Women Have Boobs -- Get Over It

By Samara Ginsberg, RH Reality Check. Posted February 4, 2009.

Even women in high-powered positions aren’t immune -- witness the treatment of Harriet Harman, Britain's Leader of the House of Commons, after being photographed a few months ago from an angle that grossly exaggerated the amount of cleavage she was showing. Poor Harman. I know from bitter personal experience just how difficult it is to dress "modestly" when you have large breasts.

Dressing "modestly" means wearing something that conceals the size of your large breasts -- the actual size of them, not just the amount of flesh on show, otherwise you risk looking as if you’re actually dressing to make them look bigger. It’s a catch-22 situation that reaches whole new dimensions if, like me, you are only 5-foot-2 and have to consider that most people will be able to see down your top.

Because there are such limited representations of women in the media, and so many stereotypes associated with particular looks, this creates unfortunate associations for women who happen to resemble any one of these particular looks. Tall, slim, young women for example are stereotyped as bitchy fashionistas. Women above a size 10 who -- gasp! – don’t hate themselves are "confident, real women." Overweight, middle-aged women are regarded as barely deserving of existence until they give up carbs and get Botox. And young, petite women with big breasts are regarded as "easy."

My classmate’s "a handful is enough" comment succinctly demonstrates the phenomenon of people thinking that women choose the size of their breasts, or at least treating them as if they do. Sometimes I feel as if I have the words ARROGANT SLUT tattooed across my forehead. Given what men seem to think about my sexual availability and the judgments that women seem to make about my "morals" and self-image, it really does seem that having big breasts is equivalent to this.

I think that the crux of all of my breast-related problems was very well summarized by a perceptive comment made by a friend when I was 16: "The problem is, your breasts just don’t suit your personality."

She was right: People had gone from seeing me as I really was -- just another shy, geeky teenager who spent entirely too much time in the library -- to seeing me as a bimbo who would definitely want to suck their dicks. My breasts were a mask that seemed to prevent people from actually bothering to get to know me.

It seems that often women have the biggest problems with their breasts when this happens, and when the treatment that they receive from other people is related to their tits rather than to who they actually are as a person. All people are to some extent judged on their looks; this is unfair. Women are judged on their looks much more than men; this is even more unfair and makes looks-based discrimination very much a feminist issue.

Women with big breasts are in my opinion subjected to many more negative snap judgments than most, perhaps even on a par with fat women and women who explicitly fail to comply with society’s standards of beauty by doing horrific things like failing to remove their armpit hair. This is horrendously unfair, not to mention bloody stupid.

I’m not saying: "Boo hoo, look how difficult life is for gorgeous women, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful!" Being regarded as attractive generally makes life much easier and puts one in a position of privilege, an unfair and wholly undeserved privilege that I am aware of having. But being seen as extremely sexually attractive is massively problematic for the individual in question. In such a deeply sexist and heteronormative culture, looking like the personification of "sluttiness" is seen as an invitation for sexual harassment.

It’s bad enough when people think you are inviting sexual harassment because of how you happen to be dressed that day, but at least mini skirts and high heels come off. Breasts do not. The size of a woman’s breasts, surgery notwithstanding, is not a personal choice. Forget "This is what a feminist looks like" -- I think I need a T-shirt that says, "These came with my body."

For any girls or women who think that they would like to look like a glamour model, I would like to say that you are fortunate not to. Not because there is anything at all wrong with being petite with big breasts in itself, but because a woman who looks like a Nuts pin-up is constantly assumed by most people to be an airhead. Your life will be much easier if you have a more average figure. Consider how healthy your self-image would be by now if you had endured being groped, being automatically regarded as unintelligent, being seen by other women as the enemy, being regarded as nothing more than your body, every day of your life.

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