Wonder Breasts

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I like to put Maybelline Body Shimmer on my cleavage for glittering disco boobs. I've worn pasties. My favorite pair came from Lili St. Cyr's Undie World in Hollywood. They're about the most vulgar and amazing things a woman can add to her wardrobe--red-sequined with red string tassels at the ends. The beautiful older blond woman who sold them to me said I could use eyelash glue if I couldn't find spirit gum, the pasties paste of choice. I almost squealed with delight--a new tit accessory! Back home, I tried them out on my beau one afternoon, hiding them under a big sweater. When he saw them his eyes almost popped out of his head.

Tits are fun. I reject the hopelessly square idea that breasts only function as fetishized objects and that women who bother with theirs are playing into the sweaty hands of patriarchy. I don't care if people stare at my chest with lust in their hearts. I mean, I don't mind if they do, but I like my breasts for one reason: because they're mine. They're not perfect, but they go with the rest of my body. I keep them firm by schlepping manuscripts, laundry, and groceries. I enjoy the attention they've garnered.

Lately, though, I haven't been nearly so delighted by my breasts. I am starting to worry about them. I am afraid they are going to kill me.

The top women's fashion magazines made a valiant effort on behalf of the fight against breast cancer last October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We heard the slogan 'one in nine' quite a bit, and lump detection and postmastectomy reconstruction were discussed along with the usual fluff editorials on moisturizer and lipstick. Throughout these pages, however, were the same models with their silicone-enhanced death bumps propping up the latest haute couture.

Most of us have already dealt with the issue of breasts more intimately. I started to worry about mine one night when my mother, whom we'll call Della, phoned. Her mammogram showed the presence of cancer, and a biopsy confirmed it. I was upset, of course, but not surprised. My friend Regan had lost her mother to breast cancer. The mother of another friend, Marina, had had a mastectomy, and my friend Christine had one the same year.

After Della's mastectomy she convalesced in my apartment for a month, and I started thinking a lot about her breasts. They were the first ones I ever saw. As a young girl, I could look at them while she took her bath when we'd talk in the evening, our private time away from my brothers and father.

They were beautiful. I don't recall Della ever being much into showing hers off, even in the evening. It wasn't her style. She was married at 20, and as a young woman in the 1950s, you either highlighted that part of your anatomy and were considered a bimbo or you didn't and were assumed to be more than the sum of your parts. She used her breasts well, though. In 1965, the year I was born, breast-feeding was anathema to the nurses at Beth Israel, no doubt because it was disruptive to the feeding schedules. They discouraged her; but Della insisted, and I got the tit.

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