The Case of the Missing Areolae: Race and Breast Reduction Surgery — Page 8:
36 Using the metaphors of “text” and “territory” to represent female breasts troubles me. Perpetuating this perspective seems highly suspect in any effort to resist the oppressive hand of patriarchy. Alternatives for communication exist. However, academia has fixed on text as the ruling medium of messaging, which then itself reifies and reinforces patriarchal domination. I see no way of feminizing “text” or “territory.”
37 The terrain remains contested. Uncle G, the husband of one of the aunts, announced to the world that his wife’s breasts were like that of an aircraft carrier from which one could launch fighter planes. She felt disgusted, wanting to have nothing to do with any of them. But she has no choice, no say in the matter. She is just a child, and a female child at that.
38 When women take the message of responsibility for their breasts to heart and seek breast reduction as a means of exerting control over their “out-of-control” overly large breasts, they are prodded and questioned and have to pass tests and rules of thumb. Furthermore, as a result of over-emphasis on the possibility of breast cancer, “being a woman with breasts has come to be defined as a risk factor” (Davis 50). No matter which path you take, the place you get to is that being a woman is risky.
39 This she knew all along. This came at the time of her birth, even before that, at the time of her conception. The message drummed into her mind from time before time, is that being female is deadly.
40 Women are set up for an impossible conflict. They are to protect this part of their body, which does not really belong to them, but when that body part becomes diseased, it can kill them. So something they are told is not part of them in life becomes part of them in death. Therefore, opting for breast reduction surgery can come to be interpreted as fiddling with a time bomb or messing with property that does not belong to her. Breasts belong to men. They signify femininity. Within the patriarchal hetero-normative world-view, femininity exists only for the pleasure of men. Whether lesbian women view female breasts differently than men do is not within the scope of this essay. Breasts belong to men in their role as sexual beings and also as members of the medical establishment when breasts became medicalized. Finally, breasts also belong to men because it is men who, in general, and with their medicine, exert control over the discovery, diagnosis, control, and removal of female breasts when cancer comes into the picture. And when cancer comes into the picture, patriarchy still retains control, burning or removing the breast(s) not to empower the woman, as was done for Amazons, but in an attempt to maintain her now disempowered existence in a culture, where, breastless, she is no longer feminine and therefore no longer of value.