Tanya Raises Her Sights

Posted on January 6, 2003 in Crosstalk

Madame Fabulous has left off the topic of the alleged flab about her midriff and devoted herself to the study of artificial breasts:

The Columbia Valley, in which I live, may soon be renamed the Silicone Valley. The proliferation of fake breasts is absolutely astounding. As round and hard as softballs, there they are. And the women are as proud of them as they would be their own children, and so are walking around with shirts unbuttoned to their navels, wearing their daughter’s smallest sweaters, and are only barely stopping short of wearing neon arrows pointing to their assets. There are husbands who are giving their wives breast implants instead of flowers for birthdays.

[Question: how does Tanya know how hard they are? Has she been walking up to women and feeling them?]

I’m ambivalent on the subject myself. I was a little surprised when I first began touring blogs to see “The Rack Browser”, on which various women displayed their “rack” in varying stages of undress (usually bikini tops). I went through a few of these sites and was not favorably impressed with the direction or the content.

Other than that notable connoisseur of the female body, wKenShow, most of my more literary friends don’t do that kind of thing. The closest thing I found in a quick search of my links was a reference at Teresa’s In Sequence to Bust’s Girl Wide Web with a few references to erotica but no actual pictures of Teresa or anyone else that I know.

These days, it seems that women are more concerned with breasts than the men I know, not all of whom are gay. The last time I went to my writer’s group, we got into a discussion about the appropriateness of a particular phrasing by the other writer who was on the grill that night, Melanie. I faulted the phrase “appreciable boobs” because of the diction (would a 13 year old boy use that?) and others because they didn’t believe that people used the term in the 1920s. Melanie sighed loudly and said “I have this problem, then, with my “‘appreciable boobs'”. I quipped “I don’t know about that, Mel. They look fine to me.”

Scarlet was the color of her cheeks for about a minute as the composure of the men and women at the table broke down into hilarity.

After I emailed a pre-emptive apology, she comforted me:

I am the one who said I have a boob problem, and I meant it
in jest, because the fact of the matter is that I am quite happy with my
boobs.

[Come to think of it, I tend to hear that word burst from the mouth of women more than men. Does anyone know how this came about?]

Readers know that I don’t talk about such things, unless I quote a female who uses the word to refer to that part of her anatomy or a boorish man who drools it off his lips. I get email every day promising me bigger breasts or a longer penis, neither of which I feel moved to develop. I suppose that they have plenty of customers for their products, but I have yet to meet anyone who admits to it.

Tanya, however, can name names. Others, using their new found surgical prostheses and injections, can look in the mirror and point, never removing their hands from their pockets.