The bigger the better
Excerpt from the book "The Big Book of Breasts". By Dian Hanson.
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"I am a breast, a mammary gland disconnected from any human form, a mammary gland such as could only appear, one would have thought, in a dream."
Philip Roth, The Breast, 1972
In The Breast a man is transformed into a giant disembodied boob with a hypersensitive nipple in place of his penis; most would say a uniquely American fantasy. By 1972 America's breast fanaticism was so well known and well entrenched that for Roth's contemporaries, men who came of age in the 1940s and '50s, a 155-pound breast would indeed have been a dream-come-true.We accept America's singular fascination, but how did a country come to fixate so completely on one secondary sexual characteristic, on this soft, simple mass of fat and glandular tissue? Around 1760 Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus coined the term "mammal," meaning breast bearing, to describe all furred, warm-blooded creatures. Against prevailing religious opinion, he included man among these creatures.
In 1762 philosopher and author Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared French peasants the noblest of the breast-bearing beasts in his popular novel Emile. Over the next 30 years a French cult of peasant worship formed around Rousseau's writings. Legions of French aristocrats were inspired to forsake their wet-nurses and actually suckle their own infants.
As the French revolutionaries relieved Marie Antoinette of her head, they preserved her breast bowls
Marie Antoinette was so swept up in the fad she had an elegant dairy built at Versailles so she could drink fresh milk from porcelain bowls in the shape of her own breasts; in effect, suckling herself. By 1793 Marie and the rest of the aristocrats were way over the peasant thing, but even as the French revolutionaries relieved her of her head, they preserved her breast bowls, because, while beasts, they weren't philistines.
The French peasant revolt pinched breasts all over Europe. In 1794 Germany passed a law requiring mothers to breast-feed their children, and mandated that women receiving state aid make their breasts available to feed the needy. In England women adopted the gauzy, breast-revealing "peasant" dress, to the considerable delight of English men. Even the Russian aristocracy celebrated the peasant aesthetic, with the full, pendulous, maternal breast replacing the high, virginal model in art and literature.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
"I am a breast, a mammary gland disconnected from any human form, a mammary gland such as could only appear, one would have thought, in a dream."
Philip Roth, The Breast, 1972
In The Breast a man is transformed into a giant disembodied boob with a hypersensitive nipple in place of his penis; most would say a uniquely American fantasy. By 1972 America's breast fanaticism was so well known and well entrenched that for Roth's contemporaries, men who came of age in the 1940s and '50s, a 155-pound breast would indeed have been a dream-come-true.We accept America's singular fascination, but how did a country come to fixate so completely on one secondary sexual characteristic, on this soft, simple mass of fat and glandular tissue? Around 1760 Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus coined the term "mammal," meaning breast bearing, to describe all furred, warm-blooded creatures. Against prevailing religious opinion, he included man among these creatures.
In 1762 philosopher and author Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared French peasants the noblest of the breast-bearing beasts in his popular novel Emile. Over the next 30 years a French cult of peasant worship formed around Rousseau's writings. Legions of French aristocrats were inspired to forsake their wet-nurses and actually suckle their own infants.
As the French revolutionaries relieved Marie Antoinette of her head, they preserved her breast bowls
Marie Antoinette was so swept up in the fad she had an elegant dairy built at Versailles so she could drink fresh milk from porcelain bowls in the shape of her own breasts; in effect, suckling herself. By 1793 Marie and the rest of the aristocrats were way over the peasant thing, but even as the French revolutionaries relieved her of her head, they preserved her breast bowls, because, while beasts, they weren't philistines.
The French peasant revolt pinched breasts all over Europe. In 1794 Germany passed a law requiring mothers to breast-feed their children, and mandated that women receiving state aid make their breasts available to feed the needy. In England women adopted the gauzy, breast-revealing "peasant" dress, to the considerable delight of English men. Even the Russian aristocracy celebrated the peasant aesthetic, with the full, pendulous, maternal breast replacing the high, virginal model in art and literature.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4]
The Big Book of Breasts
Hardcover, 30 x 30 cm (11.8 x 11.8 in.), 396 pages
$ 59.99
$ 59.99
The supreme worship of the natural bosom
Caren Castro