I missed the big show by Janet Jackson. . Being a female with two breasts attached, exposed mammary glands don't do much for me but it did get me thinking about the difference between boobs and breasts.
Boobs are perky, usually overexposed, and a marketing gimmick for a big or small audience. They are either uncovered or stuffed into tight clothing so that all eyes go there first.
Breasts are something different: they are a food factory for babies, a secret and welcoming place for a husband or lover, a soft pillow for sad little kids who can't sleep or an old person who no one hugs anymore, something interesting inside a dress that not many people have seen, an addition and enticement to a woman's sexuality if exposed just a littleBreasts are a part, but hardly the main attraction, for an emotionally healthy woman.
As I saw the reruns of Janet's big moment, I wondered if she had had her baseline mammogram yet, for it is at that point when boobs start to become breasts.
If she hasn't done it yet, soon she'll go into a dressing room, strip down to her waist, take off her bling-blings, put on a hospital gown that ties in the front, and then lay her breast on a cold metal shelf. She'll put her arm in an awkward position, hold her breath, and feel her famous right boob get squeezed flat as a pancake. She'll grimace, hold her breath, and count the seconds until it's over. She'll do that four times: side and front, both breasts. She'll then go back to her dressing room and wait for someone to tell her that it's OK to get dressed. If she's lucky, she'll get a postcard in a week telling her that her breasts appear normal. If she's not so lucky, she'll get a phone call and then a biopsy. If the news is bad, a doctor will sit her down and tell her she has breast cancer. The physician will not call it boob cancer.
Maybe all of us, at one time or another, have thought of boobs and breasts as synonymous but all it takes is to love one woman sick with breast cancer. It is then that a boob gets promoted to breast and takes its respected and rightful place as a body part that has the power to maim and kill.
The cost of breast enhancement, $5,000; the cost of AOL's investment in the half-time show of the Super Bowl, $12,000,000; the cost of healthy breasts for my living and dead friends - two Sandys, Prudy, Sue, Jodi, Cynthia, Kathy, Carol, Camilla, Charlotte, Linda, Laura, Pam, Mary Ann, Peggy, Judy - priceless.
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Andrea S. Conroy, Union, KY, is the owner of Rivertown Communications.
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