​2014: The Year in Tits

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Tits! Boobs! Breasts! Everyone's got them. Well, a lot of people do. Some women don't. Some men do. Some whip them out in public and some get them chopped off. Some get them pumped up and some twerk them to classical music. Yes, ten years since Janet Jackson flopped hers out at the Superbowl and nearly caused the world to end, tits are still going strong. In fact, they've had quite the year.

My tits went from a C to a DD this past year. And no, I haven't had a boob job. I know, right? It's OK, everyone finds that hard to believe, apart from that guy I let feel me up on the bus home while I swigged a Bacardi Breezer that time and he was like, 'Oh my god, these are so real… too real' and then died from too much boob realness. I think Victoria's Secret changed its size guide to flatter customers into buying more bras or something, but the point is, my tits are massive now. And I wasn't even born a girl. Despite major social issues, the destruction of the natural world and ongoing war and famine, if I can serve titties like this, the world can't be in that much trouble, can it?

Tits aren't just bags of fun, though. Tits are a political battleground. In the States, feminists have been trying to liberate their lady lumps with the admirable #FreeTheNipple campaign. Meanwhile, here in the UK, prudish middle-class feminists have been busy banning tits from supermarket shelves and doing their best to block Page 3. Feminists on both sides of the pond are decided on one thing, though—ladies should be able to whip their mammaries out whenever they need to if they are breastfeeding.

I've been scouring the internet for everything tit-based (turns out there's quite a lot on tits) so you don't have to, and I've put together a quivering mass of breast-based bounty for you to do with as you will. Ladies, and men with man-boobs, take that damn bra off, give the girls a rub, and relax for a moment. It's about to get titty up in here.

NO MORE PAGE 3
Following a campaign to ban sexual imagery from the venerated shelves of Co-op last year, in which Nutz and Zoo were forced to bag up like eager swingers chided into putting on condoms, No More Page 3 attempted to ban tits from the Sun. I can see where they're coming from. It is a bit weird to see a semi-naked body in a "family newspaper." In our culture. Because we have a helluva lot of shame around nudity and our bodies in general, so we associate nudity with sex and let's face it, Page 3 girls are there to look sexy to your average Sun reader.

And therein lies the problem. The fact that one of Britain's most read newspapers presents young women as something to stare at does send an unhelpful message. Like, women aren't just there to be naked, are we?

My solution would be to bring back the Page 7 Fella. No. I'd never heard of him either, but Google is your friend. Back in the 80s the Sun had a stab at equality and started publishing topless hunks on page seven. It didn't last long. Evidently, readers weren't overly impressed with the half-naked hunks.

Could Page 3 be on its way out, too? Tossed aside like a much loved but embarrassing old bra? We'll see. Rupert Murdoch tweeted, "Brit feminists bang on forever about page 3 … never buy paper" before adding, "I think old fashioned but readers seem to disagree."

Brit feminists bang on forever about page 3. I bet never buy paper I think old fashioned but readers seem to disagree.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) September 10, 2014

I doubt the Sun will be dropping Page 3 any time soon. In perhaps the cleverest, most cynical media move I have ever seen, the paper used Page 3 to launch its Coppafeel campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer and encourage women to check their breasts for lumps. Cue "Page 3 saved my life" headline, as "mom of four" Wendy Bush revealed that she'd had a lump removed from her breasts after reading the Sun's campaign. She said she probably wouldn't have checked her breast if it hadn't have been for Page 3. And I've yet to hear a feminist argument that tops that.

I say let's objectify men and women if we want true equality. I'm fucking sick of prudes telling us we can't be sexual and oh won't somebody please think of the children. If you don't like seeing tits in the Sun, don't buy it. But definitely do check your boobs for lumps.

FREE THE NIPPLE
You're free! To do what you want to do! Unless that means taking your top off in public, if you're a woman. Most places.

Why are women's nipples sexualized, covered up, made taboo, when men's are not? If anything, women's nipples have more of a right to see the light of day because they actually have some use beyond being tweaked and licked. Not that that stuff isn't important too, guys.

Hurrah, then, to the feminists who are fighting for the right to be both naked and a woman. It's currently illegal for women to be topless in 35 states in the US. I doubt many women are going to show up to the laundromat with their tits casually hanging out, but at least in some states they now have the option. And it seems to have cheered up Rumer Willis, bless her. Bless her and her boobs. Bless all boobs.

MADONNA'S TITS UPSET EVERYONE—AGAIN

God bless Madonna, too. Our Lady of the Perpetual Boob Outrage. She managed to piss everyone off again in 2014 and all she did was get her tits out, which, as we've agreed, is a bit of a double standard.

Madge treated the world to her nips as part of a fancy photo-shoot for Interview magazine, so it wasn't like anyone was forced to look at them or anything. And anyway, the Queen of Pop has been popping them out for years now. Decades. I doubt anyone who's had a television, internet connection, or magazine subscription at any point over the past 30 years has managed to escape seeing Madonna's mammas. As far as funbags are concerned, they're about as mainstream as mammaries can be.

The difference now, of course, is that Madonna is well into her 50s and, alas, not the sort of woman you might see on, for example, Page 3. Which is precisely why it is so important she keeps getting her tits out, if you ask me. She wasn't interested in society's pointless sexual taboos when she was 26 and I don't see why she should be interested in them at 56. As Madonna herself pointed out, why is it OK for everyone to crack one off to Kim Kardashian's butt crack but Instagram won't let her slip a bit of nip? She's got a hard, erect, nipply point. Because really, just who decided what parts of the body we are and are not allowed to see?

Madonna, if you're reading, I say you keep getting the girls out—so long as it annoys and delights people in equal measure.

FEED ME
Boobs aren't just there to annoy folks though, ya know. Babies like boobs, but for entirely different reasons to grown-up pigs like me and you, dear reader. Babies, it turns out, eat boobs! Or the milk that comes from them. That's actually what boobs are for.

Just don't you go doing anything ostentatious like feeding your hungry, crying baby with the boobs that nature and/or God gave you to soothe and sustain said baby, because that would be, like, totally ostentatious. According to arch dickhead Nigel Farage, commenting on the unfortunate case of a woman who was asked to cover up when she began breastfeeding at Claridge's. If I were ever to breastfeed (and yes, that is possible) I suspect I'd pop to the toilet if I were somewhere posh like Claridge's, as I am known for bowing to convention and respecting the establishment's unspoken rules, but not everyone is as deferential as me these days. Certainly not the mob of milky moms who showed up a few days later to breastfeed their babies and make their point in style. Now that's what you call a protest.

TITS ROUND UP
There was some science shit for boobs this year too, with boob experts figuring out that 3D mammograms are better for dense breasts, social researchers finding out that British men prefer tits to oh-so American ass, and women with bigger boobs were found to be bigger spenders when they go shopping. Also, Katie Price, she of the big boobs, had a reduction, while BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter Claira Hermet followed in the footsteps of Angelina Jolie and choose to have a double mastectomy—and talk about it publicly—as a precaution against cancer.

So there you go: that was the year in boobs. I've got nothing more to add other than this woman became famous for twerking her tits to Mozart. Nothing else tit-related happened in 2014.

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