Breast Size: the Tyranny of Large Breasts.

I once had a Brazilian roommate in
English we don't say housemate we say roommate we didn't actually sleep in the same room he was in the next room kind of two doors down the hall but we eat breakfast together sometimes we saw a lot of each other living in the same house we were both actually in Germany learning German and he asked me a very funny question one day he asked do you think there is a genetic difference between white people in Brazil and white people in the United States and Canada because in Brazil it seems that all anyone cares about is the shape of a woman's ass whereas in the United States in Canada everyone's obsessed with you know the size of a woman's breasts if we think about it the question is even more surreal if you were to include the black population of Brazil and the black population in the United States and Canada you know given that they're part of the same basic history of slave trading back and forth between Africa and the world and so on so my answer at that time I was younger but it wasn't that bad an answer I said no I think it's completely cultural I don't think it's genetic and I said to them you know I think in Brazil you dress a certain way and culturally you act a certain way and you maybe meet women dancing in revealing attire or at the beach wearing bathing suits but you know in Canada most United States it's cold all the time and women are wearing winter coats and so on and I you know you pretty much never see that lower half of a woman's body so you know the size of a woman's breasts are the first thing you see when she walks in the room the size of her ass you might notice what you walk out of the room but depending on what kind of winter coat you're wearing you might not see it at all there are cultural and climatic reasons as to why this might have developed in the way it did the stereotype shall we say about Brazilian and Gian and ever the merica culture right my girlfriend Melissa and I we talked a lot today about mmm cultural social political would even kind of philosophical consequences of breast size and to be fair it's a topic we've talked about a lot in the last three years I come from we're talking about this very different angle when you and I first got together um I think the realization I came to today in our discussion which was new for me which I hadn't really thought of before is that breast size means something very different now in the year 2020 than it did in any earlier century in 1920 or 1820 or 1720 and that is because in the past the size of a woman's breast just like the size of her nose or the length of her legs or the size of your arms was just something fixed by birth and to some extent whether or not you were starving during your childhood development the quality of nutrition equality of upbringing in that sense but you know some people were born short and some people were born tall and this was in electable fate beyond your control it wasn't a choice it wasn't saying you could negotiate and conversely you know with breast size you just had to regard it as something like this arbitrary and unequal and today because of the prevalence of plastic surgery the accessibility ease and affordability of plastic surgery and above all else because it's socially accepted because culturally it's treated as acceptable for women's undergo of this plastic surgery women who have small breasts women who are flat-chested whenever they see a one with large breasts whether its natural or surgically enhanced they are presented with an image of the door they left unopened the road they didn't go down the choice they didn't make now as never before if you have small breasts that's a choice it's a decision you're making and you know I have lived in other cultures where it's socially acceptable for a woman to have fake breasts of a very different kind where it's a social assessable for a woman to wear padded bra and a whole complex prosthetic outfit to work every day and I mean women who are like lawyers women of an office job like women who are extensively changing the way their body looks at the padded bra every day and where that's acceptable Thailand easy example you know you know the use of foam padded bras is at epidemic levels of Thailand let me tell you okay I have lived in cultures where that's really socially acceptable and that's why I feel confident saying this is not one of them in the United States and Canada I think a woman would be ridiculed for having fake breasts of that kind of a fake breasts that on the outside of her skin but it's accepted it is normal in 2020 for women to have fake breasts in the form of surgical implants worn under the skin right so that's something in any other context it would be absurd to say that a woman feels social pressure to have large breasts because you can't say that a man feel social pressure to be tall there's just nothing you can do about it like he's short maybe maybe he does feel he would have advantages as people were told maybe he does notice that all of the men who were regarded as handsome even people like newsreaders and lawyers and business leaders that like tall tallness is something important in this culture maybe he does think if he were taller he would have had other sexual partners in university than almost he had maybe but nevertheless it's not an option when a tall man walks in through the door a short man can't think or reflect that would be me if only I'd set my pride aside if only I'd set my own sense of authenticity and integrity aside and get that surgery right because there is no surgery for that yet maybe there never will be but definitely not now on to those and for a flat-chested you're small breasted woman the sight of any woman with large breasts is a challenge in that same way now as it never was before and yes I mean obviously part of the psychosis of Instagram which is maybe overly philosophized about here on YouTube you know of looking at women who are better dressed than you women who spend two hours a day going to the gym exercising at the gym and you don't all of those things have okay they can only be a burden on you they can only apply pressure to you socially or psychologically if you think of those things as options right that you could be going to the gym that you could be spending more money on your clothes that you could be drinking this diet tea and losing weight there first has to be an option allottee to it right and indeed I mean I'm sure today as never before that must be true with the shape of your nose that you could have a smaller nose you'd host or maybe you see maybe when you see women with small nose you feel the same way but historically that was never the case in the past right as much as you might be moan your fate your fate is absolutely by definition something you didn't choose and can't change right whereas now this is something that you can yeah you must be going yeah I guess I could say the specific time that I grew up in there was some dissonance between these two ideas so the two ideas that I'm thinking of or the Equality the discussion and school and discounting children that you know we're all born equal in this way you know in certain ways and like everybody is beautiful in their own way everyone's special in their own way and even everyone is smart in their own way yeah I got I got the same message in school by contrast on television I remember watching shows when I was very young called Extreme Makeover plastic surgery shows YES on E Entertainment Television and also seeing pretty dramatic representations of women on MTV vh1 on these you know this type of mass media which I consumed quite a bit of so yeah I just I just say there was this dissonance between like okay so is everybody equal and you know everybody has their own attributes that should be you know seen as beautiful or is it the case that we're all trying to mold into this right Beauty ideal and we're willing to you know right we're physically you know shave off parts of our body or put silicone or are you all equal equally entitled to spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery this pressure maybe this wondering something yeah it's it's different when like when the first person dead or like when the first few people like the first wave of breast augmentation happened it's like once you take that step now it is it is the case that anyone could if there is that equality in that everybody could potentially if we save up enough money you can get breast augmentation I mean you know I think even the language here has to be questioned augmentation think about the meaning of the word vision enhancement enhanced breath breast enhancement surgery right the reality is these procedures they're crippling you they're making you into a disabled person I'm not gonna go off into great length or great detail with this but guys if you have silicone sax inserted in your chest when you lie on your back to sleep you have to breathe with them on your chest when you turn onto your side to sleep for some ways women that can be even worse one of the most common things you read about with women when they get breast augmentation surgery okay can we shouldn't even say augmentation Billy when you think about it is that they have this terrible process of adjusting and learning sleep again sleeping in some strange position they didn't sleep in before whether that's on their side or face down or however it is they sort it out or somewhere more comfortable on their back whatever it is but it it changes the way you breathe it changes the way you sleep and then you can look up the long list of very peculiar side effects that are now fueling the so-called explant movement okay so the language of augmentation and enhancement you know what I would already oh it already question I think the power of this for women we're going to talk about the male perspective separately ultimately comes in fact that most of us including intellectuals now I think I really have to speak on that too alright for most of us the pleasures we have in life however paltry come from sexuality and the people we love and the people who are brought into our lives through social relationships right I mean my conversations with my girlfriend may be more important to me may be more meaningful to me than the act of sex itself regarded in a vacuum but we wouldn't be having these conversations if we didn't have a sexual relationship I mean you know really there's this I've seen different people try to address it but I think there's this assumption that men who lead a meaningful life men who are intellectuals are somehow aloof from or indifferent to sex and then the opposite is true the opposite is true I think as a male intellectual you appreciate sex more because you reject alcohol you reject watching sports you reject playing video games you reject skiing I'm sorry but I do I even think skiing right I'm not I'm sex positive right I don't regard sex as something meaningless or evil or bad I don't regard it as a waste my time the way you skiing is or what have you I do not think there's any productive allegory to be made between sex and cocaine cocaine is a drug I think you should completely exclude from your life gambling I think you should completely exclusively so just say in terms of what remains in the life of an intellectual your intimate relations with other human beings your intellectual relations your emotional relations but yes also sex this remains something someone you know tremendous import so for women the idea I think it is the same basically with a nose job but in some ways in some ways the breast implant and breast size natural or otherwise it's a much more powerful symbol you know if you have a woman who lived her whole life with a really ugly nose there's something wrong with her she has a crooked nose and she thinks her whole life she could have been happy she could have had better sexual partners or married a better man you know that she could have had this better life if only her nose weren't crooked it's very very powerful right and for a lot of women who are small breasted or flat-chested entirely they are living with this sense that they don't know what it's like that the grass really is greener on the other side of the hill and again now that's not just a fade they have to be resigned to it is something they could change so this becomes a really powerful cultural symbol yeah yeah I want to say I actually do agree with you now but I think when I was growing up I didn't address the questions the look well there's there's limited like discussion to have philosophically about human sexuality right and I guess when I was younger I thought you know this is something that you know I'm too mature to be asking these questions or to be talking about breast size to be talking about these things that's my friends and I you know contempt yeah but I wish I would have earlier because then it left me later on in the dark and a lot of these things and immature and a lot of these places so I do think it's important yes even as somebody who thinks oh no I you know that's that's not something I'm gonna display my time with I'm gonna spend my time reading I'm studying at school and I'm playing music you know these other things I don't have time to even like think about that human sexuality but it's like everybody has a sexuality you know well I mean I think we're at the limits when we talk about he was a buddy almost by definition we're at the limits of what you can address rationally and then we're into taking a step beyond that into the irrational world of desire and purely animal instincts which we live with as an intellectual you live with it if you're a Buddhist monk living in celibacy you live with it all right I know cognitively as a fact that a woman having larger breasts doesn't make sex better and it doesn't make the relationship as a whole better I know that now a lot of younger guys watching this you know know that you may not know that you may not have the experience to really speak up on the have confidence and say no you know actually a woman can be flat-chested and and that this may sound weird again for some of the younger guys watching um a woman having really strong arms can contribute more to great sex than are having large breasts all right look really like the strength and vitality of the room which in our culture we don't sexualize at all now we don't you don't women have arms but it's not it's not this powerful token of either sexuality or maturity or maternity or whatever you know um you know it's not presented this way so you know I can know that cognitively right I can know that inverse was and I can even make rational choices in that matter accordingly okay however on the level of instinct on the level of irrational desire and so on it is true in many situations woman's breast size is the first thing you notice and we have been in cultures including the South of France where women are either actually naked or they're about 98% naked and what are you know even if you're not really out there looking for it where Wow all of a sudden like Here I am at the beach with my five year old daughter or going swimming this is not on my mind at all like you're thinking about like where did my daughter leave for toi a water gun like you know you're keeping track of like your minds on other stuff and you are confronted with you know you know women who are you know very consciously intentionally showing off up there present Connie's here in Canada we do allow female toplessness and several memorable times here in Victoria Canada there have been young women who again I mean they were not average looking young women I mean they really what I think who really knew that sottish off who were really displaying the press and to me and totally unexpected context where you know you know you react to this again on a level of in st. Louis er so I just say for men also it is a really powerful force if it is a powerful force in the psychological reality of daily life and no matter how much you mock marketing campaigns and advertising that try to exploit this like hey men buy this car battery because there's a woman with big breasts posing with the car pattern but it's so really feel stance which whether it's on the internet or in print media any product can be promoted with a woman in a bikini with large breasts anything you know what a joke okay but there are times in your life if you're a heterosexual man and again it can be completely unexpected like that like you know I'm at the beach transform with my daughter it's not what I'm looking for it's not what's on my mind when that reality cuts in you know so I just say whether whether you are Brazilian or Canadian or American I think I have to stand by that you know I think that is a fundamental fact of life and even if it's exploited and even if we're cynical about it or even if not just philosophically but your personal practical experience you really know it doesn't matter it doesn't matter having a good relationship and it doesn't matter to having great sex I still have to say it's something that will and for me it's actually not in photographs for me a real life face to face it's something that leaps out to you and grabs your attention like seeing a serpent moving in the grass if you like if you've really lived if you've been in the jungle or so you've been somewhere that snakes are dangerous and you see a snake move you notice it sticks so clearly you have millions of years of evolution to notice that snake moving in the grass you know even though it may be the same color as the grass I you know lamentably or not I think that is something we're all we're all born with and living with this intersection man look I'm a heterosexual female and I don't have the you know desire that comes when I see a woman with large breasts but it's very like shocking sometimes you know it's true it's like I can't help but look you know so I'm not saying that I'm you know like interested sexually but like and from a young age I can remember these things you know we part of our discussion earlier was I was saying you know I was lamenting that somebody in the hip-hop world got breast implants yeah and I was thinking but you know I saw some of her earlier videos where she had you know it's a smaller chest and I thought oh that's you know that's cool like you know there's somebody that's more that's in the hip-hop world that has a small chest and then she went and got breast implants maybe five years later so this discussion is done from that and I kind of thought well I guess I'm thinking of you know you you Kate you came up with many examples of women in the media who are small chested yeah as an example you know I said like oh there's not really that much representation of small chested woman in the media but that's not true you know there are quite a few actresses who are you know it's very popular who have small chest but I guess the thing that stood out to me the most when I was growing up even though I am intersexual it's like I remember like from a very young age seeing like Baywatch on TV you know like I'm a sandy beach like running around and also um you know when I was like 10 or something I you know I begged my parents to have a TV in my room so just most of the time I was watching cartoons forever but I guess I do remember at night there was the really like those crappy advertisements for girls gone wild so you could buy it girls gone well on VHS so yeah I just knew from a young age that even though that wasn't what I was into I knew that that was that was what was you know like that is how the way to be sexy that's the way to be attractive to a man and then like you know imagine my frustration I didn't develop breasts like that you know that's like it doesn't you know I'm not messed up about it now and I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a small chested woman and you know I there are you know things about it that I actually do like and be able to play volleyball ya know but I do like I have to recognize it's easier to go up staircases but it went yeah yeah but that's not gonna be the focus for men okay okay I've heard plenty of women lament that like you know Oh men don't get my face when I'm talking and I'm they look at I can imagine what what they're still looking at you you know the men in my life being more interested in my face in my brain what I actually have to say so you know I guess I guess people might always think the grass is greener but yeah like like you said there is this kind of different dimension instead of men thinking the grass is greener if you're taller I mean you know I neither think the problem nor the solution is representation in the media I know it's very common in 2020 to make every problem into an issue of repetition media and the conversation we had earlier before the cameras were running Melissa lamented at one point was the spontaneous thing she said that there were no flat-chested women with me and then I actually talked through this if well look are we talking about the media you and I actually watch like we talk about what we actually know here and I started talking through it systematically and then we start talking about different genres on and quite rapidly Melissa said look she abandoned her initial suggestion that no and whether you're talking about Keira Knightley or that blonde girl the blond girl Kanye West's has a fight with Taylor Swift at any one time there are many many beauty icons not just in the world of music and not just in the world of hip-hop or dance or movies or news presenters that actually but that one of the interesting things that came out of that was they said look you have to recognize that you are noticing you are picking out the women with big breasts and you know and you are noticing and remembering the women who had breast augmentation surgery now I'm not saying this to criticize or insult my girlfriend but that stands out for you that actually no in terms of the media we actually watch which is very peculiar we don't watch your kind of cross section of normal American media but actually all the time there are flat-chested women and small boys and me know we list it off kind of what the actual things we watch are and what-have-you right but in your mind what's standing out or the way and again I think that is the psychology we talked about at the beginning you know that I mean for one thing as per the comparison to seeing a snake in the grass there is just some kind of attention grab and quality this has even for a heterosexual woman and yes melissa is heterosexual I have experience with bisexual women Bliss is not bisexual at all and it is different when you're with bisexual women and lesbians the way they respond to the sight of breasts and so on that's also very interesting maybe it's off 50l but you know so comparison what if there were a man who you know was short and it's always bothering him that when he watches the news the men on the news art all the news presenters are tall and so on I mean I don't really think the problem or the solution is representation in the media like if we if we make it a policy to have more short men and really short men I don't mean five-foot-nine look let's start with men who are 5 foot 2 or so you know men who are really short and I don't think that solves any problem I mean I just don't I mean either you know there's another problem assertion so we partly have to talk about what is the psychology of the man who's watching the news and noticing all of that guy's taller than me oh that got you know there are no short men on the news and you know maybe is struggling with his own sense and and which is true by the way I think both in terms of news presenters and leaders of Industry and actors you know male actors the preference for height is much more strong and uniform than the preference for having big breasted women in movie roles for example even though female beauty is expected to answer to higher standards especially for news presenters especially females that women are spending more effort with their appearance clothing makeup hair everything then men are nevertheless the standards for men are in some ways more inflexible and there are very very few you know short men but the problem is not representation meaning the solution is not gross addition to media I mean I think the problem is really ancient instincts instincts we've had for thousands of years now confronting this sense of optionality that you could choose to have you know larger breasts I think that's something new and very difficult to just draw away okay that's let's call that a wrap