I Have Boobs, Deal With It.
October 17, 2009 at 1:55 am 1 comment
Sing it, Meghan McCain!
So by now most of us are already over the non-controversy regarding Meghan McCain and a certain chesty twit pic. However it is her response today in the Daily Beast that really intrigues me as it seems to encapsulate the struggles that all well-endowed women face. So McCain posted a picture of herself on twitter sporting vaguely porny looking cleavage. She claimed it was in preparation for her big night in that involved a good book and some takeout. Now I don’t know a 20 something female who would post and unflattering or dowdy picture of herself on the internet and as Broadsheet pointed out, “What do they think young Republican women wear to bed? Lanz of Salzburg?” OK, so posting a megaboobs shot of yourself online might be vaguely tacky (however again, I challenge you to find me a 20-something female who doesn’t have at least one vaguely saucy pic of herself on Facebook) but to be called a slut over it? What century are we in?
McCain says she has, “struggled to accept the fact that the way I look in a tank top comes off more “sexual” than a flat-chested woman.” I can totally relate here, there are some styles smaller chested women can wear without stares that I just can’t pass off without looking like Marilyn Monroe. Although it can be a nuisance at time, I’ve always ultimately thought of it as a nice problem to have. I do my best to dress appropriately for the situation I’m in, try to keep it all “tucked in” and not flash people in public, but in the end… I have boobs. They’re big, sometimes people are going to notice them. I’m not going to go around wearing turtlenecks every day or uncomfortable chest minimizing bras just because some people can’t handle the sight of a fully grown woman.
What’s up with people behaving as if having large or noticeable breasts is a sign of promiscuity? Last time I checked, there was no correlation between cup size and number of sexual partners and if there is… boy did I miss out when I was single. It doesn’t work the opposite way, people don’t look at women with small breasts and think, “Oh, she must be such a prude.” Why do we look at a woman who has larger breasts, breasts that are often more visible than the breasts of a smaller woman and automatically think that she’s a slut just because her body’s doing what it does naturally?
Although breasts are highly fetishized in our culture, the fact is that they serve a very practical evolutionary purpose; feeding human babies. Unless you have a lactation fetish, that’s just about the least sexual thing I can think of. Having large breasts is not an invitation for people to stare, comment or think ill of my character any more than having a large nose or ears would be. Living with the body I was born with and feeling comfortable in it, comfortable enough to not want to hide behind boxy clothing doesn’t make me, or Meghan McCain a slut. And while we’re at it, I’m so done with slut shaming. What’s a slut? Anyone who’s had more sex than you have? I’m tired of the word slut. I’m a slut, you’re a slut, we’re all sluts. Why in this day and age do we really think it is our business to comment on who or how many people anybody else is sleeping with anyway?
Meghan McCain says she’s proud of her curves, but like so much of her other writing, I feel that she gets close to making a great point and then backs off it in the end. She says she’s not perfect and that she’s still “making mistakes” and that she says she’s, “learned a valuable lesson about the internet and boundaries” and hopes, “other girls can learn from this episode.” Learning to draw the line between the internet and real life is a valuable lesson for sure, but in the end is this a lesson about being who you are, critics be damned, or covering up and shutting up when a few assholes pull out the S word? After all, McCain did threaten to take down her twitter page after the whole incident, something she has never done when the media has repeatedly called her fat. Why is it that a tiny four lettered word like slut has the power to make a confident woman like McCain consider silencing herself? Why is it that we use the word slut so often to defame, discredit and shut down young women?
It’s something to think about. In the mean time, don’t you even think about calling me and my C cups slutty. Unless, of course, you mean it in a good way.
Entry filed under: body image, celebrities, entertainment, Events, Fashion, feminism, news, Niftiness, opinion, Politics, quotes, Snark-a-Licious, Things That Inspire Me, women who rock, women's health. Tags: blogging, body image, breasts, broadsheet, celebrities, daily beast, entertainment, Events, Fashion, feminism, gossip, meghan mccain, news, opinion, Politics, slut shaming, sluts, twitter.
1.
Ayelle | October 17, 2009 at 3:31 am
Oh I have so much to say about the fetishization of breasts. Not long ago, a friend/acquaintance removed me as a friend on LJ and Facebook after we had an argument about feminist issues — specifically, female toplessness. I don’t want to get into too much detail, as it wasn’t pleasant, but it still frustrates me when I think about it. I argued that there was nothing wrong with a woman being topless anywhere that it’s appropriate for a man to be topless. One of his counterarguments was that the *obvious* differences between a topless man and a topless woman just shows that despite the fact that in some places the law may say they’re the same legally, the *reality* is that BIOLOGICALLY a topless man is *not* the same as a topless woman, and shouldn’t be considered the same in terms of appropriateness, decency, sex etc.
It was the sort of statement that *feels* like an obvious truth to just about anybody who’s grown up in our culture… but it’s NOT true. Historically, human cultures have differed radically as to which female body parts are fetishized and which are not. Cultures where breasts — those things we feed babies with — are *not* regarded as particularly sexy or inappropriate for public display are probably at least as common as those in which they are. This is even true in Western culture; in 16th and 17th century England, female fashion routinely featured such low-cut necklines that the entire breasts, nipples and all, were revealed — but GOD FORBID they flash an ankle or a forearm — that’s what got Queen Anne in trouble. There are stories about an overheated Queen Elizabeth pulling open her dress top to reveal her “wrinkled breasts” to the entire court while fanning herself.
And in some countries, men — and probably many women as well — would agree that it’s just not decent for women to show their lips or noses or hairlines in public… because women are different, y’know, it’s biology, they have sexy parts men don’t have, and it’s just not appropriate to show those parts in public!
The reality is that the Western fetishization of breasts and the demand that they be covered for decency’s sake is not fundamentally different from the burka. (Among other things, this comparison may help Westerners understand why banning the burka is often not a particularly high priority for Middle Eastern feminists, especially not compared to, say, honor killings — just as female freedom to go topless tends not to be a particularly high priority for Western feminists compared to other issues.) I don’t point out these ingrained cultural beliefs about women’s bodies in order to claim I’m somehow free of them: I’m not, and I wouldn’t be comfortable walking around topless in public, because I was raised in this culture too. But I think that it’s REALLY IMPORTANT that we understand that this is a cultural fetishization — a way that the patriarchy control’s women’s bodies — and NOT BIOLOGY, not objective reality.
As a side note, since the freedom to breastfeed does tend to be a higher priority for feminists in our culture, there are lots of places where neither men nor women can be topless generally, but an exception is made for breastfeeding mothers. Not that that stops the occasional breastfeeding mother from being thrown of a plane for indecensy, of course.