From Corsets to Toplessness

The only purpose of the female breast is to produce milk for infants (lactation). However, in North America, women's breasts have also been given enormous sexual connotations. As a sexual object, breasts can be both arousing and a problem. Arousing, as breasts and nipples, on both men and women, can be an extraordinarily pleasurable part of sexual relations. It is possible for some women to achieve orgasm solely from breast and nipple stimulation. And breasts can be a problem, an inconvenience, or even more problematic, for example, when running, due to unwanted attention, or even sexual harassment.

A woman's breasts have become overloaded as visible social and sexual symbols. This social and sexual visibility often causes young girls and adult woman unnecessary anxiety. A woman with small breasts may envy a woman with large breasts, and the opposite may just as easily be true. A n attractive woman with large breasts may question her beauty, wondering if men are drawn to her because of the size of her breasts. She may as a result wear minimizing bras or clothing that disguises her chest. An equally attractive small-breasted woman may wonder during a dateless period if it's because her breats are too small. This is the craziness that has resulted from the American obsession with women's breasts.

Breasts: Our Most Public Private Parts, by Meema Spadola 249 pages, Wildcat Canyon Press; (October 1998)

In much of the western world, with the exception of the United States, women go without a swimsuit top at beaches, pools, and spas. Americans, with their country's Protestant origins, retain a strong cultural sentiment against public nudity and the exposure of the female breasts. This has extended even to negative reactions to mother's breastfeeding in public.

American culture accepts depiction of the naked female breast when displayed by minimally clothed or even entirely naked people if they belong to indigenous cultures from places like South America, Africa, or Australia. Americans may rationalize primitive nudity as innocent or as an example of the culture's backwardness. In either case the exposure of the female breast can be excused by “civilized” society.

But the depiction of the naked breast of a modern, Western woman does not occur on TV; only fleetingly in the cinema; rarely, with greater acceptance—it is art, after all—on the stage; and only in rare exceptions in public.

This is a paradox, for we are bombarded with images of women's breasts in the media via advertising, television, billboards, magazines, and other media. It can be a scandal if a women's breasts are actually seen in public. Witness the media attention given to the "accidental" baring of Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

Women's breasts have not always been a topic for feverish attention by the male half of the species. In many earlier tropical cultures, and in most indigenous cultures from warm climates today, female toplessness if not complete nudity is the accepted norm. Topless women are common at beaches, spas, and pools throughout virtually all of Europe and in many other locations worldwide.

Americans naively believe that their familiar attitudes are normal for everyone else. They are often shocked when they go abroad to learn that others find some of their behaviors amusing if not backward. Americans do not seem to realize that their paradoxical Puritan zeal about female breasts is not shared by most cultures.

The known history of societal attitudes towards the female bosom begins with Egyptian Worship of the Sun God