Storm in a D-cup

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Are you a breast or leg man?” It was the same old joke every time my father carved the Sunday roast. “I prefer breast, Dad.” “Me too, son – but what part of this chook would you like?”
In the security of a pack, safely out of earshot of disapproving females, men will sometimes define their taste in women by preferred body part.
Legs, arse, breasts. Such objectification is shameful to admit, but true. Me?
I’m a breast man.

Most heterosexual men are hardwired to look – at the bar, on the treadmill, in the queue at Coles. Titillation through tit-elation. The woman who makes my cappuccino has a magnificent cleavage. And every day I wonder whether it’s God’s gift or that of an accomplished surgeon.

Fake. It’s an emotive word, normally with a negative connotation. In sport, a fake is a subtle move, a tool, a skill used to gain a clever advantage. In art, it is a corruption. Whether you’re talking about money, diamonds, designer handbags or smiles, there is an implied dishonesty. But there is nothing dishonest about breast augmentation. Fake breasts are right there, up front for all to see. That is often the point.

One of my favourite films is the ’80s brat-pack flick Weird Science. I love the premise that two testosterone-filled teenage boys design their perfect woman and she comes to life. In these days of comparatively affordable and safe cosmetic surgery, such a fantasy can be made real – but the well-adjusted modern male would never dream of asking his partner to go plastic fantastic. Doesn’t stop him secretly wondering what it might be like, though.
So what do men prefer: the organic fruit or the surgically modified? Each man is different. The only thing I can say for sure is that we will never tire of making the comparison.

Thanks to the simplicity of the procedure, the figures for the number of women having boob jobs are, well, swelling. While there are no definitive statistics for Australia, the rate of breast augmentation has quadrupled in the past 10 years, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery – making it the world’s most common cosmetic surgical procedure.

At my old company, the marketing director returned from a month’s “holiday” with new norks for a souvenir. Emboldened by alcohol at a work conference a few weeks later, I asked if it was true. She confirmed. She’d recently split up from her husband who used to tease her about being flat-chested, so she’d got them done to show him what he was missing. She said they made her feel confident, newly assertive and sexy. She even insisted that I feel
them to prove her point.

I have only got to grips with fake breasts on one other occasion. They looked so cartoonish, I almost expected them to sound like hooters. I tried; they didn’t. They felt strange: too solid, and the sensation was all mixed up for all concerned. It was like the buttons on the keyboard had been changed around; nothing I pressed got the expected result. I didn’t know how to handle them, they were also just too damn big and intimidating. The novelty quickly wore off.

But it’s not always a disappointing experience. The partner of an acquaintance of mine recently got implants. I asked him what he thought. “She’s the same woman, but, well, she’s just more. More confident; more sexy.”
I understood what he meant. It’s about personal growth on an emotional as well as a physical level.

I once had to interview two glamour models for a men’s magazine – one au naturel, one surgically enhanced. One girl was very “up-front” and feisty; the other painfully shy and awkward. Guess which was which? Breast augmentation isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about attitude and appetite. Hers. A more sexually confident woman is a more sexually attractive woman.