Understand Breasts & Bra Sizes

This begins to come back to my penance. If anyone quotes a breast size of 40AA I will immediately think of FW, which is probably not what you intend, and probably not what most other readers will imagine. Are the breasts round or pointy? Are they sticky-uppy or dangly-downy? Are the areolas puffy and the nipples large? That can make a good cup size of difference. And, I assure you, that matters to a female reader and is usually deep in the male fantasy, as far as my limited experience goes.

So, having explained why bra size is a pretty useless way of describing bosoms, what positive advice have I got to offer? How should you talk about tits?

Breasts are rich and full, heaving, pendulous, wide, narrow and hung high or low on the chest, just the size to cup nicely in his palm, soft and springy like two stress balls – I could go on. I'll buy fruit comparisons; ripe plums, sweet apples, firm peaches, grapefruit – at a pinch, even melons (just spare us kumquat). Now you know they don't stick out much further than other girlies, start thinking about other ways how to make me jealous, excited. How about using descriptions like jutting, buxom, compressed or erupting cleavage, pert globes, porcelain half moons, spheres or orbs? Colors and textures are good; dusky pink, olive, coffee, nut brown. These are not necessarily favorites of mine but just examples I can remember reading.

Why can't we all use some of the descriptive talent that makes a good story: 'Her pinched, slender waist accentuated the voluptuous swell of her generous hips'? Bottoms can be bubbles, apple-shaped, heart-shaped or even split peach perfection. Why can't breasts get the same loving, descriptive treatment?

"As she lay back on the bed, the long, coral pink nipples and generous areolas stood proud of the expansive, firm flesh that cradled them. He had never found a woman with breasts so sensitive."

Whatever the gender of the writer, I read your stories as a woman. I really go for the bits where he 'takes her soft mounds in his warm palms and slowly rolls the balls of his thumbs over her achingly hard nipples'. Just please, don't quantify them then put them on the shelf marked S, M or XXL to get treated like inventory. You don't understand, it puts off women readers and it's not erotic – even to a lot of men as I have been told.

One summer vacation during college, I worked on a major construction site as a 'girl Friday' – that means 'gofer' – and I thought I heard the whole thesaurus of words that could describe female mammaries. In the unbridled sexism and lust – that I quite liked – no-one ever quoted bra sizes. The one expression I will always remember is, 'get an eyeful of those great mazoomas'. What exactly are 'mazoomas'? Who cares? For the men who used the term it was a mix of lust, admiration and, in a strange way, a touch of respect. For me, in context, it was far more descriptive, visual and erotic than anything that has a number attached to it.

We all know there are quite a sizeable number of synonyms for both male and female genitalia. It is just that much of the vocabulary is along the Tab A/ Slot B lines, even if he sticks his 'love lollipop' into her 'steaming channel of desire'.

Yet, in researching this piece, we found upwards of three hundred general slang words for the female protuberances. My particular favorite was 'Cupid's kettledrums', but there is surely a place in the world for such gems as 'love-pillows', 'FiFi's Funballs', 'lung-nuts' and, even 'two raisins on a bread board'? But it goes further. Unlike any other body part, we are obsessed, both male and female, in giving bazoomikas new, and personal, names.

Recently, Scarlett Johansson announced that she loved her breasts – 'My Girls', as she called them. No, no, her girls, not my girls! Anyway, whilst her 'My Girls' would look drop-dead gorgeous in a Wicked Weasel bikini, my 'My Girls' would be more like two half-deflated, patchy-albino party balloons defying the laws of physics. That's why I call mine 'Laurel and Hardy': one's bigger than the other and, when out in public, they make people laugh. A girlfriend of mine talks about her 'Garfunkels' – because they are so high pitched.

That, really, is the nub of the matter. From quite different perspectives, both men and women are fixated by what jiggles up and down on female chests. The orbs are pretty damn redundant, most of the time just ornamental like baubles on a Christmas tree, and only being practically useful for a short while after you have babies, but they seem to define femininity, womanhood, for us all – male or female. Losing a limb or an eye is an awful, frightful prospect, but it pales in comparison beside the fear and trauma to women of losing a breast.

Somehow, deep in our psyche, breasts define our gender – our belief in ourselves as women as we face the bathroom mirror. Perhaps that's why I get so riled when a lady's 'dessert trolley' gets summarily dismissed as a letter or clothes size.

I was going to conclude by suggesting that you should always write about breasts – full, perky, firm, areolas the size of silver dollars, moving up and down on her chest as if inviting Stud to slide his cock between the pert hillocks – then FW brought me down to earth.

She said the word 'breasts' sometimes had a very negative ring for her; something a bit medical relating to lactation, mammograms and stuff. Breasts live a Jekyll and Hyde existence – sliced up on Thanksgiving with the gravy and potatoes; then morph to become the most secretly romantic thing – 'he gasped as the moonlight played on her alabaster breasts, the full swells almost translucent as they rose and fell in the silvery glow'. On reflection, I think she's right. Those 'double whammies' are like the sea, ever changing, colors segueing from the crystal azure blue of sun drenched tropical bays to the wind-whipped, gray aquamarine savagery of the wildest oceans.

When Ms Jackson's wardrobe malfunctioned, it was fascinating to study the vocabulary of the warring sides, split between the 'boob flashing' and 'exposing her breast' camps. I'll leave you to remember who was for and who against.

You start getting boobs – scary – at puberty. By college they have become fun and jolly and they help to get guys to check you out so, you decide to keep them until, forty years and umpteen kids later, you can tuck the deflated flesh sacs into the waistband of your jeans. Then you've really got breasts or, even worse, bosoms. Generally, boobs are a bit giggly girly. I've got tits when I feel a bit feisty, or when you get on them, and jugs and hooters make me want to holler and be a country girl. Didn't Daisy Duke have jugs?

In fact, watching the TV news, I've decided that Condi has certainly got breasts – my other half thinks she might even still have boobs – whilst Hillary has more likely got a chest and Barbara B has surely got a bosom. I can't explain exactly why I think it and there's certainly no similar distinction for a man's dangly bits as he gets older.

So, spare not the midnight oil you male authors. Armed with this information, let your creative juices ferment. Since the dawn of time, the bodacious tatas have been a primary erotic focus between the sexes. More than child bearing hips, big booties and the phallic imagery of trains going into tunnels or tall factory chimneys collapsing in a heap, a pair of ripe Winnebago's, nipply doo-dahs, chumbawumbas or shoulder boulders have been used by wicked women to lure poor, simple men to their doom since time immemorial.

There is so much expressive language out there to use for a nice cuddly pair of snuggle puppies; there is absolutely no excuse for resorting to the lazy shorthand of bra sizes that no-one fully understands. Anyway, it just makes me think you are quoting the size of the handles you can grab hold of when stoking the furnace.

So, in the words of the wise, the thong is over but the mammaries linger on.