Intuition | Sizing up the female infatuation with big breasts

Curiously, while most of us spend our lives trying to avoid surgery, more than half a million women elect to go under the knife annually, all because they're unhappy with their breasts or, as one leading surgeon gracefully puts it, "two stupid mounds of flesh."

In a survey of 50,000 women and men, almost three-quarters of the female respondents said they desired fuller, rounder breasts. Men were a slightly happier lot: Only 44 percent said they wouldn't mind if their partners had larger ones. However, in the same poll, 85 percent of the women claimed utter satisfaction with their partners' size.

In other words, women are perpetually unhappy with their appearance, ever desirous of change, while men are swell the way they are.

These revelations and more are included in Susan Seligson's witty and illuminating book, Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front, to be released next month.

And, no, the brassiere size is not a typo.

"All too often my face plays a supporting role," she says of her naturally big breasts. They've had a life of their own, and now, as luck would have it, have a book of their own, too.

In the chapter "Our Boobs, Ourselves," a young 34D woman complains about how she's constantly judged by what genetics gave her. "Smaller boob cleavage equals cute and classy. Large boob cleavage equals trailer-park trash."

In interviews with strippers, cosmetic surgeons, and women who have opted for breast augmentation or reduction, Seligson reveals that mammaries have become an even greater obsession now that women can alter them. Surgery hasn't set us free.

"Some of the models were the thirtyish divorcees. That's where the boobs come in," says N. Morgen Hagen, former editor of Busty Beauties magazine. "If you're not Playboy pretty, you gotta have a gimmick. The prettier they were, the less they needed to pump themselves up."

In other words, if the face proves ample distraction, the breasts are notional. That's why older women fight so hard against the inevitable droop of age when, as Seligson, age 51, notes, "fat, which abhors a vacuum, moves in."

Ironically, given our craving for comfort in this country, when people parade around in gym clothes and sneakers everywhere, and teens take to the streets in pajamas and slippers, bras are an afterthought even when breasts rarely are.

Few stores take the time to fit women correctly, further evidence of the decline in service. Many women go around wearing bras that do nothing for support while doing everything to garner the wrong sort of attention.

You can tell when a woman is wearing the wrong bra because her breasts wobble as if she wasn't wearing one and her avoirdupois, fore and aft, visibly protrudes under her attire like unwanted popovers.

Many lingerie emporiums disregard the larger-breasted woman. The ubiquitous Victoria's Secret doesn't sell brassieres in Seligson's size. And, gee, who is that ad campaign geared toward, anyway?

Instead, most stores sell bras that encourage disrobing, undergarments designed more to be seen by men than to be worn by women. Fashion historian Anne Hollander deems these bras "licensed frivolities" that have "no function but to delight."

Then again, when it comes to style, Hollander notes, "comfort is of no interest and never has been."

Women are complicit in the problem. They will gladly pay $100 for shoes to be worn sporadically, yet balk at spending $65 on a well-made, properly sized and comfortable bra to be used daily, one that fits and is the foundation, literally, of looking and feeling good.

Without a good bra, the rest is Jell-O.

What the modern woman craves are large boobs attached to a slim frame, Jessica Rabbit, a body type that Seligson points out doesn't exist in nature but thrives everywhere in popular culture and the plastic surgeon's operating room.

As the noted philosopher Robert Rey observed, "Inner beauty is disappearing in this country."

OK, so he's the celebrity cosmestic surgeon on Dr. 90210, but you get the point.