Breast Implications #1: Introduction

During my last semester at Beloit College, my senior seminar created and executed a project on the cultural implications of breasts. We looked a societal, cultural, environmental, and medical implications of breasts and created a zine that was distributed to our campus and we also gave a presentation open to the campus on our research.

I was really proud of this project not only because the three of us in the senior seminar designed and completed the project all on our own, but also with the resulting research that we found. I thought this research might be of interest to my readers, so I've decided to create a new series with the different sections of our research. I will be writing posts about each section in the zine that we created. We had creative pieces and our academic research was split into three sections: societal, cross-cultural, and environmental and medical (we did have a section on the historical implications of breasts, but the person who was doing that research had to leave the class).

Our project was called "Breasts: Can You See Us Now?" But I will be calling the series "Breast Implications." I will be posting in this series either every day or every other day until I have gotten through our research. I hope you find this research interesting and thought-provoking. There are definitely things that were left out because we did not have limitless resources and time, but this is what we created for the public.

The first installment of this series is the introduction to the series as well as the introduction that we wrote for our zine, which follows:

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Dear Breast Enthusiasts,

This zine (these posts) was created by the Women's and Gender Studies senior seminar, spring 2009, as an homage to our collective Women's and Gender Studies journey. We have become a tight knit group, sharing stories and experiences, but we realized along the way that we all share a fascination with breasts. There they are, but there they aren't. Even though as women in the class, we realize we each have breasts, we often don't think about them and this project allowed a space for us to become more breast-savvy. We would like to pass the particulars on to you and provide you with a resource for you to start thinking about breasts in a meaningful way. Hence, we offer you our zine (posts).

Even though we live in a breast-centric culture and our lives are filled with images of breasts, little is discussed as far as their social and biological functions. Our purpose in making this zine (these posts) was to "milk" the issue. Because invisibility perpetuates oppressive norms, we want to make visible the significance of breasts in our society, the environment, and the world. In this zine (these posts) you will find information on the breast as an environment within an environment, an examination of our sexual obsession, breastfeeding as a cultural decision, and outrageous societal statistics.

We hope that this zine allows you a space to think about your investments in breasts and the meanings of breasts to you. Enjoy your exploration!

Love,
Your Campus Gynecologists*

*In this use of gynecologists, we are referencing the actual meaning of the word: the study of women.