FREEDOM Just Breasts

The female body must be desexualized so that it doesn’t scream sex in every possible situation. Portraying a female body as sexual should be a choice and happen with diversity; it should not be the only way to represent a woman’s body.

The female body is not there to satisfy all men. 
Breasts do not exist to please men.

Women are tired of being reduced to objects of sexual arousal.
Freedom from being sexualized.
Freedom from being an object desired whenever a man feels like it.

Sexualizing is taking the right to define, to claim interpretive authority.
To consider oneself entitled to stare at a girl’s body, whether she seems to like it or not. To take the right to decide that “because I find her sexy, that is her most important trait.”

In ancient Egypt, Isis was the mother goddess. Through her breast milk, she was believed to connect pharaohs with the divine. Pharaohs are depicted suckling at Isis’s breast at birth, coronation, or death, as the milk was thought to grant immortality.

With Christianity, the breast took on a new role. According to the Old Testament, a man should enjoy his wife’s breasts for potency and lifelong monogamy. But in early Christianity, theologians began to see the female body as a threat to spiritual perfection. Women drew attention away from God and tempted sin. The breast became dangerous. Naked breasts were painted only on sinners cast into the gates of hell, and some even had their breasts mutilated.

In the 1990s, silicone breasts arrived; many began to have surgery, and a new ideal emerged that made breasts even more sexualized, and the topless trend of the ’70s disappeared.

The view of women’s breasts as sex objects versus milk producers has varied throughout history, with women themselves having little say in the matter. The function and value of breasts have rather been determined by men, who decided whether they should be seen as good, evil, erotic, or nurturing at any given time.

Breasts have historically been the most erotically charged body part in the Western world. In our century, breasts have become a commodity. Whereas women once “sold” their breasts as wet nurses, they now sell them to the media, entertainment, fashion, and pornography industries. And women are willing to pay to increase their sexual value.

Many women still live under strict social conditioning about how they must be, and women who dare to embrace their liberated status are quickly oppressed. But why do women still get fined or arrested for breastfeeding or sunbathing topless? Is it to protect women, or to protect men who “cannot control themselves”?

Women are expected to manage their sexuality when exposed to male bodies, while men are not expected to do the same regarding female bodies. Similarly, men’s disgust at exposure to unwanted female bodies is given more respect than women’s disgust at unwanted male bodies.

Sexualization and objectification undermine the principle of the human as an independent subject and can restrict women’s ability to protect their bodily integrity.

I am extremely tired of women being reduced to mere objects, even when it’s done with good intentions. Can’t women’s and men’s bodies just be skin, bones, organs, and blood?

If you look for an explanation as to why men are so interested in women’s breasts, one reason may be a hormone released during breastfeeding. When breastfeeding, the child stimulates the mother’s breasts, sending signals through the nervous system to the brain. These signals cause the hormone oxytocin to be released.

When the hormone is released, it helps the milk flow in the woman’s breasts and creates a strong bond between the child and the mother.

The same hormone is released when a man and woman are attracted to each other and the man stimulates the woman’s breasts in sexual situations. The hormone drives their desire to care for each other, resembling the strong bond between a child and mother during breastfeeding.

From a biological perspective, humans’ fixation on breasts is quite strange. Humans are the only mammals fascinated by breasts from a sexual perspective. No other male mammals stimulate female breasts during foreplay and sex.

And women are the only female mammals whose breasts grow larger during puberty.

Simply put, a woman’s breasts are udders—the same as on a cow or a sheep. Their function is to produce milk for newborn offspring. In our society, however, breasts have taken on an extremely sex-obsessed role, and many are provoked by women who breastfeed publicly.

A woman’s breasts are not a sexual organ.

The sexualization of women’s breasts is a major problem; it makes many unhappy with how they look. It’s not even allowed to breastfeed anywhere. Everyone should have the right to be topless if they wish. When many women on the southern Spanish beaches let their bikini tops fall, it’s not “just” breasts—it’s also a symbol of the freedom embedded in the culture and, not least, a tribute to the strong women who, more or less voluntarily, have helped to nuance perceptions of femininity, equality, and sex worldwide.

The fact that women are depicted as sexualized objects more than men can also be understood as a democracy issue. Sexualization and objectification undermine the principle of the human as an independent subject and can restrict women’s ability to protect their bodily integrity.

Through sexist imagery in media and advertising, gender norms and power structures in society are legitimized and reinforced. Every society committed to human rights and equality should actively counter sexist sexualization and challenge stereotypical ideas about gender.

With gender equality comes freedom.

Just Breasts was my contribution to Designforum’s 2015 competition, where it was also exhibited at Sven-Harry’s Art Museum in Stockholm.