{"id":3831,"date":"2007-11-08T16:35:38","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T23:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/11\/08\/disembodied-breasts\/"},"modified":"2007-11-08T16:35:38","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T23:55:26","slug":"disembodied-breasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3831","title":{"rendered":"Disembodied Breasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

A popsicle shaped like a breast<\/a><\/p>\n

Melissa MacEwan has a remarkable post<\/a> up documenting sixty-five examples of “gag gifts” which represent disembodied breasts. There are popsicles shaped like breasts (as above), pillows shaped like breasts, pasifiers shaped like breasts, frying pans made to make breast eggs, cake pans made to make breast cakes, soap breasts, slipper breasts, earmuff breasts, pasta breasts, candle breasts, mug breasts, and more.<\/p>\n

Melissa writes:<\/p>\n

I can, quite genuinely, understand why people look at one\u2014or maybe even two, or three\u2014of these items and dismiss them as “just a joke.” If I wrote a post about just a frying pan that turns eggs into boobs, I’m certain even some truly feminist women and men would defend it as just a bit of harmless kitsch. It’s just a joke; what’s the big deal? I get that; I really do.<\/p>\n

Which is why I went for critical mass.<\/p>\n

It isn’t just one “boob novelty” (or, as they tend to be called, “boobie novelty”). It’s sixty-five. If I hadn’t totally run out of steam, I probably could have included sixty-five more. And these things aren’t relegated to adult stores and websites\u2014ads for the Jingle Jugs are being run on radio and TV during ballgames, and many of these items can be found in regular old party stores and gag shops like Spencer’s Gifts, which has franchises in every bloody mall in America. The “Stress Chest,” “Beer Boob,” and “Boobie Fuzzy Dice” are all sold at Spencer’s, right alongside Harry Potter action figures.<\/p>\n

The ether is permeated with boob novelties (which is to say nothing of vagina novelties, women’s ass novelties, the women-as-toilets products, etc.), and while each on its own may not be such a terrible thing, the combined effect is having turned disembodied women’s body parts into just so much cultural detritus to be consumed or ignored. No rational person can argue that makes no difference to how women are viewed, as a group and as individuals, by men and by themselves. And that isn’t a laughing matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of which I agree with.<\/p>\n

I do disagree with her slightly here:<\/p>\n

some readers may correctly note that one can increasingly find “penis popsicles” and the like, it is a false equivalence. In truth, the amplification of disembodied penis novelties serves merely to suggest a perniciously inaccurate illusion of equality… It’s a step forward only in a race to the bottom, and there is little to be gained by treating service to the lowest common denominator as a favorable equalizer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She adds that “objectifying the body parts of either sex is exploitative.”<\/p>\n

I don’t agree that disembodied body parts are inherently, in and of themselves, a problem. Disembodied hands, for instance, as in this mechanical construction that plays classical music:<\/p>\n

Mechanical hand that plays classical music<\/a><\/p>\n

Are really not problematic. Clearly, the mechanical hand is not comparable to the disembodied breasts — and that’s because there are different social meanings that construct disembodied hands, just as the social meanings that surround disembodied breasts are different from the social meanings that surround disembodied penises. Where disembodied breast novelties are problematic en masse, a disembodied hand, eye, or foot is not exploitative.<\/p>\n

And neither does a disembodied breast have<\/i> to be. In comments at Shakesville, Portly Dyke writes, “Even the stretch to find these items humorous means we all have to go back to 5th or 6th grade,” and I don’t think that’s true. I know highly intelligent, mature adults who think fart jokes are the funniest thing that ever happened. Senses of humor differer. Personally, I can imagine sex positive contexts in which a disembodied breast or penis would be genuinely funny, genuinely fun, and genuinely harmless.<\/p>\n

But as Melissa MacEwan points out — that context is not the bulk of America, and particularly not given the ubiquity and social construction of the critical mass she has represented.<\/p>\n

I urge you to go over and read her whole post<\/a>. Not only is the whole list of items overwhelming to see in total, but she has a lot more smart comments about them.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Many of the images in Melissa’s post have been removed by Photobucket. As Melissa notes in comments, “That’s fairly ironic, given that they were images of fake breasts fashioned into various novelty items that are supposed to be “fun” and not offensive.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa MacEwan has a remarkable post up documenting sixty-five examples of “gag gifts” which represent disembodied breasts. There are popsicles shaped like breasts (as above), pillows shaped like breasts, pasifiers shaped like breasts, frying pans made to make breast eggs, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender-and-the-body"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}