By Gazonga Gal

Some men are born boobs, some men achieve boobness, and some, like actor Jeremy Piven, have boobness thrust upon them—in his case, a nefarious side effect of overindulging in, of all things, soymilk!

JJust when you thought that there wasn’t another reason to distrust tofu, along comes evidence that for certain males, soy (which contains natural chemicals that mimic estrogen) gluttony can lead to that infamous locker room scourge known as gynecomastia, or… the dreaded man boobs—“moobs.”

Now, before you order your honey to cease and desist from his bi-weekly order of beef with bean curd from your favorite Szechuan takeout joint or excise Pad Thai from his diet, please note that a man has to ingest massive quantities of curd—and be one of the very few who are actually predisposed to moobitude—to grow a set of feminized dim sums. Miso soup is not the enemy; the villain here is excess and genetics.

Are you listening, Piven? Put down that straw and step away from the smoothie, and no one will get hurt.

It’s a well-established fact that many men in our society love them some prime booby, except when those boobies, are in fact, their own. For Joe Average, a booby’s rightful place is immediately adjacent to another booby of equal or at least similar proportion, located on the ribcage—somewhere below the chin and above the navel—of any member of the opposite sex who has passed the puberty tollbooth on life’s twisted turnpike (about 20 miles south of the Vince Lombardi rest stop).

But, as Mother Nature is an equal-opportunity jokester, while oft’ times she stacks the deck in favor of certain gals gazongas, she’s been known to deal a full house in the rack department to a man on more than one occasion (which turns out to be about as tragically not funny as the sitcom of the same name).

A fellow of my acquaintance (who I shall only from henceforth refer to as “He Who Shall Remain Nameless) laments that no amount of exercise or diet seems to have a diminishing effect on his moobs. And for most fellows who are afflicted with the condition, that, sadly, happens to be the case. The only surefire way to banish “manateets” is by means of surgical reduction.  The good news is, that once gone, they generally do not recur.

On bad days, when he is feeling particularly peevish regarding his unwanted allotment, HWSRN opines that perhaps he will go out and purchase a training bra for his moobs, preferably in gingham with a white lace border and a pert, little bow that marks the “V” of his cleavage—or “meavage.”

As humorous as that image is, I can’t help but twist it one further permutation—since I never figured out just exactly what is it that we were supposed to be “training” our boobs to achieve… What? A degree in animal husbandry? A career in civil service? Well, there’s nursing, of course, but that’s not for everyone.

No, when I hear the phrase, “training bra,” it conjures images of a circus ring, wherein a red tail-coated and be-jodhpured lion tamer brandishes a whip and chair (sporting a loaded revolver—just in case) while shouting a series of commands to a pride of seething, barely tamed, snarling tah-tahs. “Up, Betty! Up! Up!”

Which, of course, is not something I’ve ever mentioned to HWSRN, so let’s just keep that between us, shall we?

By Gazonga Gal

“Perky!” Now there’s a word. I hear it in my mind calf-roped by the thick Midwestern accent of my youth. Indeed, as brisk winds signal a change in seasons and fall descends, like exhaled breath and errant deer along the shoulder of a misty highway, while the echo of Frances McDormand rendering “Perky!” in her best lingua Fargo caresses my psyche—like fingernails insouciantly raked across a blackboard—manifest nipples appear as chimera suddenly rendered visible in the chill morning air.

Ah, but I have never been “perky.” Not even in my youth. We could tell Mutt and Jeff to hang their heads in shame, but the point, I’m afraid, would be moot.

On no occasion would one be likely to hear Jeff utter the words: “My, doesn’t that cloud look like a circus bear riding a unicycle!” Nor is Mutt potentially poised to chime in with: “Do you think that plane is headed for Aruba, or perhaps, Key West?” (Unless, that is, I am lying flat on my back—and even then, they would probably be looking more to the right or left for suspiciously fugitive delivery persons who were supposed to have the package to you by 10, and it is now going on noon, or errant livestock who have escaped the confines of their appointed coop or pen…) Nope. Mutt and Jeff’s general perspective on life is most often along the lines of: “Nice shoes, don’t you think?” “Oh, really, they are so last season.”

Here’s a little secret for you…that’s no big secret: boys weren’t the only ones sneaking peeks at Daddy’s stash of Playboys when they were growing up. I used to peruse the models with wide-eyed wonderment, weighing the odds on whether I would grow up to look more like Miss March or Miss November. The answer was, of course (as it is for most of us), neither.

It wasn’t my lack of stature that precluded me from the pages of that venerable bastion of female pulchritude. To be sure, they have had short models grace their centerfolds (which well may be what the wide-angle lens was invented for). And I did have big blue eyes, an unruly mane of auburn hair, and a creamy, pale complexion that flits in and out of vogue at the whim of fashion, but kept my skin from turning into luggage a few years down the highway. But alas, along with the Stitzburg tits came the Stitzburg teeth—a bit too gap-happy for the requisite winning pageant queen smile, which, when paired with the Jetlitski (the name my great grandfather quickly anglicized soon after his arrival on these shores, thankfully predating current water sport trends, or I might, God forbid, be going through life now as a Jetski) nose, rendered my face…more “unique” than the white bread sensibilities of the day.

But, like Janis Joplin as the protagonist in Leonard Cohen’s classic anthem to the disenfranchised, “The Chelsea Hotel,” determinedly “clenching her fists like the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,” even those obstacles might have been overcome had Mutt and Jeff been hitchhiking to Oregon or the California Coast, rather than searching the pavement for loose change—and had I, by the time I was of age, still had the inclination to appear naked in the pages of a national magazine, which I did not—because I had by then learned that my balcony stuffers didn’t exactly fit the Playboy bill.

Here’s another little secret for you that’s no big secret: boys weren’t the only ones sneaking peeks at their peers in the locker room. Though I was years away from discovering that magazines featuring buxom babes with “Juggs” more akin to my own even existed, much less had a fan-base of devoted admirers, I was educated enough by comparative study to discern that while Mutt and Jeff had sizeable merits that were nothing to be scoffed at, they were simply not going to make the cut for first string varsity porn. Damn, another career choice shot to hell!

I did, quite by chance, happen to meet a Playboy photographer during my freshman year at college. The magazine was doing a “Girls of the Big 10” spread, and they were scouting talent among Northwestern University’s crop of comely coeds. As I recall, the photographer was a man of short stature, an easy smile, and a practiced, professional eye. He didn’t even bother to offer me a test shot, he did, however, ask me if I cared to take a romp with him between the sheets. This led me to another valuable lesson, and one that women who let themselves be oppressed by the figures of beauty, whether of the porn standard or fashion runway variety, would do themselves a great service to heed: What’s best for the camera is not always what’s better in bed—nor what a lover finds truly desirable—not by a long shot.

And so, when several years later, I was disrobing for the first time for a new man, who exclaimed with awe: “Wow! You look just like something out of a magazine!” I knew I’d found someone whose dad must have been a Juggs man. And amen, to that.

By Gazonga Gal

Sometimes, mostly late at night, I imagine that Mutt and Jeff have tiny minds, and tiny high-pitched voices of their own.

I don’t think they mean for me to hear their whispered conversations, punctuated by the occasional snort or nipple giggle. And as much as I wish I could report that their discourse is stellar and intellectually evolved, it never rises about a certain tawdry, bourgeois level hardly approaching sophistication. They are, after all, only boobs.

Mutt and Jeff are obsessed with the effects of gravity, and the necessary evils of underwire. They argue the merits of push-ups versus minimizers ad nauseum. When it comes to sizing themselves up against the perceived competition, they are at turns condescending and insecure. Jeff, for example, is hypersensitive regarding his two errant tit whiskers, about which Mutt consistently torments him (or should that be her?) as only a sibling can. Of course, Jeff being the not all that much perceptibly larger of the two takes great glee in taunting Mutt with the derisive nickname, “Dinky-D”.

They can be a bit catty—bitchy even—at one moment, and in the next breath, filled with internal loathing and self-doubt. But arguably, the most disconcerting aspect of this fantasy is that the voices of my Bra-bdingnagians (to interpolate my Swift with my Baum) are definitely male, and akin in timbre to two out of three representatives of The Lollypop Guild…or perhaps a pair of bickering, elfin drag queens on helium.

I do feel obliged to mention that Mutt and Jeff are slightly mad. Cracked eggs. Escapees from the booby hatch, perhaps? I believe their eccentricity to be the direct result of a conflux of deviant wiring and having been raised in the constant tutelage of a not altogether normal or respectable governess—namely, me.

Over the wiring issues, I have no control. Mutt and Jeff are cursed with a faulty motherboard. Their “ignition” switch works in a contrary fashion to most reasonably accepted and expected standards of titillation. Neither a flirty flick of the finger, a subtle slip of the lip, nor the blithe application of even the most practiced tongue will start their motors running. In fact, as those insistent on pursuing this course of action can give testimony to, it will actually flood the engines and leave you in a dead stall. And that is because—and for the love of God, I have no idea why—the actual switch is located in the back, along the spinal column, just north of Butt Crack, Montana. Mutt and Jeff are not configured as warm-up engines, they are after-burners. Go figure.

Of their upbringing, I must accept responsibility. One minute, they are being thrust proudly into the limelight to garner the attentions of all and sundry; the next, pulled out of play, as their distrustful duenna weighs the intentions of those who might, if given the chance, shower them with their affections. “Does he like me for me, or is he only interested in (to mangle my Spanish with my French) a tête-à-tit with Mutt and Jeff?” These mixed signals have led to more than a few head-on calamities, and rendered my chest charges somewhat schizophrenic, as last night’s conversation will attest:

Jeff: She likes me more than she likes you.
Mutt: No she doesn’t. I’m her favorite.
Jeff: I have proof.
Mutt: No, you haven’t… have you?
Jeff: Yes. I overheard her talking to a producer on The Maury Pauvich Show. She’s been cheating on you. She wants to confess it on national TV. She’s found a new tit she likes better, and she is giving you the old heave ho.
Mutt: You’re a liar. Besides, if she’s cheating on me, she’s cheating on you, too.
Jeff: Not necessarily.
Mutt: C’mon. I’m right here. It’s not like you can hide something from me.
Jeff: Oh, can’t I? You are fairly obtuse.
Mutt: Obtuse! Obtuse! How dare you call me that? I may be obtuse, but you are delusional!
Jeff: You’re out of here. She thinks you’re ugly and useless.
Mutt: Does not! Does not! Does not! You take that back!
Jeff: Pack up your nipple and areola and hit the road, Baby.
Mutt: If I’m going, you’re going with me! I caught her online, looking at the breast lift before and after photos. If you don’t watch your step, you’re gonna wake up one morning with more stitches in your ass than a three-piece tailored suit, and a bird’s eye view of her chin.
Jeff: Yeah, what is up with that? Doesn’t she see that big, black whisker?
Mutt: You’re a fine one to talk.
Jeff: I do not have whiskers… I have tit tresses.
Mutt: Whatever…. Uh, oh… Shhhh. Be quiet.
Jeff: Why? It’s a free country. I can talk if I wanna.
Mutt: Now you’ve done it.
Jeff: Done what? Why is it always my fault?
Mutt: Shhhh! Oh, great.
Jeff: (Singing loudly) Be kind to your web-footed friends, ’cause a duck could be somebody’s mother! Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is cold and damp.
Mutt: Here we go; she’s rolling over…
Jeff: You may think that this is the end. Well, mrphurfphizsh…..

By Gazonga Gal

Normally, I try to keep my posts from veering into darker territory. After all, boobs, by their very nature, bring a smile to the lips and a twinkle to the eye. However, as October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I feel I would be derelict in my duties as spokeswoman for the Armies of the Amply Endowed not to bring this discussion to the table.

If you are lucky like me (knock wood), no member of your immediate family has ever had to deal with this illness from a first-person perspective. While heredity is a factor, there are so many variables that play a role in who gets breast cancer and who doesn’t, that you may think no matter what you do, if your number is up, your number is up. There’s no arguing with that. Do we have control of the universe? No.

But we do have control of how we behave while we’re in it: If you’re driving, you wear a seatbelt. If you’re on a plane, you locate the safety exits. If you’re having sex with a new partner, you get tested. If you have breasts, you perform regular self-exams, and if you’re a woman of a certain age, you get your routine scheduled clinical exams and mammograms.

Will this ensure that you don’t get breast cancer? No, but it will greatly up your chances for early detection and enhance your odds for increased survival.

So, to all you women—big breasted, of medium melonage, or pertly proportioned—I say, go feel up your boobs! You can have a partner do it for you, but if it’s going to lead to other tempting distractions, you might be better off taking matters into your own hands.

Not sure how? Go here.

And by the way, men can get breast cancer, too. About 2 percent of all reported cases occur in male patients, and often, because they aren’t aware that they are susceptible to the disease, by the time many men realize what they’ve got, the cancer is already well advanced.

So, for the love of all that’s boob-iful, if you find something out of whack in your Grand Tetons, don’t piddle around like a scared puppy. No sticking your head in the sand, either! Get thee to a doctor for a proper diagnosis! The tits—and the life—you save, may be your own.

Cool links:

http://www.feelyourboobies.com/

http://www.zazzle.com/breast+cancer+gifts?cg=103113243848843719

By Gazonga Gal

Boobs. Jugs. Rack. Sweater cows. Sweatermeat. Melons. Hooters. Bosom(s). Breasts. Chesticles. Breasticles. Tits. Titties. Tay-tahs. Gazongas. Bazongas. Funbags. Balloons. Traffic cones. Tetons. Torpedoes. Snuggle puppies. The girls. Cantaloupes. Cans. Boulders. Knockers. Yabbos. Mulligans. Airbags. Bronskis. Bra stuffers. Butterballs. Marimbas. The Devil’s Dumplings. In the course of my tenure as a card-carrying member of the Confabulating Sisterhood of the Over-Crowded Balcony, I have heard all these euphemisms, plus a whole lot more.

My personal favorite (apart from sweatermeat which for some reason just tickles me) stems from an incident that occurred when I was little more than a DDDebutante. Whilst temping as a receptionist for a Japanese banking firm between college semesters, I found myself in a curious situation. Each morning, as the businessmen made their way into the main office, they would briefly congregate in small groups, circling my desk in the antechamber, errant fish caught out of school by the pull of an unseen eddy.

Each would greet me cordially, and I returned the courtesy. But as they left, whispering to one another in their native tongue and giggling like schoolboys, I often caught them making the universal hand gesture—palms spread about 10 inches apart, fingers arched as if to catch a medicine ball. This was accompanied a phrase I heard on a regular basis for several weeks. Of course, not speaking Japanese, while I got the gist, I couldn’t help but wonder what the literal translation was.

Now, I have a good ear for language, and am adept at phonetic pronunciation, so
one day, not long before I was due to return to school, I repeated the phrase to my manager, who turned a most charming shade of crimson upon hearing its utterance from my American lips. “What does that mean?” I asked him. He was clearly flustered. I repeated the phrase. “Well?”

“You see, in Japan,” he explained, after some hemming, hawing and generally not being able to look me in the eye, “most women have very small…chickens.”

“Small chickens … I see,” I responded, “and I have big chickens.”

“Yes,” he gulped. “Big chickens.”

He was clearly relieved when I started to laugh. Big chickens. I suppose I could have been offended, but honestly, I’ve never been politically correct—which is perhaps why lost in translation humor—especially of the unintentional takeout menu variety—has always appealed to me.

Name Game

In addition to the salacious tittie titles men bestow upon our breasts, there is also a long tradition of women who choose to name their own twins. As mentioned in an earlier post, mine are called Mutt and Jeff. I have also been acquainted with the owners of Bert and Ernie, Hope and Glory, Frankie and Johnnie, Lucy and Ethel, Ben and Jerry, Abbott and Costello, George and Gracie, Gin and Tonic, Romeo and Juliet, Pyramis and Thisbe, Gert and Alice, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha, Venus and Aphrodite, and of course, Thelma and Louise. I’ve yet to meet a woman sporting a pair of Penn and Tellers (although I have met Penn and Teller) or Siegfried and Roys, but perhaps that’s because a gal might be afraid her precious pair might magically disappear into the ether—or be mauled by tigers.

And speaking of less than sexy imagery, I feel compelled to admit that I find some boob soubriquets men have come up with tend to be turn-offs. I am not fond of the terms jugs or funbags. Likewise, headlights and hooters leave me stone cold.

So, after much time and consideration (and a few glasses of wine), I’d like to offer some alternatives that I’ve come up with for your consideration: Nippleodeons. Bra monkeys. Bravados. Pair de deux. Pairouettes. Cupolas. Capitol domes. Demimounds. Portabellas. Lactavias. Mammarionettes. Mammifest destinies—on second thought, maybe I’ll just stick with big chickens.

By Gazonga Gal

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Of course, William Butler Yeats was not referring to wardrobe malfunctions when he wrote that, but he might as well have been. When Janet Jackson unintentionally flashed boob during the 2004 Super Bowl, the FCC fined CBS Television $550,000 in punishment for forever emotionally scarring the tender sensitivities of beer swilling, chili gorging, face-painted, belching football fans nationwide with the terrible beauty of the nipple.
But flimsy bra straps and ill-stitched halter-tops have oft wreaked havoc with the well-endowed female. Case in point: A cousin of mine, also amply blessed with a superfluity of boobage, accidentally exposed her chesticles to the entire audience during a high school production of the musical Gypsy. The rented chorus girl costumes were simply not up to the task of supporting her hefty hooters and exploded at a critical crescendo, which led to the Great Chorus Girl strike of ’75, of which I must say, I was the ringleader.
After that memorable “outing,” I, with a cadre of other busty chorines in tow, marched up to the director, costumes in hand, and decreed that they must be altered.
“But they’re rented!” he protested.
“Do you really want a repeat performance of tonight’s little showstopper?” I asked point blank. He did not. Luckily, along with large breasts, I was gifted with sewing skills that had earned me an A+ in Home Ec. By the next day’s matinee, the precarious costumes were secured and our titterettes were safe from further untoward display.
Many years later, while attending a formal company function at a swank nightclub in New York City, I was beset by my own décolletage debacle. It was the firm’s annual Christmas party—back in the days when companies actually had the budgets for such frivolities—and for the occasion, I had donned a floor-length, bottle green stretch velvet sleeveless gown that hugged my curves like the proverbial scenic railway. (Let’s just get it out of the way: 39” x 24” x 36”.) To slip into this slinky number required certain feats of engineering, namely a well-constructed bustier that cinched me in and hefted my girls to the heavens. Breathing? Who needs breathing when you look like Jessica Rabbit?
However, as I made my rounds, glad-handing and how-do-you-doing (we didn’t call it networking back then), I felt an odd sensation on the left side of my cleavage. Something niggling. Something nagging. Something not right. I had just greeted my immediate boss, and was standing in a small circle of upper-echelon employees, when, as if mesmerized by a snake charmer’s Pungi, an errant underwire reared its cobra-like head and inched its way up and out of my cleavage—at the exact moment our ultra conservative über boss came to shake my hand.
“Toothpick?” I asked, offering it to him without missing a beat.
“No thanks,” he replied smiling. “Perhaps later, after the hors d’oeuvres.”
“Great party,” I said. “Thanks so much.”
“Indeed,” he replied, his eyes twinkling. “Great party indeed.”
Crisis averted. And thankfully, in this case, a mountain was not made out of my molehills. Good thing the FCC wasn’t invited to that little shindig, though. By the by, does anyone know what the fine is when corsets attack?

By Gazonga Gal

Last Sunday, I was talking with my pop, getting the weekly update on the West Coast branch of the family (Dad, his wife, and my twin half-sisters who are 10), when he opined that one of the girls was already in a training bra. It was more of a “Where does the time go?” than a “WTF?” but it just goes to show that, for better or worse, Dad’s day-to-day involvement in the rearing of his second family is a lot more intensive than back in the bad old days when I was growing up.

I seriously doubt I ever consulted my father on the subject of breasts. In fact I am sure of it. Nope, Mom, with her perfect 36Cs was my go-to source on that one. (Actually when we lived in Chicago, the art director of then nascent Playboy approached her to enquire if she would model for them. She was flattered, but declined.) And even she was a bit stymied by my development… or should I say, lack thereof.

As I’ve mentioned before, big boobs run rampant on both sides of our genetic stadium. The Stitzburg Tits had nothing on the Galatzer Gazongas; it was a regular sweatermeat bonanza all around. The only mildly less than zaftig woman in the family tree was my maternal grandmother, who, at five-foot-six, with dark brown eyes, jet-black hair, olive skin and—I am guessing here—a nice pair of 36Bs, was something of a changeling, anyhow. So it seemed kind of odd that as other girls my age began to sprout and bloom that my garden of chestly delights lay fallow and barren.

I am going to officially date myself now by revealing that my nickname in junior high school was “Flatsy.”

A brief history lesson: Flatsies were tragically feminine in an oh-so-cutesy way, bendable action figures popular back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. (Picture the ill-starred, born-again love children that might have resulted from a drunken gangbang between the Bratz dolls and Gumby.) To my everlasting horror and abashment, the tagline to the Flatsies’ commercial jingle ran: “Flatsies! Flatsies! They’re flat, and that’s that!” I confess, I lost count of just how many times the pubescing boys in my class chanted those words at me as I braved the gauntlet of their callow disdain.

Oh, the irony. From barely a bee sting to triple DDDigits!

Of course, it would have been a lot easier to walk defiant among my peers and toss off a hearty, “Ha-ha! So there, you fathead lummoxes! See what God hath wrought!” had my boobs busted a simultaneous move and arrived at the finish line in a dead heat, but Mother Nature decided to have one more laugh at my expense before gifting me with her bounty. I didn’t develop breasts so much as I developed “breast.” (It’s hard to “Ha-ha!” when you only have one “ha” to ha with.) I later learned that unequal rates in breast development are not at all abnormal, but at the time, I remember thinking, Lord help me…Frankentit!

I was so deeply traumatized by what I considered to be my sideshow freakishness, I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to my mom about it. When Mutt sheepishly arrived some months later (Yes, they are named Mutt & Jeff, but that topic, “A Boob by Any Other Name,” is one I am sure to tackle in the near future), I heaved an epic sigh of relief. It took almost a year to for my breasts to achieve parity, but eventually, things pretty much evened out. As is the case with most women, one is still slightly larger than the other, but at this point, I defy the casual observer to tell which one is Mutt and which is Jeff. (And no, you may not heft them in your hot little hands for the sake of comparison.)

One thing I do recall is that when my pair finally became apparent, my life was forever changed. I was no longer seen as “the smart girl” or the “girl with a good pitching arm,” I became the chick with the tits.

It hardly seemed fair. I had done nothing to achieve my newfound status, but I soon realized that the power of the boob is a mighty and often mesmerizing thing. Learning to harness that force for the power of good took some time, however. You wouldn’t hand a teenager the keys to a nuclear submarine and expect them to know how to maneuver it, would you?

I am guilty of launching a few torpedoes at unintentional targets in the beginning, but I did get the hang of it—according to my own code of breast ethics, that is. Was I above taking a better grade from a college professor with a penchant for cleavage? Not if he wasn’t above giving me one. I was still the smart girl and the girl with the good pitching arm. I was also the girl with the big tits. If the latter is all someone chose to see, I felt not a whit of guilt when I sank his battleship. Would you?