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By: Lauren,
on 4/28/2011
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By Gayle Sulik
A blogger who goes by the name of The Accidental Amazon recently asked: “When did breast cancer awareness become more focused on our breasts than on cancer? Is it because our culture is so obsessed with breasts that it slides right past the C word?”
The Amazon’s questions are important — but they are inconvenient; blasphemous to the pink consumption machine, disruptive to the strong societal focus on pink entertainment, and anti-climactic for the feel-good festivities that have swallowed up popularized versions of breast cancer awareness and advocacy. Her questions are sobering — but sobriety is the last thing that a society drunk on pink wants. We’ve been binging on boobies campaigns and pink M&Ms for too long, and we’ve grown accustomed to the buzz.
After a federal judge in Pennsylvania declared that the “I ♥ Boobies!” bracelets worn in schools represented free speech protected under the 1st Amendment, an interesting debate broke out about language as well as the legitimacy and usefulness of the boobies campaigns. The judicial system, focusing on the former, upheld the tradition that people are free to express themselves unless what they communicate is lewd or vulgar. To them, “boobies” did not fit this category because they were worn in the context of breast cancer “awareness.”
Much of the ongoing debate, and I use this term loosely, has been about discerning whether the Pennsylvania judgment was sound. Is “boobies” an offensive word when used on bracelets or t-shirts in schools? For the most part the discussion has been a polarized virtual shouting match about prudishness versus progressiveness. The commentary quickly “slid right past the C word” to focus on the B word. Boobies is far more titillating to the public than CANCER.
And why not? Sex sells. Playboy, Hooters, Pin-Up girls, pink-up girls. What’s the difference? Women’s sexiness is for sale to the highest bidder, or for $4.99. We’re not too fussy. It’s all about “the girls” getting attention from the boys. Of course, the undercurrent remains that all this nonsense really is about breast cancer. Boys wrote on facebook pages and in editorial posts that they “LOVE BOOBIES” and – in the spirit of breast exam – they’d love to “feel your boobies for you.” Some snickered at anyone who expressed concern about the accuracy of the campaigns, the fact that they diverted money from more useful endeavors such as research, or that they focused on women’s breasts to the exclusion of women’s lives. “Get a life,” one boy said. “Don’t be so angry,” chimed another. Women and men alike chided those who felt differently. After all, who are we to rain on the happy boobies parades?
Peggy Orenstein has tried to place the issue in a larger context, that these “ubiquitous rubber bracelets” are part of a new trend called “
0 Comments on Boobies, for fun & profit! as of 1/1/1900
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I often use Urbandictionary to research slang uses of otherwise staid and respectable words.
Urbandictionary in turn tries to induce website visitors to browse the site further by including along the bottom each page seemingly randomly selected images that other Urbandictionary users have uploaded to complement their homegrown definitions of words.
An image portraying cleavage caught my eye.
Now cleavage is a very interesting word even without pictures so I thought I’d tell you a little about it.
Long before cleavage referred to the space between a woman’s breasts there were two words that both evolved out of Old English into two words in Modern English. Both are cleave and strangely one means “stick together” while the other means “break apart.”
The “stick together” word is related to cling while the “break apart” word is related to cloven as in cloven hooves.
It wasn’t until 1946 that cleavage made an appearance as a word in English applying to the female form.
I don’t know for sure, but I think we can presume that it was the “break apart” meaning of cleave that lead to its use in reference to women’s chests.
That first citation for this use of cleavage appeared in Time Magazine.
Time was reporting on deliberations in the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association of America had set up its own censorship board mostly so that the government wouldn’t step in and do the censoring for them.
The word cleavage had been adopted within the Association to refer to the shadowed area indicating the space between an actress’s breasts.
The censors had to decide if too much shadow was too much.
In the case of the Time Magazine story the film in question was called The Wicked Lady and originated in Britain.
The censors decided it was just too racy for American eyes and the English film makers re-shot the offending scenes cleaving the film into two slightly different editions, one for each side of the pond.
Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces
Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of
Carnal Knowledge – A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia as well as the audio book
Global Wording – The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English.
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Woah. a post about cleavage is illustrated with a … cameltoe? How cool is that?
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