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The Cultural History of the Breasts
The story of the breasts can be compared with a debate of which most of the contributors are men. The breasts have always been a charming object for poetic, religious, erotical and medical debates. Finally, when the breasts are described from the female point-of-view, the great mythical story is replaced by many small stories of suppression.
Women have seldom had the entire disposal of their breasts. The breasts have been of too great importance in the mentality of the western cultures to be left to their true owners, the women. The breasts have been the object of both political and spiritual conquest. The breasts have been loved and hated, praised and defiled. The breasts have been an object in the interest of the church, the nations and the consumers. The breasts can sell anything: red apples, alcohol, political slogans and melons. If the marketing shall be successful, the breasts must have an mystical glory. This can only be allowed in areas which are under inspection. Sometimes it can be assumed that the breasts are the hidden supreme authority in the world. What is the reasons for the fascination of the female breasts through centuries?
An explanation can be found in the milk production of the breasts. The weak life is nourished by the soft-formed nipples. Babies of all kinds of communities and classes have found life and nourishment by suckling the women's breasts. The breast have been sanctified in the pictures of Jesus and the breast-feeding Mary. Although Mary breast-feeded like other women, she was unique and different. The distance between Mary and ordinary women was often underlined by the breast-feeding breast was like a pasted unripe apple. Consequently, the nourishing breast of Mary was not human-like breasts.
When the breast-feeding breast was naked, the breast got soon a secular life. The breast was moved from the church to the secular men, and the breasts is dramatically erotized. "The man is happy who can fill you with milk, and who can transform the virgin breasts into a beautiful and perfect woman." This proclamation is to be found in a poem written by Clemant Merot in the first half of the 16th century. The poem is fascinating because the breasts stimulated both the male desire and the male pride. The male ecstacy express a phantasy of power to start the process of milk production.
In the 14th century the naked, small breasts of the Italian madonna symbolized the nourishment of God, and the amount of naked breasts which is to be found in paintings and poetry in the 14th century, is a part of a cultural and social revolution in Europe. The breasts were one of many objects which could be conquered by active men. The breasts were a object which could be taken from the priests. In the Renessaince France and Italy turned the female body, especially the breasts, into a focal point of the advanced civilization. Apart from nurses, farmers' wives and witches, the breasts in paintings are seldom big or heavy. On the contrary, the ideal breasts are floating and rise above the law of gravity. The erotic and naked breasts in the Catholic regions are not to be found in the Protestant regions. The visual appearance of the body which blossomed in the Catholic elite, was very suspect in Protestant circles. Although the naked female body was not to be found, the verbal proclamations transformed the woman into a plate filled with fruit! Generally, the sense of contact was represented by a male hand on a breast in allegorical paintings of the five senses. That the man lay his hands on the breasts was a sign of domination, which corresponded with the exhortation of Christianity that the wife should be submissive to her husband.
From the end of the Middle Ages the cult of the erotic breast has characterized the western civilization. The only discernible change have been the change of the ideals of size, form and function.
Although the community in the Renessaince expelled the milk producing qualities of the breasts, this function of the breast should return with new strength in the 18th century. Because of the philosophers of the Enlightment and the subsequent development of nations, the breast got an very important function. The breasts were a fire place where the family gathered. Suddenly, nursing got a national function. The breast-feeding breast was sexy even in the upper classes. In a socio-political manifesto written by French women of the upper classes in 1788 the nursing had the function "to strengthen the bond of families, be responsible for the the duties of the woman, force them to be indoors to avoid shameful behaviour and bettling."
In the French revolution the nursing is raised to a quasi-mythological niveau, and the iconography of the Revolution was populated by women with naked breasts. In the official manuals the women were encouraged to offer their breasts to their husbands, so that the husbands could rest their heads on them, and to offer their children the breasts to nourish them. Paradoxically, the women had this important function, but they should not take part in the public life.
The new laws guaranteed civil rights to religious minorities and slaves, but not to women! The state took over the church's practice of symbols: As the church was described as a mother who nourishes the believers with the milk of the religion, the nation was described as a mother who offered her breasts to the children of the nation. Nursing was a collective manifesto of a civic virtue, corresponding to Rousseau's philosophical visions in Emile (1762). Rousseau said that the nursing established a closer connection between the mothers and the families, and at the same time it established a fundament to the renewal of the society.
In the 19th century the breasts have been used politically by different governments, especially in times of war. The variation in the use of the breasts in the propaganda i.e. in WWI is based on the different national costumes. The political trends was developed out of a specter of political, financial, religious and medical sources, which are to be described as male-dominated institutions. In the end of the 20th century the women began to influence the sexual policy which controlled their breasts. Paradoxically, in the time of the increase in the number of breast cancer, the women got back the control of their breasts. Of course, the history of breast cancer is long, but the increase of the number of registered cases of breast cancer which is experienced by women nowadays, is a historical fact.
In opposition to the theories of Sigmund Freud, feminists have concluded that the history of the breasts reveals the fact that men is dominated by breast envy. Because the men cannot have these female attributes, the envy results in an ambivalent male desire. Because this hidden center of power is not to be found on the male body, but is to be found on the female body, it must be controlled and just let out in controlled areas. If the hidden thing is revealed it will result in chaos and annihilation!
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