I love mixed messages. I really do.

Back when I actually had money, I bought some new clothes, among them some bras. Shopping for undergarments is, in my opinion, almost as much fun as a root canal without anesthetic, and the reason for this is mixed messages.

See, in the US at least, manufacturers seem to think that the only people who might be even remotely interested in a patterned or colored bra are people who wear a 38C or smaller. The rest of us - and based on a random chest survey performed by walking down the street, I'm not in the minority here - only want bras that come in black, white, or beige, with no patterning, and a stupid little decorative thing right on the front. We also all want underwire bras with heavy-duty straps, bras that wind up looking like rejects from some kind of industrial plant - and not one that makes bras, either.

So, fine. I'm prepared to accept that, at 6'4" and 260 pounds, I'm not Cindy Crawford, and that I do need a supportive garment rather than some little piece of lace with spaghetti straps that's designed to show off breasts rather than support them. In fact, I probably would find only one appropriate situation for such a garment, and it wouldn't be on me for very long in that case.

However - and here's the mixed message - I also live in a culture that, no matter what surveys of men say, says that women should have large breasts. Preferably their bust size should exceed their IQ.

I can just see the seduction scene now. Candlelit room, music on the stereo, man lounging on the bed, partially dressed, while the woman is doing the sort of tentative striptease, then she gets to her bra, which appears to have been ordered out of Dr. Frankenstein's House of Bizarre Medical Equipment. Real mood-setter there. I'm aroused.

Women should have large breasts, but they should also be made to feel ashamed of them by only being able to purchase ugly garments that simultaneously cover their breasts completely and project an image not unlike what I imagine a chastity belt to have looked like.

For an area of the body that receives a lot of attention, much of it unwanted, we certainly are doing a good job of telling women that they should be ashamed of their femininity, and god forbid that they should want to take pride in the damn things, unless they are small and delicate, presumably matching the woman that they are attached to.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about here. I may have large breasts now, but they used to be larger. It was to the point that I had a reduction - because, although I should have large breasts, I should also know that large breasts are unattractive. Does anyone else see the illogic in this?

So that's the mixed message. And it comes from everyone, not just the manufacturers who think that women with large breasts have a white-beige-black fixation, or the ad execs who realize that large breasts, preferably barely covered, sell beer or cars or jeans or whatever. It comes from people on the street, both men and women, who seem to feel that it's absolutely okay to comment on a woman's breasts, either overtly (which is the only good thing about men and breasts, generally they just say it) or covertly (which is generally what women do). To me this is up there with some stranger going up to a pregnant woman, grabbing her stomach like she's Buddha, and excitedly getting in her face about when the baby's due. If I ever get pregnant and someone does that to me, they will be missing a few limbs. It is completely and totally unacceptable to assume that certain parts of the body are public domain.

But the messages that we are inculcated with are that, yes, breasts are public domain. They're plastered all over everything, from calendars to cakes and back again. This is as unacceptable to me as the idea that I - although mammarily gifted - am unattractive because I'm mammarily gifted. Does the entire Western world have a repressed mommy-fixation or something? Is it merely the idea that maybe god fucked up by giving women breasts and brains? (Stop her before she takes over the world!) Is it fear that, if women are allowed to set their own terms with regards to their bodies, they won't stop with breasts but will go on to plastic surgery, reproduction, and body weight, eventually winding up with equal rights based on the fact that they are the ones in possession of their bodies and men are not?

After all, I don't entirely buy the idea that sex sells. If sex sells, yet women do most of the buying and see most of the ads (particularly the ones on TV, as men seem congenitally unable to watch a commercial), then why do people keep plastering tits on everything? I sometimes think that a really clever ad agency could make a bundle just randomly inserting a giant breast like the one that chases Woody Allen in Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex, the one that's the size of a Taco Bell, into all their ads - you know, panning shot of the car on the road, in the background a field of cows and a giant tit rolling past. I suspect it's not that sex per se sells but that - a variation on the idea - if you buy the product, you will have these breasts, which - unless it's Jordan doing the advertising - are generally small and attractive, appealingly packaged in the kind of low-cut, strapless little dress that you can't wear if you've got to wear the industrial bra most of us do. It's like - if the garment already looks like shit, let's not waste any effort in making it a different color or pattern or whatever, we'll just use up the nine jillion yards of beige that we've got. God forbid we should do anything different - the bitches won't buy it if it's not unattractive.

I resent the idea that different ideals are pitched in different places. Large breasts are promoted as the ideal - except in the clothing industry. I resent that we can't just assume that people have differently shaped bodies and should therefore be given a choice of styles - the shoe market seems to have figured out that they can sell the same shoes to women with size 5 feet and size 12, so why not the lingerie industry? I resent any idea that puts any portion of my body into the public domain. If I want to walk down the High Street wearing a fashionable (ie tight and revealing) shirt, you do not have the right to comment on my breasts. I resent the assumption that I will only buy certain products. If I'm not given a choice, how do you know what I'll buy? And don't even get me started on the hideous torture that is plastic surgery of any kind.

I resent the idea that I should be ashamed of my body in any way. I'll decide when and where to be ashamed, thanks, and I don't need any help from anyone who's not involved in my body, which is, was, and always will be only me, because I'm the only brain being hauled around by said body. I do not fail to measure up to your standards, nor does anyone else who has non-societally-accepted body measurements. Your standards are fucking stupid, arbitrary, and generally non-existent on actual humans.

I want all these assumptions and ideas changed before I have to start killing unredeemable mendicant assholes. Construction sites around the world, look out!

Patching up genetic damage with a two by four,

Channon