Mom, we need to talk about breasts—breasts as an object in culture.

In Susan Bordo’s article ‘The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity’, the body is defined as not only a text of culture that can be “read”, but as a betraying “docile body” regulated by cultural norms. Essentially, our body is “made” by culture, especially through social construction of gender difference. Bordo states that “through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity…female bodies become docile bodies” which lead to a woman’s focus to be centered on self-modification. Anorexia nervosa is a visible example of a feminine practice that was created by the “docile body”. Bordo states that through the process of anorexia, a woman discovers “a range of values and possibilities that Western culture has traditionally coded as “male” and rarely made available to women”. An anorexic discovers that her dwindling body is no longer a sexual object in culture. As the anorexic’s body continues to diminish into nothing more than a “spare, lanky male body” she unintentionally discovers the satisfaction of male privileges. Western culture constructed the sexual and social vulnerability of a female’s physique, including her breasts. An anorexic is liberated by the deconstruction of her body and the newly possessed “values our culture has coded as male”. Western culture’s definitions of masculinity and femininity and body practices socially constructed the female bodies to become “docile bodies”. The ideas of femininity and the “docile body” have dramatically changed since the late twentieth century. Women are more focused on self-modification now than they have been in previous centuries. The media freely encourages stick-thin figures as the ‘in’ physique for women and promote women as sex symbols. Today a woman’s breasts are no longer a sign of vulnerability, nor do they prohibit a woman from the values and possibilities that were traditionally coded as “male”. In fact, women are seeking to enlarge their breasts to exhibit themselves as a sexual object in culture. For example, in her breast augmentation testimony Shal states that she was “a little worried that [she] was starting to look like a boy” when her breasts got smaller. (https://moodle.umn.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=1190594) Shal's statement opposes the view of breasts in past centuries when women, especially those affected by anorexia nervosa, saw breasts as a vulnerability and anorectics wanted to take on a male figure and eliminate their breasts.