Breasts: Our Most Public Private Parts
"I believe that every woman has a breast story," says Meema Spadola, who has spun that assertion into a much-praised documentary on the subject and, subsequently, a book calledBreasts. Between its colorful covers is an epic saga of pleasure, power, affection, woe, consternation, fear, anticipation, and ready-or-not metamorphosis shared by females age 2 to 90.  Because breasts are a hard-to-conceal badge of womanhood, 9-year-old Ali finds that her new curves "shoved her out of the world of childhood and into puberty." How those around a girl treat this change makes a huge difference to self-esteem. "Tie those things down, you might poke somebody's eye out," a mother kids her 13-year-old daughter. Others recall being teased much less kindly within their families for developing too fast or not fast enough, and dodging catcalls and far worse from strangers who suddenly felt free to comment on their bodies.Leaping beyond the angst of puberty and adolescence, Spadola thoughtfully probes into how women feel about their breasts--whether natural, enhanced, or downsized by surgery--in relation to work, love, baby nurturing, aging, cancer, sex, and friendship. "Breasts are aggressive," says one woman. "Men feel compelled to look at them, so sometimes I feel like it's rude to other women to show too much breast." Whether indulgent or insightful,Breastsdelivers on its promise to reveal what women really feel and how their self-images help shape the course of their lives.--Francesca Coltrera