Female Breasts
In many works of art throughout history, female breasts have been featured prominently and in the nude. The symbolic meaning credited to the breast was usually associated with fertility and nourishment, both spiritual and physical, and in the wider sense, with life. Eroticism, nourishment, abundance, expression, feminine power, as well as feminine subservience, are different contradicting themes of the breast played out in time.
Different reiterating views of its importance and the way it should be displayed are used to reflect upon the views of women of the time and life in society in general. At times, it is near-worshipped as a sign of sexuality, or as a sign of nourishment. Other times it is restricted down, sometimes a sign of the inferiority of women or, on the contrary, as a sign of women's independence and their equality to men. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, how the breast is perceived throughout history is a direct reflection of the views of the time.
Legends about the breast have appeared in a variety of cultures, from Greek, Indian, to Native American myths, they all contain stories that involve biting a breast. For example, as an infant, Hercules was said to have gotten his extra-human strength from biting the breast of Hera. Other stories such as this can be seen as symbolic of an attack on Mother Nature or the earth goddess, and of man's ability to overcome her (Latteier, 1998, p. 146). Women with multiple sets of breasts are reoccurring themes in Western society, symbolizing fruitfulness. Artenis, the Greek goddess of Ephesus, is said to have had nearly twenty breasts on her chest. She symbolized the female nourishing power and fertility. The Minoan society on the island of Crete welcomed the breast openly. Women's clothing was designed to let the breasts show through and were placed in high social positions of power. Their breasts stood for material wealth, political power, and purity. The Minoans are given credit as the first people to use a corset. They wore bodices that laced below the bust, bracing and exposing the breasts (Winston, Website). Priestesses known as snake goddesses, were notorious for large breasts and snakes that coiled around their arm, would symbolize their power (Yalom, 1997, p. 15). Classic Greek society repressed femininity and acclaimed masculinity.
Women were encouraged to stay...
... middle of paper ...
... short of surgery to change the size of the bosom.
From the binding of the breasts in male-dominated Ancient Greece, to the large breasts of the 1980's, the way society treats the breasts reflects the customs of society at the time. Why is the breast considered such an important feature of the body? Is it because of their connection with lactation and the nurturing of infants? Or is it because of their sexual nature, as a symbol of femininity and womanhood? Whatever the reason, they are an important indication of the views of society and will continue to be so in the future.
Works Cited
Allende, Isabel. (1991). The Infinite Plan. New York: Harper Collins
Broby-Johansen, R. (1968). Body and Clothes. New York: Reinhold Book Corporation.
Latteier, Carolyn. (1998). Breasts: The Women's Perspective on an American Obsession.
Binghamton: The Haworth Press, Inc.
Silverman, Steven. "The Brassiere." http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/support_files/author.html
Winston, Elisabeth. "The History of Corsets." http://home.earthlink.net/~isibastel/corset.html
Yalom, Marilyn. (1997). A History of the Breast. New York: Alfred a. Knopf, Inc
Female Breasts by Raman Bains
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
It makes one wonder how society came to these ridiculous standards of beauty and the taboo of talking about women's bodies that still resonate today. I can personally attest to the uncomfortableness of the conversation of menstruation and developing bodies. My mother was taught, as her mother before and so on, that these conversations are to be kept in private and talked about quietly. In response to this, the power of men have an increasingly strong hold on the ideal physical beauty and how the changes of the body, such as menstruation, be in private and never spoke of. The Body Project gives a disturbing look at how women in the past few centuries and the present should act, look like, and keep hidden in response to what men think is most desirable. No matter how free women think they are, we are still under the control of men even if it is not directly. This book opens the conversation on the problems that are still plaguing women and how society needs to change to have a healthier environment for women to be comfortable in their
Prior to the 20th century, female artists were the minority members of the art world (Montfort). They lacked formal training and therefore were not taken seriously. If they did paint, it was generally assumed they had a relative who was a relatively well known male painter. Women usually worked with still lifes and miniatures which were the “lowest” in the hierarchy of genres, bible scenes, history, and mythological paintings being at the top (Montfort). To be able to paint the more respected genres, one had to have experience studying anatomy and drawing the male nude, both activities considered t...
women were also treated as some what of sex symbols. In The Odyssey, Calypso, the sea nymph Odysseus (whom is the protagonist) lives with on her island for seven year, provides a near perfect example of this. Aside from being referred to as the “lusterous goddess” through out the work, Calypso and Odysseus have a few suggestive moments. For example, after Odysseus is told he will return (to his wife, I might add) him and Calypso almost immediately make love. “And now, withdrawing into the cavern’s deep recesses, long in each other’s arms they lost themselves in love. When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more Odysseus quickly dressed himself in a cloak and shirt while the nymph slipped on a loose, glistening, rope, filmy, a joy to the eye…” (159).
Women in pictorial history have often been used as objects; figures that passively exist for visual consumption or as catalyst for male protagonists. Anne Hollander in her book Fabric of Vision takes the idea of women as objects to a new level in her chapter “Women as Dress”. Hollander presents the reader with an argument that beginning in the mid 19th century artists created women that ceased to exist outside of their elegantly dressed state. These women, Hollander argues, have no body, only dress. This concept, while persuasive, is lacking footing which I will attempt to provide in the following essay. In order to do this, the work of James Tissot (b. 1836 d. 1902) will further cement the idea of “women as dress” while the work of Berthe
Mortal females cause struggles among men and are portrayed as wicked in Greek Mythology. In the story of How the World and Mankind Were Created, the Father of Men and of the Gods, Zeus, swears to get revenge upon mankind because of the poor sacrifices made to the altars. Therefore, he “[makes] a great evil for men, a sweet and lovely thing to look upon… they [call] her Pandora… the first woman… who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil… is the source of all misfortu...
These three goddesses represent three different types of women in Greek society. Sarah Pomeroy, author of Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, believed that “the goddesses are archetypal images of human females, as envisioned by males” (8). Pomeroy understands the significance of the differences between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and what those differences meant for the women of Greece who were required to follow three important rules. The first rule was for the women to live a life of domesticity and motherhood. This was very important to the men in the society.
What makes the depiction between Athena and Aphrodite interesting is the different ways they are portrayed even sharing the similarity of being born strictly from male only. Athena from the all-powerful king of the gods Zeus and Aphrodite from Ouronos. Though they were both born from man alone, the content of these births caused Athena to be expressed in a more dignified, respected, and superior way. Hesiod’s recount of the births of Athena and Aphrodite in his Theogony reveals the source of Athena’s superiority. According to the Theogony, Ouranos’ genitals are thrown into the sea where they mix with the sea foam to result in Aphrodite (Hesiod 180-192). Aphrodite is said to be called, by Hesiod, “Philommedes, fond of a man’s genitals” ( Hesiod, 200-201). In contrast, Hesiod writes that Athena is born from Zeus’ head (Hesiod 924) after Zeus consumes her mother Metis, the goddess whose name means wisdom, for fear of her giving birth to someone who was destined to be his match in wisdom (Hesiod 894-900).
Shinn et al (1984) investigated the effects of coping on psychological strain and "burnout" produced by job stress in human service workers (psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, pastoral counselors, nurses, etc). The researchers found that these stressors predicted job dissatisfaction, behavioral consequences as job performance and turnover in studies of human service workers, psychological symptoms, such as depression and anxiety; and somatic symptoms, such as headaches and various risk factors
In considering the relationship between the meanings of myths and their representation of women, we learned that the major role in shaping the narratives was played by men. Myths reveal to us the experiences of women living in the patriarchal society and we gain the symbol value accorded to women and we come to realize what the term "Woman" meant to the ancient Greek man. Reading through the various stories on Goddesses and queens, monsters and more. Princesses, we learn that there are three major levels of women in Greek mythology. The first level is composed of the divine beings known as the goddesses.
It is shocking to see the digression in humanity’s morals and values over the past decade. As cliché as it sounds, the media is the center of it all. The way women are being represented, from our television sets, the radio, pornography and even art has pushed beauty to the top of the list of controversial and widely debated topics around the globe. “Whenever we walk down the street, watch TV, open a magazine or enter an art gallery, we are faced with images of femininity,” (Watson and Martin).
The primary, and much older, contributor to the start of martial arts was the religion of
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
In the workplace, stress can have some strong physical and mental effects on employees. To best understand stress, it is first important to define it. Stress is defined as “a feeling of tension that occurs when a person perceives that a given situation is about to exceed one’s ability to cope and consequently could endanger one’s well being” (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2011). Stress on the job is usually the result of people feeling inadequate and unable to perform the given duties of a position at a high level. This could be the result of not having the tools necessary to complete the work or having an outside need that is unable to be met while performing duties. Today, we’ll examine different types of stress and the effects that stress can have on individuals and the workplace.
Tsai, Y., & Liu, C. (2012). Factors and symptoms associated with work stress and health-