Big Breasts Are Out Of Style?

A friend of mine posted this the other day and I thought I'd share both it and my thoughts on it.

Vogue Magazine UK says "Big Breasts Are Out of Style"


BOOBS are out of fashion. And flat chests are back. Or so came the decree from UK Vogue this week.

Golly! I guess that means I'll be packing up mine for a few seasons and storing them in one of those vacuum-seal storage bags they flog on Mornings with Kerri-Anne - so the moths don't get to them.

Of course, boobs have never really been in fashion in high-end fashion cliques. They kind of get in the way of the clothes.

That said, there does appear to be some evidence of a broad-based breast-lash going on.

Word from the Spring fashion shows overseas is that next season will be all about the "boy look" and the bandeau top, which, as any woman who's wriggled into one knows, serves primarily to plaster boobage back and under the armpits to create a bulbous androgynous form.

Fashion types are suddenly in a tizzy over minimiser bras, while flat-chested celebs are embracing some time in the limelight (which leaves me with a colourful image of Keira Knightley slinking out from the shadows of Jessica Simpson's pneumatic bosom to reclaim her four square-inches on the red carpet).

Poisonous gossip website TMZ pays homage to them this week with a bunch of gratuitous A-cup slideshows.

And I have it on good authority from my hairdresser (and aren't hairdressers the most accurate source for anything happening at street level!?) that everyone (read her clients and their friends and their friends) is talking about getting their breast implants removed.

"It's hot," she tells me.

Yes, washboard is definitely the new cleavage.

But here's the interesting thing. This about-face happens every time there's an economic downturn.

When economic bubbles burst, so does the buoyancy of women's breasts.

In the recession of the 1920s, fashion - and, hence, the idealised female form - reverted to a straight up and down "flapper" look.

In the '50s, a time of unbridled capitalist growth, breasts were big and highly sexualised.

Ditto in the '80s. Then came the '90s recession and with it the heroin chic look.

And, of course, the past decade of booming growth and rampant spending has galloped along hand in hand with a 300 per cent increase in breast enlargements in the US (the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons says Australian figures are much the same).

Economists have previously referred to a "lipstick indicator" to describe how a recession is often flagged by an increase in lipstick sales (women replace their usual splurges with a relatively inexpensive gloss indulgence).

Interestingly a chat with David Jones CEO Mark McInnes revealed lipstick sales have spiked.

As someone inappropriately suggested this week (and it was not Reserve Bank boss Glenn Stevens), perhaps we could now refer to a "breast barometer" of economic prosperity.

I can't help but notice implicit in this whole phenomenon is the idea that abundant breasts are a crass symbol of over-consumption and that, in the face of economic belt-tightening, they become threatening - and must be banished.

A journo in the UK's Telegraph newspaper wrote this week, "Currently flesh is de'classe".

And I was not at all surprised to read on Monday that the head of Australia's most prestigious fashion school has described the way women have been dressing as "trashy" and all about luring blokes.

He advocates a return to more sophisticated designs, which I read to mean that women should be covering up. And, he added, only men are capable of creating such a demure look. Oh really?

I don't know what's more repugnant. Being told to store my boobs for the winter if I want to fit into the latest boy designs. Or being told by a man I can't dress myself.

Hopefully, for this recession, we'll all defiantly thrust our best asset forward regardless of how much the ass falls out of the market.

Or, as one blogger commented yesterday, we could just "keep our fingers crossed for the day inverted and tertiary nipples become the hottest new accessories".

I don't know how true this is, but I hope it's just someone overreacting. I am a man who prefers big breasts. I know I like things in the past and, but the '20s aren't exactly my fav era for the reason all the women look like boys in drag. Women are meant to have curves. Just because the US (and world) economies are going to hell in a hand basket, doesn't mean females need to sacrifice what God gave them.

As far as I'm concerned boobs will never go out of style!