Tag Archives: Breasts

Speaking as we were at the bar about knockers…

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in Sandshoe

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Article by ‘Shoe

Last month on October 16 was No Bra Day. I am myself big on no bras, not wearing them myself. I mean I could not give a polly waffle whether others do or not regardless I feel at odds with the social norm, bereft anyone can stand wearing one. Some say they are too big ‘in the chest’ to not.

I have learned some women are in every way uncomfortable not wearing one.

Mine however, when I was 18 going on 19, went into a disposal bin for once and for all after prac teaching at a High School in Townsville, Tropical North Queensland in summer. I left the profession within a matter of weeks concerned among other things I was told stockings would be worn or I was on the carpet and the seams of a bra wearing at my flesh that suppurated copious amounts of perspiration sufficient to generate a tropical ulcer. On balance, nothing at my then age and given a happy condition of physical fitness could be said to have caused me more discomfort than wearing stockings and a brassiere in the tropics, truly saying something were it not for the socio-politics of Queensland in the years of my emergence from high school in the late 60s. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is excellently comfortable and 10 abysmal, the Queensland Government and its hench crowd in those years takes the cake in my experience of discomfort, again truly saying something.

At the beginning of October last anticipating No Bra Day I searched my place high and low to transcribe and send to the Pig’s Arms Editor-in-Chief, Emmjay aka Therese Trouserzoff an article, I’ll flop if I have/want to! I researched and wrote in 1998 for a community publication.

Moving schmoving, we forget where everything is every time we move. As if it is not difficult enough and still manage to stash somewhere yellowing newsprint. I feared the cache of small treasures had been misplaced. No, my stars have fallen into alignment. My PC came back after round about 8 weeks at the repair shop with its new battery for its PSU nicely installed. Hello. The box where I hid the newspapers from exposure to the elements has walked across my path where I searched again. Hello.

So naive I think as I type the article ready to send. The beauty of a community rag although is naivety regardless how many hours go into shaping one. The contributors do not have to be Einsteins or equipped with multiple doctorates. The editors do just have to remember to check through claims if made by any one individual they are themselves specialists or cured or maimed by a product. The standard of community journalism is remarkably high and editorial input.

By contrast to my article with its underlying agenda of bias to encourage women to discard them if they did not want to wear a bra, the Scientific American 9 years later on 19 April 2007 weighed in on the book I quoted …. I had seen it on a public library shelf … Dressed to Kill.

S.M. Kramer for the Scientific American presented the word according to Louise Brinton cited as chief of the reproductive and epidemiology branch of the National Cancer Institute that it [the thesis of the book] is not ‘logical’. The President and Medical Director of the Dr Susan Love Medical Research Foundation, and a former breast surgeon, with a book to sell, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, Dr Susan Love, agreed ‘the bra myth [promoted in Dressed to Kill and suggesting bras suspects in breast cancer] comes from frustration of not knowing what causes the disease’ and wanting to ‘control it’ ie by a measure that is external to the person and body, something that can be discarded.

My small contribution to the subject is reprinted below:

 I’ll flop if I have/want to!

Glennys Bell, reporting in the National Times article ‘The no-bra look follows the no-bra flop (February 22-27 1971, p16) noted that bra production had dropped 6% between June and November, 1970, compared with the same timeframe in 1969.

In response to the trend of women ‘burning their bras’, manufacturers had launched the no-bra look, replacing wired and reinforced bras with a ‘soft unseen, light weight garment’. Bra sales climbed again in 1971 after levelling out at the end of the previous year. A bloke who was the marketing director for a major supplier of bras on the Australian market remarked: “Sales haven’t really been affected by the braless look, but they could be higher if all girls wore one”. This might better read as ‘I’m not fazed about sales going down last year, but I’d feel better if all women did what I’m telling them to do.”

“They’re really spoiling their figures by not wearing a bra and will lose their shape quicker, then they’ll really need all the support we can give them.” Now, that’s cute.

I recommend reading ‘Dressed to Kill – the link between breast cancer and bras’ (The Avery Publishing group, 1995) by S.R. Singer and S. Grismaijer, a husband-and-wife research collaboration. They cite evidence suggesting it is unwise to restrict areas around the lymphatic system. They also refute the claim that wearing a bra stops or reverses “flopping”.

Christina B. Wilson

Reproduced from Women’s Voices April 1998 p 10

Pub. by the Southern Womens Community Health Centre (out of print)

Noarlunga Centre, SA 5168

Postscript: 10 November 2016.

Breast cancer does of its nature traumatise us all for the loss of friends and close family and community and the suffering it causes us alone from concern. I am of all things fortunate to have my breasts without the personal trauma of breast cancer. By way of a disclaimer: I do not believe I have not had breast cancer because I have not worn a bra.

I do feel fortunate I have felt comfort not wearing a bra for the intervening years since I chose to rebel. I neither however believe my breasts sag any more than they would if I had worn a bra for the past 48 years and five breast-fed children later. In my mind the concept a bra overrides muscular sag of a breast for whatever reasons imaginable was not logical regardless my mother’s advice or bears current scrutiny when I consider my breasts. They are just peachy.

The Restless Booksearcher (Final)

01 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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After the swap to the maroon coloured book ‘Riders of the Chariot’ he took up her offer of the shower at the back but first went to the butchers for some bones for Bluey. This time it was a dishevelled male that served him. He was dressed in shorts and grimy singlet. Just some bones and lamb chops, he asked. There were no books or shelving. Carcases were dangling from hooks at the back wall and a compressor was busily trying to keep the room cool.  The book searcher asked where the nearest town was, somewhere with a market, he said. Oodnadatta, 180 miles from here, the butcher answered. Take plenty of water, but you might take a ride on the cattle road-train, he advised.  I have got some water and food from the shop up the road, the book searcher said. Taking a shower first? The butcher smiled back, with just a hint of something more, but left untold. 

He got back, gave the bones to Bluey who had patiently waited confidently that his boss would not forget. Our wanderer, now satisfied with yet another book but still unwashed went to the back of the shop for his shower. He got undressed, started to soap himself when the large breasted shop owner got through the door, offering him a towel as well as her-self. She was naked but held her hands modestly before her large pendulous breasts. I’ll soap your back, she said. She pushed him against the wall. There was limited space and the softness of her generous body pressed against his lean hardness was as good as any hot afternoon would ever get 180 miles from Oodnadatta, for him as well as her.

Afterwards, with the sun at four in the afternoon our happy book searcher bade his goodbye and wandered to just outside the settlement. He spotted a large and lonely ghost gum. He spread his swag and told the dog “sit’. He took out his P.White’s “Rider of the Chariot,” and started his first page of his unread book:

RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT.

“Who was that woman?” asked Mrs Colquhoun, a rich lady who had come recently to live at Sarsaparilla. “Ah,” Mrs Sugden said, and laughed, “That was Miss Hare.” “She appears an unusual sort of person.” Mrs Colquhoun ventured to hope.

The Restless Book Searcher had found his book, yet again.

The Restless Booksearcher (Number 2)

29 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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The ceiling was of pressed metal, bravely keeping some semblance to a floral pattern somewhat obscured by the numerous coats of paint applied through the decades. It was now painted a light hospital green and decorated with the hangings of three brown fly strip spirals that had lost its fatal attraction to anything in flight some years back. The whirring of a ceiling fan above the custard tarts glass case might have finally been installed to at least show the flies they were not all that welcome anymore.  Besides, the health inspector had become somewhat grumpy and insisted the fan to be installed, as well as a written direction to clear out the dead flies from the glass display cases.

The man put down his swag and back-pack outside, told the dog ‘stay’, which he instantly obeyed, squatting next to the swag. The dog was thirsty as well as hungry. After entering through the fly screen door, the solitary walker surveyed the interior and took in the sparsely filled shop. He knew that he could rely on a hamburger and cup of tea. The rancid smell of 50/50 hamburger mince and 100% lard had permeated floor, ceiling, furniture, not even giving the hard Laminex a chance in warding it off.

The day had been hot. The back-pack of the walker contained a small hoard of books as well as clothing. Dried fruit, including apricots and sliced apple, some nuts with a couple of bottles of water completed the solitary walker’s total inventory.  The heat had weighed him down more than usual. He needed sustenance as well as to replenish water for himself and his dog. A woman appeared. She was dishevelled looking, hugely breasted and all crumpled. The TV blaring out with canned laughter from somewhere at the back indicated the possibility she might have been horizontally positioned when he entered the shop. He asked for a hamburger, a pot of tea and some water.

 His daily walk in search of new and unread books had taken him longer than usual and even though he passed several small settlements, none had books. His roving eyes had spotted shelving with frayed looking books just behind the tables facing the right hand wall away from the counter. His spirit lifted even before the hamburger arrived, which the shop-owner plonked on the fiery Laminex table in the well practised and desultory manner of the country shop. She came in again and served a pot with cracked spout filled with hot water and a separate dusty tea bag and sugar and milk. She also, without wasting a single word, walked through the fly screen door with a dish of water for the dog outside. The Bluey dog was still camped next to his master’s swag. His grateful slurping was heard inside with his dog- tag tinkling against the metal dish.

The man’s thirst quenched by tea, the intrepid walker started on his well layered hamburger, bits of beet-root trying to escape slipping and sliding towards the edge which the solitary book searcher prevented  from falling by rotating the bread bun while  expertly eating the protruding slices of guilty vegetables including the brown rings of fried onions.

Will be continued.

Agfa Clack

15 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Agfa Clack.

There must have been some spare money about but when about twelve or so I had a Kodak box camera given by my parents. It was a simple box and had two little mirrors in which to focus on the subject. The film was wound on an empty spool two and a half times and then inserted in the camera; the box would be closed ready for the 8 or 12 photos that it then could take. What a glorious gift it was. The photos took about a week to get developed and sleepless nights would be followed by euphoria when the big day would arrive to get the photos. Money for the development was earned by collecting old newspapers and rags after school.

After the go-a-head for migrating I had spotted a camera far advanced to the Kodak Box. It was an Agfa Clack. Forty five guilders.  A small fortune. Many times I stared at the shop window.  As I remember, it had two apertures and two shutter speeds and was flash capable. The approval to migrate coincided with parents taking me out of school in order to work to help and fatten the communal Oosterman wallet. Something at least for the totally unforseen and unfathomable future.

It was all a bit shaky and nervous during that time. Friends would be left. No more handball games on a Sunday with girls and budding breasts…. Eric Nanning, Anton Van Uden, Louis Gothe, all would disappear within a few months. The same for our street, the ice cream (between crusty wafers) shop, and hot ‘patat de frites’ as well, soon be gone. What need for a good camera, etched the good times in photos’ eh?

The job was delivering fresh fruit and vegetables to the very top of The Hague’s society and its burgers, Including royalty and most embassies. The delivery was done by carrying the goods in a huge wicker basket fastened above the front wheel of a sturdy and large steel framed bicycle.  I peddled like one possessed. There were lots of orders and the boss was strict. No loafing and it was winter.

The stingiest of tippers are The Hague’s wealthiest, the best tippers the staff of embassies. They all had jars of money to be tipped to deliverers of goods. The US embassy was unbelievably generous. My earnings were always tipped into the parental wallet, ‘for our future,’ I kept being assured. All tips were mine and at times they eclipsed earnings, especially after a delivery of imported black grapes to the Yank kitchen at the back of the Embassy, the tradesman entry… A ten guilder tip gave me almost a quarter of the Agfa Clack in one scoop. Not bad, considering I had filched a couple of those grapes from the delivery. Geez, they were those black ones as well.

I soon came to that glorious walk to the camera shop and bought my camera. A couple of weeks later, a leather case with carry strap. Soon after that a battery operated flash with 6 globes. Even sooner came the day, just after Christmas on a bleak and rainy day that it came about, that we all walked the dreadful walk up the gangplank and boarded our ship to Australia. Goodbye all. And that was that. My Agfa around my neck.