For those of us who don't share their model statistics, we can still feel comfortable partaking in this seasonal pastime. In the spirit of the old-fashioned smutty seaside postcard, the Sun has declared this National Cleavage Week, when women should be proud to prominently display their assets. Laundry workers and trainee accountants have put their best boobs forward, sending in snaps to the newspaper's newly-formed Cleavage Department.
The Sun campaign is typically coy. There's plenty of fluttering flesh, but not a raised nipple in site. But, of course, every girl knows that summer and bare Bristols go together. August is the only month when we get to really examine other women's mammary glands, an engrossing exercise in compare and contrast. But despite this fair weather exposure, the breast in Britain today is in a sorry state. Its stature is sagging, and respect for it is at an all-time low. This noble body part has been reduced to the stuff of would-be starlet publicity stunts and cheap titillating jokes.
Now the sign of having "made it" is not how well known your face is, but your boobs. The breasts of 19-year-old Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova hung over motorists on billboards throughout the country, advertising a sports bra by Berlei. Her success proved that tits, rather than talent, will win out. A poor performer on court (she has never won a major tournament), she has nevertheless made more money than any other female tennis player, banking £7.5m. In a tabloid newspaper yesterday, Kate Moss's facial features were hidden behind her new short crop, but her "couple of small points" were fully exposed on an Ibiza beach. That's the only bit of her we're apparently interested in looking at.
Yet while its fine for Kate Moss to have minuscule mounds, as her sexual status is already established, ordinary women are mortified if they can't fill a 34C. There's a clear image of what Naomi Wolf has called the "official breast", which is supernaturally firm and pert, and to which we nearly all aspire. But no matter what size they are, the one area of their body which women will never be satisfied with is their bosom. A friend recently told me the story of two women who used plastic surgery to, in effect, swap breast sizes, one having a reduction and one an enlargement. After their respective operations, each looked like the other before surgery. Both were delighted with their new measurements.
Yet while a woman's sexual status is crudely focused just below the neck, that same area is being imbued with near mystical maternal properties. It is ironic that while the biological function of the penis is being eroded, with more and more women resorting to artificial insemination to produce a child, the natural role of the breast is being promoted as if it were sacred. While men's bodies are becoming increasingly divorced from their reproductive role, women are being increasingly encouraged to use their body as it was originally intended, as a child feeder. Men are escaping the biology of their body, women are becoming tied to it.
"Breast is best" is being preached with missionary zeal. Lack of mother's milk is being blamed for almost anything, from your offspring's asthma to their low IQ. Yet, at the same time as breastfeeding is being exulted, we are not allowed to witness this miracle of nature. We may see the proud, protuberant pregnant bellies of Madonna, Kate Winslett, Catherine Zeta-Jones and a host of other expectant stars. And we may see Kate Moss and Jerry Hall's nipples. But we have yet to see a picture that bridges these two bumps: a picture of a star of stage and screen breastfeeding their baby. That would be considered a very dirty pic indeed.
The perceived conflict between breasts as sexual assets and natural providers lies behind their fall from grace. It's no accident that Barbie, the most sexualised of all dolls with famed stand-alone bosoms, has no nipples. Dian Hudson, who edited the magazine Bust Out!, insightfully said of Playboy pin-ups: "They're women who are not really procreative females. They have very narrow hips, very boyish figures, big false breasts, and they're Playmates, not wives. So a man can escape the reality of his childbearing wife. There's not the possibility of her getting pregnant."
We need to overcome this obsession that breasts are either one thing or the other, either mere milk machines or sexually titillating. Only then will they stop being the butt of ridiculous dated jokes. There should be no conflict between seeing a breast as both a nurturing and an erogenous zone. This is a difficult, perhaps even dangerous idea, but nevertheless true: breastfeeding is sexy. Nursing a child is erotic.
I once wrote a column bemoaning the sorry state of the penis, calling for fans of the male anatomy to stand up for one of its most attractive appendages. A flood of sympathy for the organ poured in. Now I believe the breast is fast becoming the most maligned and misrepresented of all bodily parts. I think there should be some honest portrayal of our female protuberances.
Let's turn National Cleavage Week into National Breast is Beautiful Week - however low they dangle, and whatever they happen to be doing.
Proof that A-levels are getting easier
I was loath to believe that A-levels were getting easier when it was announced that, yet again, the number of passes at higher grades had increased. But one fact stood out that made this claim seem indisputable. For the first time, a member of the royal family has managed to approach a near respectable set of marks.
Prince William got an A in geography, B in history of art, and C in biology. This only reads extraordinarily well when compared to the pathetically low grades of his father, uncle and auntie, despite the tens of thousands of pounds lavished on them by the British taxpayer for their exclusive private education at schools whose declared aim was academic achievement. The Prince of Wales scraped through with just two A-levels; Prince Edward gained a C in English and a D in history and politics; Princess Anne got a D in history and an E in geography. While a girl with straight As is denied a place at an Oxford medical school, a blue-blooded son of a millionaire Greek immigrant called Charles could get into Trinity College, Cambridge with a B in history and a C in French.
If the statistics are true, then, within a decade, there will be no such thing as a fail at A-level. Then we might even find the next generation of the Windsor family getting the four A grades everyone else already needs.
Francis Wheen is away.
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