BARE REALITY

First published in 2015 by Pinter and Martin Ltd
Text and images copyright © Laura Dodsworth 2015

Laura Dodsworth has asserted her moral right to be identified
as the author of this work in accordance with the copyright,
designs and patents act of 1988.

All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-78066-260-2

Managing Editor: Zoë Blanc
Editor: Susan Last
Design: Blok Graphic, London

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The author and publisher disclaim, as far as the law allows, any liability arising directly or indirectly from the use, or misuse, of the information contained in this book.

£1 per book sold is paid to Breast Cancer UK a registered charity,
number 1138866 Registered Company Number 7348408

Printed and bound in China by Everbest Printing Co. Ltd

Pinter and Martin Ltd
6 Effra Parade
London SW2 1PS

www.pinterandmartin.com

Editor’s note: Clothing and shoe sizes that appear in interviews refer to UK sizes. Please note all the stories in Bare Reality are personal opinion. No book can replace the diagnostic expertise and medical advice of a trusted physician. Please be certain to consult your doctor before making any decisions that affect your health, particularly if you suffer from any medical condition or have any symptom that may require treatment.

Acknowledgement and thanks

Thank you to my family and friends for listening to me, encouraging me and advising me. I’m fortunate to have had the help, love and support of so many people. Special thanks and acknowledgements must go to John, Ethan and Cole for their patience and support. To my parents, for encouraging me to be a free thinker, and have confidence in myself. Also to Lucy, Sarah, Craig, Soraya, Zoë, Martin, Bex, Matt, Ruth, Cassie, Lindsay, Cath and Neil. I’m grateful that Breast Cancer UK gave me the opportunity to support such a worthwhile charity.

An enormous and heartfelt thank you goes to the 100 women who took part in Bare Reality. You took a touching leap of faith when you let me photograph and interview you. That trust in me, and the stories you told, moved and inspired me. I hope that Bare Reality honours you and your courage in baring your bodies and hearts.

Contents

Acknowledgment and thanks

Foreword by Soraya Chemaly

Introduction

I’m proud I decided to have a tattoo

Breasts make you feel like a proper woman

There’s a sense that breasts are for titillating men now

I tease my bra off

This has been the year of the breast

My breasts are small and inconvenient for clothes

I’ve got a great pair of melons!

God gives life and creates, and as a woman you can connect with that

Breasts are like psychic baubles

Naturism is a close and supportive community

We are so fixated on them in our culture

Often people don’t perceive you as a sexual person when you are in a wheelchair

My daughter can sit next to me to breastfeed because my breasts bend round the corner

When I was thinner I always wanted bigger boobs, and now I’ve got them, not really

Because I have rejected my breasts they aren’t erogenous

There was no need for them to be that big

Breasts are powerful, not submissive

Because I’m pregnant they’re not as I’ve known them

The female body is beautiful

I stopped wearing bras when I started to think about the politics of body image

My boobs disappeared, my periods stopped, my hips shrunk

In our culture you have to hide when you breastfeed

It broke my heart when my daughter told me she had breast cancer

I might be ambivalent about my breasts as a self-defence mechanism

I wanted to design them, to make them more important to me

They started to show naked boobs after the Second World War

Every young person strives to be like the images in the magazines

If I’d had big breasts I would have been a different person

Boys like big-breasted girls because of what they see in the media

Girls send pictures of their breasts to boys

I’m completely ambivalent about my breasts

I’ve never worn a bra

They are my assets and I have been blessed with them

Mine are very large and I’ve only got little legs, I’m like Humpty Dumpty

Eating wasn’t for me any more

I was so determined to breastfeed my second baby

Breasts are an integral part of my identity as a woman

I want to raise awareness of breast cancer in a positive way

Conversations with my mum about weight started at a very young age

They were like balloons after a party

Stretchmarks aren’t pretty but you can feel proud of them

Sport has changed my body image

I’m planning to have breast implants / I look in the mirror and it’s not me

I never even give it a thought now

I regret not using my womanly wiles

My breasts are empowering, feminine, attractive and confident

Men think they are the bee’s knees

Great liberation of the breasts needs to happen

It was wonderful that my son shaved my head for me

My husband has bought me about 35 sets of matching underwear

It’s almost embarrassing when breasts are popping out at you

I felt more confident after the boob job

Porn takes the pressure away from finding relationships and sexual partners

Women are much more likely to involve your breasts and to know what to do with them

I felt like I’d been eaten by a tiger

We’re all trying to be the Special K woman

I don’t like the lumpy bits on my areolae

I can have an orgasm without my breasts, but it’s a lot more satisfying if they are involved

I could look like a Page 3 girl, but I don’t want to be a sexual commodity

When I bare my breasts I am trying to bare my soul

My husband’s never really said how he feels

He literally stood there for five minutes massaging my breasts in one direction

Breasts can come into sex in BDSM in the form of nipple play or nipple torture

All boobs go south

I grew up with scars on my breasts

I’m a burlesque dancer who doesn’t fit the beauty archetype

I’m the one with the huge breasts, that’s my thing

They’re not bad, are they?

I still hate my body, but I’ve always loved my boobs

My breasts are still intact. I am grateful for them

At night, I use the left breast for the babies, and the right one is for sex

I’ve streaked at half time at proper big matches

People say they want to motorboat them

Sometimes I think they are too flat and nothingy

My first true love made me feel good about myself

The only thing I see in the mirror which looks like I think it should, are my breasts

We are goddesses, we create life

One is quite shy. One is like a roaring teenager and up for anything!

I had plenty of unwanted attention in the typing pool

The piercings make my boobs look pretty

I was reborn as a ‘Drag Goddess’

I used to dream a lot about being naked in public

It’s worrying when you get padded and push up bras for growing breasts

Large breasts are seen as amazing when actually they are an extreme pain

I wish I had appreciated my body more before

My nickname was ‘Fried Eggs’

Breasts are supposed to have their own intelligence

The breasts are located either side of the heart chakra

Most of the time we don’t realise how beautiful women are

It’s hard to tell the people you are closest to that you have breast cancer

I’d like to look like a Victoria’s Secret model

My breasts have always been a turn-on

80 per cent of the time they are a feature of sex

I don’t touch my breasts if I’m masturbating. It’s all about speed these days!

Breasts are a homing device for men

He was kissing away when breastmilk came out

They were so sensitive it was like having two clitorises on my chest

My grandma always said a good handful is enough

My breasts have pleasurable feelings that I wasn’t aware of before

My milk went when Hitler marched in

Why create Bare Reality?

Methodology

Acknowledgements and thanks

Foreword

There are few parts of human anatomy as provocative as a woman’s breasts, which frequently exist, culturally, not as part of women’s bodies, but as ideas defining an eternally shifting border between private and public.

The moment a girl’s budding breasts make an appearance is the moment that her relationship to the world and the people in it begins to be redefined, even in her own imagination. As girls and women, we often learn to think about our changing breasts from the perspective of how they make other people feel – in particular, men and babies. In other words, beneath thoughts of bras and bathing suits, we think of ourselves in terms of sex or sacrifice, naked and exposed or comforting and nurturing. As the stories here attest, these lessons are filtered through class, race, sexuality, religion, illness, geography, politics and, too frequently, violence and war.

Images of bared female breasts have evolved as a primary symbol not just of what makes women valuable and important, but of what cultures think of themselves. In her book, A History of the Breast, Marilyn Yalom delightfully explores the manifold ways in which this part of our bodies has come to represent, visually, central ideas about women and what constitutes ‘progress’. How the female breast is portrayed, and displayed, has illustrated gender relationships, changing political thought and dominant religious ideas. In addition, the regulation of these images, which varies tremendously across the globe, is related to the regulation of female freedom, sexuality and rights.

Breasts have been central to iconic depictions of women as sexually available fertility goddesses, as mothers who sacrifice their bodies for their children and as freedom-fighting avatars of national independence. If you are reading this, the chances are fairly high that you live in a place where naked breasts were, in the relatively recent historical past, associated with racialised and religiously-inspired ideas about the ‘primitive’ nature of women versus the ‘superior’ nature of others. Ideas about women’s breasts were employed in colonialist mythologies about gender, sex and race. Among other things, ‘good Christian women’, light-skinned, had to be clothed – a signifier of a superior, ‘civilised’ culture. While we may not always be aware of these ideas, we live with their legacy nonetheless.

Rarely have women, like those in this volume, defined cultural ideas about our own bodies. It is an historical fact that, regardless of the particular symbolic meaning at any given time in history and art, images of and ideas about women’s breasts have primarily been created by men. How women see themselves and public explorations of how we experience our female human bodies have been, until very recently, few and far between.

Idealised images of women’s breasts have been, for the most part, created by men, from men’s perspectives, for male purposes. To describe breasts, as writer Natalie Angier has, as ‘modified sweat glands’, is both an acknowledgement of some women’s utterly unimpressed relationship with their breasts, and an almost hilarious affront to the Western male fixation on eroticising breasts to the point that the women they’re part of can seem like nothing more than irritating appendages.

What a society chooses to allow of female toplessness, as with art, speaks volumes. It is entirely possible to see how a society’s rules governing access to women’s bodies continue, ultimately, to be rules governing what is considered a male property right. There are constant contestations over breastfeeding in public, toplessness on beaches, bare-breasted political protesting and what constitutes obscenity and pornography. In mainstream views and in social media, for example, female toplessness is largely prohibited, while barely camouflaged sexually objectifying pornography, that prioritises male sexual pleasure, is not.

This cultural norm goes a long way to explain why a common response to seeing ‘real’ women’s breasts – messy, aged, damaged, asymmetrical, large, small, excised – is mystification. This mystification largely stems from two assumptions: one, that the male, breast-less body is the human standard and two, that breasts have to be ‘doing something’. If women insist on being ‘deviant’, if their breasts must be exposed, they should, at the very least, serve a function: feeding, titillating, nurturing, providing solace. It’s as though women’s lives are mediated by our breasts’ social value. What, after all, is the purpose of breasts if they are not idealised, perfect, feeding or entertaining someone? You might as well ask the same of women in general. It’s an unsettling idea to fold into one’s sense of self, the objectification of portions of your body. In point of fact, even though it’s pervasive, it’s absurd.

There are places in the world where the sight of the bare female chest is unfreighted by culture, where naked breasts evoke no sexual feelings in men, no neo-Victorian outrage in polite society, and no automatic, almost fetishistic, association with maternal sacrifice. As for restrictions on seeing women’s naked breasts in public, which are rife, it’s important to ask, what is it that is obscene in the end? Is it that female bodies are made visible, or, more fundamentally, that we dare to have them and insist they are not deviant, dangerous or subhuman? Why is it so threatening and taboo for us not only to have these bodies, but also to share them, publicly and with grace, as Laura Dodsworth has done here?

The stories collected here are both a striking counter-narrative to objectification and a loud renunciation of its effects. Each woman’s story is its own quiet and brave rejection of the idea that her body is a public resource, a private tool, a thing divisible from her self. Each decided for herself, for her own reasons, to be here, to bare her self without shame, and share her story.

I, for one, am grateful to Laura for this refreshing, radical and revealing subjectification. Women who insist that we see their imperfect humanity and acknowledge their female human dignity, cause ripples in the universe.

Soraya Chemaly

Introduction

My breasts are simply part of my body, not the most important thing about me. Yet what they mean to me, and my experiences of them, provide insights into some of the most personal aspects of being a woman.

Women aged from 19 to 101 have taken part in Bare Reality, women with healthy breasts, cancer survivors, different ethnicities, women from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes, heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, asexual and trans women.

What will you gain from reading this book? If you are a man, you might not have seen as many ‘real’ breasts, or heard women be so frank. As a woman you might be interested in seeing what other women’s breasts look like and take heart: no-one is perfectly symmetrical, many women perceive themselves to be too large, too small, too saggy. If you are younger and still developing, you might be curious to see ‘real’ breasts, learn about other women’s experiences, and gain an insight into your own potential future.

The women in this book bare all. For the first time, 100 women share pictures of their breasts, along with their most personal, courageous and humorous stories about breasts, including growing up, sexual experience, breastfeeding, health problems, insecurities, surgery and ageing. Our breasts and our personal experiences of breasts can shape how we see the world. In turn, our breasts can shape how the world sees us.

This is how we look. This is how we feel.

I’m proud I decided to have
a tattoo

Age 54 | Three children

About 10 years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. First the lumps were taken out, but that didn’t work, so I had a mastectomy. I came away with nothing but a horrible scar. It’s bad enough having your breast off, but looking in the mirror and seeing the scar … I just thought, ‘I have to make it look pretty!’ I decided to have a tattoo with a little bit of colour. I liked the idea of flowers.

I had to wait about a year to heal, and there were a couple of bits of the scar which didn’t heal as well and couldn’t be tattooed. It took about four hours in two stages: first of all the outline, then the colouring. The tattoo artist made me feel comfortable, it wasn’t embarrassing. For him it was just artwork. Funnily enough, because it was on the scarring it didn’t hurt, it was numb.

I don’t think I could have come to terms with my ‘battle scar’ as easily without the tattoo. It would have taken a lot longer to look in the mirror and feel okay about the scar where the boob was. It makes a statement and it’s pretty to look at. I’m proud of it. I want people to realise you don’t have to hide away just because you’ve had breast cancer.

I can’t remember much about the operation. I remember dreading looking down. That frightened me, as it must for anyone who has had something removed, whether it’s a breast or a leg. I cried. I remember seeing one boob but not the other, and it looked weird. The worst thing was having the drip out for removing the fluid. When that was pulled out it hurt all across my ribs.

At the time my partner had a brain tumour and was given two years to live. I had three children who were five, 12 and 14. I was offered a reconstruction but I didn’t want my children to have to suffer any more, so I said no. I didn’t have time to dwell on myself. After my partner died I went through a bad time. I had the children, and I had to keep it all together, but oh my God, I did go through a bad patch.

My partner was amazing, but the night before I went in for the mastectomy he went off and left me alone. I don’t know if it was because of his brain tumour. I had the three children and had to come to terms with the fact I was going in the next day for the operation. He went out at lunchtime and came back about 10pm at night. Couldn’t he cope? At the end of the day I needed someone. I was frightened, and my family don’t live round here. He came into the hospital to see me. I showed him my chest when I got home, and I have to say he was good.

I do lack confidence since having the mastectomy, I don’t feel a proper woman. Losing a breast is a massive thing because it’s a big part of what makes you feel like a woman.

I have since wondered if I did the right thing about the reconstruction, especially now I am on my own. The only reason I would have a reconstruction would be for a potential partner. I was thinking about internet dating, but when do you tell someone you’ve had a mastectomy? Some men are boob men: the bigger the boobs, the better. If I met someone like that, they’d run. But then, would they be worth it? That’s life, unfortunately. Some people can’t handle a deformity. Someone is either going to accept me for who I am or they’re not.

I was sexually involved with someone for a while and he wasn’t bothered. When I told a male friend about my mastectomy he didn’t run away either, but we aren’t sexually involved. So, really, that should give me confidence. Everyone has accepted me for who I am, and it should be like that. If someone did run away I don’t know how I would cope.

One day, a man I knew had a bit too much to drink and said, ‘Phwoar, I’ve always thought you have a fantastic pair of boobs!’ He’s married so it really upset and annoyed me, and I thought, ‘You slimy, dirty man’. I’d had my mastectomy, but he wouldn’t have known that. I felt like getting the prosthesis out and plonking it down in front of him! If we hadn’t been in a pub, maybe I would have. Some men look at women’s boobs, and seem to think they are entitled to comment. It’s totally out of order.

The prosthesis has got a nipple thing which is rather comforting, I have to say. I’ll sit and touch it through my clothes. If I put my finger over it, it feels like a nipple. I find the prosthesis quite heavy, it’s like a chicken fillet thing, so at night I take my bra off. I go braless most nights. On holiday recently, it was so hot I had to keep the prosthesis in the fridge. We’d go to the fridge for a drink and there was this boob sitting there! (laughs)

Unfortunately, a big thing is made of breasts in the media. Page 3 doesn’t really bother me, but they’re all ‘perfect’ breasts. I’d admire it if they put a mastectomy on Page 3, but they wouldn’t, they’d worry people wouldn’t buy it. But I think a lot of women would buy it, out of interest.

I do get a little bit upset when I see other women’s breasts. I don’t know if it is envy … A sense of loss. I do wish I had two.

It worries me when women have breast enlargements: how will they detect a lump? If they are huge and rock hard, how can you find a lump? Hopefully I am wrong.

My sister and nan had breast cancer. My daughter has to start mammograms once she reaches the age of 30. My other sister is higher risk too. I think my daughter is pleased she will be monitored. We don’t really talk about it. I’ve never made a big deal of my breast cancer to my children, we all just forget I’ve had it.

My children all love my tattoo. I often wonder what my sons think about the mastectomy. My youngest one will only remember me with one breast. I wonder what they will think and feel about breasts as they grow older.

I feel lucky. I’m one of the lucky ones. (cries) There are people who don’t get through it. I’m proud I decided to have a tattoo. The tattoo helped me get through it, and accept it.

Breasts make you feel
like a proper woman

Age 26 | Two children

I think my breasts are alright looks-wise. They were a couple of corkers when I was a teenager, a nice pair. Then I had my first baby and fed her, then my next one, and they’ve gone a bit saggier and stretch-marked. But they’re alright in a bra! (laughs) I’m very proud of them for being able to feed my children. I was very impressed with that.

I only go braless in the house. I would never go out without a bra on. They’d just look saggy, not attractive. And you know when you’re cold and your nipples go hard and everyone looks?

I was pretty flat-chested till I was 15. All my friends had boobs. I was the last one. I was wearing a strappy top, and I put cotton wool bits in, and one day the cotton wool started protruding out of the bra, and all my friends were like, ‘Oh, look at you with cotton wool in your bra!’ It was so embarrassing.

I started my periods late as well. All my friends looked like women, and I looked like a little girl. I felt rubbish. When I grew, my friends didn’t really say anything about it, but there was an impact on the boys, a little bit of attention: ‘You’ve got big tits!’ That kind of thing. It’s pathetic really, but I was quite pleased everyone was noticing. (laughs) I’ve never been particularly shy, so I didn’t mind that people were commenting on them.

I breastfed my first baby for six and a half months, and my second one for seven and a half months. It was easy and natural. I just whacked my boob out, on they went, and that was that. No problems at all. I was really lucky. ‘Look at me, look at me feeding my child!’

I think breasts are amazing, they are so impressive. Magic. Yeah, my boobs are a bit saggier and stretch-marked now, but I don’t care. I pretend I care. I’m like, ‘Oh, my boobs, my boobs!’ But I don’t care, I’m proud of what they did. My kids survived off my breasts. They make me feel womanly and strong. Before I had kids, I just thought of them as boobs.

My partner absolutely loves them, just as much now as he did 10 years ago. On a date once, he made me get out of the car and he said, ‘Can you do something to my car? Can you just bounce on the bonnet?’ I later found out that bouncing was making my boobs go up and down, and that was why he was doing it. Pathetic. He’ll kill me for saying that!

He still has a good old perv on them. He’s happy with them, likes looking at them. They are a very big part of our sex life. He likes to spend a bit of time paying attention to them. I like attention in that area as well, it’s important. I’ve got quite a lot of sensitivity in my nipples, so I do enjoy some fiddling. Breasts make you feel like a proper woman, and when you’re having sex you want to feel like a proper woman. They are empowering.

I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends have been offended if they’ve had comments about their boobs or whatever. It never used to bother me. They are a symbol of being a woman. I’ve always been confident with my sexuality. This is me, I’m a woman, these are what I have.

When I was a barmaid, I had things like ‘Get your tits out love!’ or, ‘Nice pair of melons!’ You would think that would piss me off, but it didn’t. I just used to laugh and make a joke of it. I’d say ‘Don’t be so rude!’

I think there’s a time and a place for cosmetic surgery. Women have real insecurities about their breasts and if they want to do something about it for themselves, then there’s nothing wrong with it. But I hate massive great big juggernauts on people’s chests. They look horrible. They’re grotesque, it’s an awful fashion, ‘Look at me being six stone with my enormous tits!’ I think it comes from porn and glamour modelling. More and more girls aspire to it. When I was younger I remember thinking, ‘Am I supposed to be that thin and tanned all the time with big boobs?’ You do feel there is pressure to look like that. It’s horrible, vile.

If I got to 40 or 50 and I wasn’t happy with how they looked I might consider surgery. If I thought, ‘These are crap, I could do with jazzing them up a bit!’ For myself. For my partner as well, but for me really. I’d do other things as well. Would you like a list? (laughs) At the moment no, but I would certainly be open to stuff in the future, if the financial situation improves.

I work in a factory, I do the admin upstairs. Downstairs is chock-full of calendars of girls with their tits out. There was a time a few years ago when it used to really bother me and make me feel self-conscious. They’re absolutely everywhere! It used to make me feel inadequate. Now I can be, like, ‘There’s your titty magazine’, and it doesn’t bother me.

When I started working there I was 21 and my youngest baby was still feeding. All my friends still had nice flat tummies, and I was going through a phase of thinking I had a wobbly tum and stretch marks. I’d see all these calendar girls with big boobs, and it made me feel a bit crap.

I don’t have an awful lot of respect for these men. When I go down there, I’ll be striding along because I need to talk to someone, and they’ll be like, ‘Phwoar, look at her boobs bouncing!’ Honestly, genuinely! They’re only mucking about. I’ll just stick my finger up or whatever, ‘Stop staring! Get on with your work!’ It makes me feel like there’s no respect, they’re just pervy men.

Just after I’d had my first baby, there was a situation with my partner. Again, I was feeling low about my body, worried about stretch marks. I found some, shall we say, ‘material’ on the internet. I was absolutely disgusted, outraged. It got to the point where we nearly split up. I was so upset. And there were a few more situations over the next few years, and I would stress each time that I hated it, that it’s degrading. Now I turn a bit of a blind eye. I haven’t found any evidence of it, but I don’t want to search for it. I don’t want to know about it.

There’s a sense that breasts
are for titillating men now

Age 80 | Three children

My breasts are my breasts. I don’t think a lot about them. They are part of a female body. I’ve always thought that breasts were designed to feed the next generation.

I noticed my mother breastfeeding, because I had a sister four years my junior. Then the next time I took an interest in breasts, you might call it an interest, was when I had my 14th birthday in Paris. I can remember seeing all these ladies in restaurants breastfeeding their children, and I thought, ‘Oh, how nice!’ It was the first time I had ever seen that. They weren’t exposing their breasts, they were very clever about using their jackets.

In England, you couldn’t even take a child into a shop, you had to keep prams outside. And when you got inside, as I found out when I had children, there was nowhere to breastfeed or change a nappy. We were not a child-oriented society. In Britain people were, ‘Eurgh, breastfeeding!’ If you had breastfed in a cafe in Britain, you would have been told to go out. It was the ‘yuck’ policy.

I was disgusted when I learnt about history. I was aware of the feeling that breastfeeding is disgusting and unnatural. I learnt that in our blessed empire, the posh British were having their babies fed by wet nurses of the races they were living amongst, and yet they didn’t rate these servants, they didn’t deserve a vote, or equality, or anything. But the servants were feeding their baby, the most precious object they were ever going to have in their lives. I thought it was absolutely disgusting, very hypocritical. You have to be an ‘animal’ to do it, so the upper echelons of society employed someone else to do it.

At the hospital where I had my first baby they made you follow the rules. I went in because the pain was intense, but it was evening, the doctors weren’t working in the evening, labour had to be suppressed in some way. They held it back and I had my baby in the morning. I delivered to coincide with the doctors’ schedule. In this maternity ward, the men were kowtowed to by the nurses, particularly the sisters, they literally bent and bowed to them. They wanted to marry doctors.

You weren’t allowed to get out of bed. They brought the baby to you for an hour, every four hours. If it didn’t feed it was taken away from you, having not fed, and then they would take the milk from you for premature babies. The idea of having to get rid of my own milk, to be taken to someone else! He didn’t want to breastfeed every time, he was always asleep. I have no idea if he was supplemented with formula. The book we were given in hospital was full of ads for formula milk. It was hard to establish breastfeeding like that. It was really wicked. I never saw my baby, except those hours, and neither did my husband. It still hurts me now, utterly.

I had my other two at home with a nurse and my husband. My husband told me, ‘I’ll be with you, I want to be a good father.’ That was lovely, and they were much better experiences. I breastfed straight away. Because I was in my own house, I was sleeping cuddled by my husband that very night.

I breastfed all of my babies for nine months: six fully, and then you gradually move off for three months. I had been told to do that and it seemed to work.

We didn’t have bras at school. I think my first one was when I was 16. Bras have changed. They’ve got built up ones now, there wasn’t anything like that, they were merely to stop you wobbling about if you were very large. The cup sizes have changed. Shops hadn’t organised the sizing regime then, the A, B, C bit came in quite late on.

There was a lot of talk about the difference between the women in the North and the women in the South, the ratio between their breasts, waists and hips. The women in the North had a greater percentage difference between the breasts and hips and the waist. We used to talk about an hourglass shape. I must say, I used to have a 22-inch waist.

We had a swimming pool, so sometimes I used to be topless, not sunbathing, but gardening, cutting grass and cleaning the pool. That’s why my back is like a gravel patch now. My husband and I would swim naked when we fancied a swim on a hot summer’s night, when it was dark.

I don’t get magazines and newspapers anymore, I don’t bother with them. It was lovely in the war when there were just two sheets, all about the war and important things. Now, newspapers are all about selling things, and are completely sexualised.

There’s a sense that breasts are for titillating men now. I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. The sexualisation of the human body has gone too far. I think it’s bad, wearing push up bras, deliberately showing the cleavage, the surgery that goes on, the money spent. It’s sad. Why can’t people accept what they are? It’s a pathetic man if he needs all this to stimulate him. There’s something wrong, it’s a failure. I used to think men were making such a fuss because they weren’t breastfed themselves. There’s something in the brain that makes them want to suck, because their mothers denied them.

I think women are weakening themselves. It took years for women to get equality. There was no equality for females in my day. My mother didn’t have a vote until she was 30. When I was at school, girls weren’t taught to drive, only the sons, because women shouldn’t have anything to do with engineering. Impressively, my father taught me to drive, showed me under the bonnet and I could take a wheel off. I also remember when I was at college my father had an argument with some men about sending me to university, they were saying, ‘Why on earth are you sending a girl to university? What on earth for? How ridiculous!’ He had five sisters and absolutely rated the female gender. One of the things he said was, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, don’t you realise that?’

We were weak then, the rights weren’t there. Now, women are belittling themselves by turning themselves into sex objects. It’s very dangerous. What’s between the ears is more important. It’s odd to have been part of the generation to observe a swing one way and then back again. If you’re worrying about your appearance, your mind is distracted from important things.

I tease my bra off

Age 26 | No children

I love my breasts, I’m happy with them. Sometimes I look in the mirror, and think, ‘I wish they were a little bit bigger’ because of the whole stereotype of big boobs. But I like being a B. I love a little freckle on one boob by the nipple, it makes the boob mine. It’s my freckle, on my breast.

I got teased for not having big breasts at school. I was called ‘twig’ and ‘ugly’. I’ve kind of blocked it out. I hated high school, I got picked on so much. But then it all turned around. When I was 18 I started stripping. One night, some guys from school who used to pick on me came in. I was like, ‘Hah! You’re paying to see me naked! You called me all those names in high school, but look at me now!’ They were quite surprised. Instead of calling me names, they were sleazeballs and called me sexual, dirty names. They treated me like an object. I wasn’t going to do them any favours in the club, you know.

I started modelling to get attention, and going on the forum for Nuts magazine. I sent in pictures I took on a self-timer. I was 17. I got nice comments but I also got sleazy comments, talking about me like I was a piece of meat. But because I’d been bullied that was nice in a sense too.

I didn’t start doing topless modelling straight away, but it wasn’t long, about six months. I started with short skirts, then lingerie, then topless.

Guys seem to like me more when they fancy me. A friend told me the way I get people to like me is by being over-sexual.

I was doing childcare at the same time I was modelling and sending photos to Nuts. I got fired from the nursery for being in the magazine. I was young at the time, and I hated the job anyway. The funny thing was, they escorted me off the premises. What did they think I was going to do, run back in and flash my tits to all the kids? (laughs)

I was good at my job. I’ve never hurt a child in my life. Why does showing my breasts in a magazine make me not a good role model for children? They said if the children’s parents saw, they wouldn’t want me looking after their children. The manager’s husband buys and reads Nuts, that’s how he knew! He must have looked at it enough, to know it was me, but that was OK.

In the club, I don’t get many comments about my breasts until I get them out. When I’m stood around in the main room I get more arse comments. A lot of the girls have a bust, and I don’t, so the bosses let me wear see-through stuff. I struggle to wear a bra to push my boobs up because otherwise I get a line from the bra. I have to edge towards the guys and say things like, ‘A handful is good enough’ and talk about having tiny nipples. Words like ‘tiny’ sound nice and positive.

When I get into the room for a lap dance I get more comments. Some guys have said I have perfect breasts. A lot of guys don’t realise what a good dance they are going to get. I tease my bra off. Eye contact is really important. Some guys stare into your eyes the entire dance. I’ve had that so many times. They love my eyes and it makes them think you’re into it. Ah, they’re so dim, aren’t they!

Some people speak to you like you’re a human being, and some speak to you like you’re only boobs and bum. I can’t stand it when guys talk really horrible to you. Some men like to feel superior, ‘I’ve got all this money, and you’ve got to work for it!’ I hate men like that.

Some guys try and lick my breasts when I’m dancing. I’m getting quite fast now! They’re not supposed to touch you. You move towards them with your breast, you are this close to them (indicates a couple of centimetres) then I have this movement to get away! (quick fluid backwards motion)

It would be nice if they realised this girl comes with the body, but this is the job and it’s going to happen. At the end of the night, sometimes we say, ‘He was a dick!’ We talk about the customers, what they’re like. One guy might say to a girl, ‘I love your big boobs’. then he might say to me, ‘I love your small boobs’. Maybe they just love all boobs!

When the pub shuts guys come in just to carry on drinking, and to have a free look, they won’t pay for it, it’s so annoying. We don’t get paid just for being there.

If I’m lying on my bed, and getting intimate with myself, I can get aroused touching my boobs. But while I’m dancing and touching my boobs and stuff like that, I never get aroused. It’s so funny, I’m doing the exact same thing, and there’s no sensation at all. I do touch my boobs when I’m masturbating, but not because I get pleasure from them, more because I like the way they feel. I like my nipples being touched, gently. As I’m sat here, I’m touching them! I do touch them quite a lot, I think it’s a comfort thing. They don’t give me much pleasure, it’s in the head.

If a guy grabs them and starts squeezing them I don’t get pleasure. I generally have quite tender breasts. Men can be quite heavy-handed, but you yourself know how much you like. My boyfriend knows I don’t like it, so he doesn’t do it. Men are obsessed with boobs, but when it comes down to sex, they’re not bothered about them. They don’t spend much time there at all.

I have a friend who is a very big boobs fan. Bless him, he’s 40, and only slept with one girl. I met him when I was 18 on the Nuts forum. On his 35th birthday we went to Spearmint Rhino and at the end of the night I gave him a lap dance. I thought it would be a nice treat. His face! He loves boobs, and I think it’s why he’s single. He’s got it set in his mind that he wants someone like a Page 3 girl. Bless him. He’s like a big, clumsy, geeky giant. He likes the blonde, big-boobed girls. He likes his lap dances.

That’s one of the problems with Page 3 and stuff like that. I’m not bothered about Page 3, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to make a woman a sexual object. Guys want to see it, so someone’s got to do it. But it does make men live in a fantasy world, they think that’s what a woman should look like and be like. There are lots of men like that. There are too many men waiting for the perfect girl, and I think it’s all because of TV and magazines.

I definitely want to breastfeed one day, I don’t even care if they don’t look nice afterwards. I do believe that’s what breasts are for, and it’s healthier for the baby. It’s one reason I wouldn’t have pierced nipples or breast surgery. I love the fact that I’m natural.

I was at the Download festival eight years ago. There were maybe 10,000 people waiting at the big stage for a band to come on. Girls were literally getting on people’s shoulders and pulling their tops off, and their boobs would be shown on the big screen. I thought, ‘Right, I want to do this!’ It’s amazing, this huge group of people cheering for your boobs! It was funny seeing them on the big screen, because they were so small I thought, ‘Can anyone tell?’ But I did get a big cheer.

This has been the year of the breast

Age 35 | One child, breastfeeding 11-week-old

To tell you the truth, before my mum died of breast cancer, I hadn’t thought of my breasts as anything more than inconveniences you had to put bras on. I hadn’t even really thought of them in a sexual way. It’s only since my mum died of and since having my baby, that my breasts have got a purpose. Your breasts can make you die, and they can give life. I think they are much more important now.

I found breastfeeding really natural. I think it’s because I haven’t stressed about it. Even if it had been painful I would have done it. For me, it’s a pleasure to be able to give that to my daughter. I was adamant I wanted to breastfeed. After seeing what my mum went through, I wanted to do something good with my breasts.

The sexual side had gone, it wasn’t what I was thinking about. That will come back. We have had sex since my mum died, before having the baby. My breasts were a no-go. I couldn’t think of my breasts as sexual because of my mum, because of what her breasts had done to her.

My breasts grew when I was pregnant. Veins appeared and the nipples changed. I know some women say their breasts get saggier after breastfeeding, but I haven’t really stood in front of the mirror and examined them. I’m not concerned if my breasts change permanently. My breasts are for feeding my daughter and giving her the best start in life.

Why do women have breasts? You should be proud if you are able to breastfeed, and I feel sorry for people who don’t even try it, or put themselves and their breasts above the health of their children. I find that ludicrous.

I used to know someone who had a boob job. They didn’t feel natural, they felt hard, almost like when your milk comes in. It was horrible! She had small breasts and she wanted bigger breasts. I find it strange because she can’t breastfeed. She has put a boob job above feeding her kids in the future.

Mum didn’t breastfeed. No one in our family really did, they all bottle-fed. My mum was always a very natural mum, but she never breastfed. I don’t know why no one in my family did. I would love to be able to ask my mum, but because she died when I was still pregnant there are things I can never ask her.

My mum’s tumour was big, half her breast. She was so calm, she wasn’t bitter. She was really strong to protect my sister and me. If I have breast cancer in the future I will get strength from how she reacted.

She had a very rare, very aggressive form of cancer. I’m told I’m not at increased risk. I do feel to check the health of my breasts. But, it’s interesting – they think earlier screenings can also increase the chance of getting breast cancer. So, do you start at an early age? The consultant recommended not to start until I am 40, so I’ll wait till then.

Breastfeeding can reduce your risk of breast cancer. I now want as many people as possible to breastfeed, for their baby and also to reduce the amount of breast cancer. I would hate other people to go through what my mum went through.

Also, people don’t check their breasts enough. I have to admit I had never properly checked my breasts. I work with people who have breast cancer and who die of it and even that was not enough to make me check my breasts. Maybe people won’t listen to me, but I hope I can get through to a few people.

This has been the year of the breast. It’s been hard. Breasts killed my mum, but my breasts give so much to my daughter. Just over a year ago I would never have known how important breasts would be to me. For me, the worst and the best things have happened.

My breasts are small and
inconvenient for clothes

Age 26 | One child

My breasts are small and inconvenient for clothes. I have to wear very high tops because otherwise there’s a great gaping hole and people can see down my top. Even if I wear a bra people can see my nipples sometimes, because not only is the top so big it sits away from the bra, the bra is too big and will sit away from my boobs. So despite the top and the bra people can see my nipples!

I can live with my breasts happily, but I like other things better! Mine are an AAA or less. I wear a bra to bulk out the look of the boobs. The padding covers up the nipples. I would be uncomfortable if the nipples showed through, I wouldn’t want people to see them, they’re not theirs to see. It gives somebody something of yours to judge, they could laugh and it would draw attention.

They are so small and insignificant I barely noticed them developing. I definitely wanted bigger breasts when I was at school. Everything is so judged on looks at that age.

If I could pick the ideal pair of breasts for myself, I would have average-sized breasts that tops are made for. Clothes would look better because they would fit. The perfect breasts are out there, I’ve seen them! My friend at school had a lovely pair of boobs in comparison to mine, and I was always very jealous of them. Society’s ideal breasts are B to C, perky, have cleavage, or possibility of cleavage, and no hair.

I loved my breasts when I was breastfeeding because they were bigger and I had cleavage. It was the only time I had the slightest hint of cleavage, which was just wonderful. Breastfeeding was a nice thing to do overall but it was painful at first. I would tap my foot with the pain, tap, tap, tap. There was a horrid sensation, a pulling, draining sensation through the boob.

I can tell you a story about when I was breastfeeding in front of two good friends of mine, a man and woman. When you’re breastfeeding the nipple gets longer and the guy made a joke to say how my nipple looked like a slug. We laughed it off at the time, but I’ve never forgotten it. However, I do remember a very nice comment once when I was breastfeeding from a friend of a friend, ‘What lovely neat little boobs you have’. That was nice.

I’m not sure what my partner thinks of my breasts. I don’t think he has any problem with them being small. He’s made reassuring comments, probably as a reaction to my lack of confidence. You know that they’re small. I know that they’re small. He knows that they’re small. So, it doesn’t even have to be acknowledged. They’re not really important for me sexually.

I wouldn’t seriously consider breast surgery. I think it would be nice, every now and then, but I would never have it done. You have to try and be happy with what you’ve got. If you start trying to change, it’s a never-ending thing, you would never be happy.

I’ve got the chicken fillets, to fill the space in my clothes, but they’re a pain. The big chicken fillets can make a difference to the look, but they are plastic so they don’t feel nice to put in and they don’t always sit quite right, or perhaps I just worry they don’t look quite right.

I had an awful experience as a 16-year-old. I had some thin padded bits to put in bras. I was sitting around in a group and someone said ‘What’s that?’ about this thing on the floor! And there it was, one of my padded bra things. Of course I had to pretend I had no idea what this thing was and left it there!

Recently my son asked me why men can take their tops off and women can’t? And I really had no answer except, ‘Isn’t it ridiculous and unfair?’ There’s no reason why women should be prohibited from doing that.

I’ve been called flat-chested as an insult. I remember a couple of people saying that. Obviously I know I am, I don’t need to be told. You know you are being told as an insult. There’s no reason it should constitute an insult.

I’ve got a great pair of melons!

Age 40 | One child

I absolutely adore my breasts. I think they’re fantastic. I’ve always loved them and thought they are an amazing part of my body. They’re big, so I’ve had to learn to be proud of them. I have a good relationship with my boobs. I’ve got a great pair of melons!

One of my breasts is bigger than the other, and I like that. I’ve always liked that they are perky and big and they look fantastic. The only thing about having big boobs on a small frame is it’s all on your back and shoulders. I’m inclined to stoop my shoulders, not sit up straight.

Last weekend, I realised with horror that they are beginning to sag slightly. That was quite an interesting revelation. I wonder if it’s because I’ve lost weight, or it could just be age-related? Now they’re touching my stomach, and I don’t like that feeling.