One day ago, during the evening news on WJLA - Washington DC, a beautiful young woman bared her breasts. No, not in a Girls Gone Wild or Opie and Anthony WOW attempt; she bared her breasts to model the proper way to conduct a breast self-exam. (She herself had caught her breast cancer early via self-exam.) Was it tasteful? Yes. Was it informative? Yes. Did it piss some people off? What do you think?
If you've read anything I've written (or heard me speak), you know what my response is already. Get the F over it. Seriously. They are breasts. Knowing how to do self-exams saves lives. And more importantly, they are breasts. They are a part of our bodies. Why do we get so damn hung up on them?
This morning on a Good Morning America man-on-the-street interview, a woman was asked, "Is TV going too far?" Her response, "Yes. I have small children at home. Who knows who may be watching the television at that time." Really? Cue the sarcasm. Because small children have never seen breasts? Because small children have never been nursed - by the breast - before? Because teen girls and boys have never seen breasts before? This is ridiculous.
Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America (which should really be named Women Who are Only Concerned With Having a Conservative and Restrictive America) suggested that this was not only going too far, but it was strictly for ratings. You know what? I don't care if it was for ratings. Showing people how to do their own breast exams serves a purpose and more importantly, initiates a larger dialogue about our inability to be healthy when we as a society have such hang-ups about the human body.
Let me take this one step further. There is nothing wrong with nudity. These are our bodies, given to us by whatever deity we believe in. When we censor the human form or encourage our children to feel shame about what lies beneath their clothes, that's when problems start. Let's not kid ourselves. The more taboo nudity becomes, the more everyone wants to run out and see some.
Yeah, and if you're asking me if I walk around naked, I do. My kids aren't afraid of breasts or vulvas, penises or testicles. They are body parts. And if and when they decide that they would rather me get dressed when they weren't hanging out in my bedroom, so be it.
But I will not give them a complex about their own bodies.
Follow Dr. Logan Levkoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LoganLevkoff
That one moment says everything to me about what's wrong with so many American's ideas about nudity, and what is obscene.
Remember at the turn of the century, a woman couldn't show a bare ankle. Then only "loose" women showed bare calves in the roaring 20's. Yet. in the 1700's at fancy European balls, many women fully bared their breasts in ball gowns as it was the fashionable thing to do.
Tahitian and Hawaiian women were topless until missionaries said it was "bad."
Here in Palm Springs, CA where my nudist resort is located, the Agua Caliente Indian women lived topless until the white settlers came in the 1800's telling them they had to cover up.
And Marios, breasts are not genitals. they are not reproductive organs. They are mammary glands used for feeding babies.
We've owned our nudist resort for 15 years and we have seen so many women just about scream in happiness nude sunbathing here because for the first time in their lives they felt the repression of society was gone and they were free.
Dr. Levkoff, keep up the good work.
It has been shown that the more relaxed a nation's attitude to nudity is, the lower are its rates of teenage pregnancy, abortions and STI's. But I guess I'm preaching to the converted here, at least as far as Dr. Logan is concerned.
I can understand the frustration you must feel that leads you to say "Get the F over it"; but 'OtayPanky' is right, it probably isn't helpful to express it that way. Staying with 'OtayPanky', what is wrong with trying to alter the "values, aesthetics, and taboos" of your own society if you believe them to be wrong?
Our social conventions are deeply flawed, simply because there is no uniformity to them. And that I can surely fight against. But at the end of the day, I cannot change everyone's mind, but I hope that I can get us to think critically about the world we live in.
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That's a reasonable and sane thing to hope form.
... a word about the decency of women's breasts in public, it maybe a debatable issue in some circles but the US Constitution is unshakable and protects gender equality. That means that if a man's chest is allowed in public, a woman's must be too. Sooner or later, state laws will have to change their unconstitutional legislature to reflect the ultimate law of the land: the US Constitution. We may kick and we may scream but that reality is coming. Like women's right to vote, the end of segregation earlier in our history, a woman's chest in public is constitutional, it MUST and WILL be honored. Note that several states already acknowledge top freedom to all citizens, like the great state of NY. and the District of Columbus! Go to www.gotopless.org for more on these legal issues and join us on the next national GoTopless day, on August 22, 2010, in honor of Women's Equality Day voted by Congress in 1971 and officially celebrated on Aug 26 each year.
But from a larger, anthropological perspective, what you say comes up short.
All societies have their own ideas of what is acceptable and what is taboo. If you were trained as an anthopologist, you would learn to have an innately respectful attitude towards societies with vastly different values, aesthetics, and taboos than your own.
So...even though you would like OUR society to be more liberal and less puritanical, telling people to "get the F over it" doesn't accomplish much. You'll merely get howls of approval from those who agree, and howls of disapproval from those who don't.
There has to be a better way to have a dialogue on difficult subjects than that. Or perhaps we shouldn't try to have a dialogue at all.
Sure, you can point ot statistics about how death rates for breast cancer is dropping. However, more detection means more detection of indolent disease that would never have spread or killed anyone. So throw those into the mix and you have a distortion of the facts. Truth is, there is still no cure for stage 4 BC.
Good reading about lead time bias in BC statistics:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199806/breast-cancer/3