revealing clothes are very much the order of the day. Still, it sometimes doesn't compute for me, like female desire, be it from my past experience or something else.
I look. I don't consider myself that much of a breast man, and I think they can be too big, but I do look. It's kind of funny really, when you think about how they can reduce men to a puddle of drool and yet they're really pretty simply shaped, objectively not much to look at in the end. But they are inexplicably wonderful, fun to see from top down or the curve-revealing side, at the cleavage or straight on, with no pretenses.
I suppose there are still rules for this sort of thing. Yes, I want you to look but I expect not to notice when you do. It certainly can't be overt or clumsily lewd. It's supposed to be surreptitious, a game of cat and mouse.
But it's a great game to play.
"In point of fact you're supposed to look. For men, that's the best part. ... You don't have to be an evolutionary biologist to know that men are visually stimulated. So the tacit invitatation to have a look at a woman's breasts is, in itself, a wonderful thing."
Now, I 've lived my life thinking I wasn't supposed to look at a woman's breasts, though we certainly all do. It would violate them or at least dehumanize them or some such thing.
This lesson was painfully driven home in the seventh grade when I was, in fact, completely innocent. I was in front of a student desk with a girl on the other side. She was busy stacking papers or something, standing on the other side but looking down, perhaps even leaning down. However, she was in a striped collared shirt, as I recall, and she didn't have much of a chest or any chest at all at this point in her life. I was there to tell her something, something of a message or an instruction, because I rarely talked to this girl. She was neither friend nor enemy, just someone I didn't interact with much.
"Why don't you tell it to my face instead of my tits," she said pointedly.
I may have physically reeled. I certainly did mentally. I wasn't, I hadn't, I was certain. But I was speechless. It was an attack from left field. I stammered that I hadn't and somehow slinked away.
Now women have always claimed with absolute certainty that they know when a man is talking to their breasts instead of them or having a look, in any case. But this experience has made me doubt their claims.
But it also made me learn that I should not, not in any way, ever be caught having a look.
The author's suggestion then that fake ones actually carry with them the invitation to have a look is a different take, and it goes with something else I overheard recently. One woman was saying to another, "Can we talk about how big your boobs are looking?" and the other responded, "Yes, please." They were a point of pride, not just a fact of life or some kind of embarrassment. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, seeing how revealing clothes are very much the order of the day. Still, it sometimes doesn't compute for me, like female desire, be it from my past experience or something else.
I look. I don't consider myself that much of a breast man, and I think they can be too big, but I do look. It's kind of funny really, when you think about how they can reduce men to a puddle of drool and yet they're really pretty simply shaped, objectively not much to look at in the end. But they are inexplicably wonderful, fun to see from top down or the curve-revealing side, at the cleavage or straight on, with no pretenses.
I suppose there are still rules for this sort of thing. Yes, I want you to look but I expect not to notice when you do. It certainly can't be overt or clumsily lewd. It's supposed to be surreptitious, a game of cat and mouse.
But it's a great game to play.
