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Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts
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46/99
Critics
47/99
Readers
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Scholars
41/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
16/99
Rating
78/99
Volume
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About This Book
An innovative investigation of the five strange worlds that worship women's chests After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy, but after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? An experienced sleuth, she resolved to venture behind the scenes to uncover the social and cultural significance of breasts. Tits Up reveals the diverse truths of mammary glands from the strip club to the operating room, from the nation's oldest human milk bank to the fitting rooms of bra designers. Thornton draws insights from plastic surgeons, lactation consultants, body-positive witches, lingerie models, and "free the nipple" activists to explore the status of breasts as emblems of femininity. She examines how women's chests have become a billion-dollar business, as well as a stage for debates about race, class, gender, and desire. Everywhere she turns, Thornton encounters chauvinistic myths that quietly justify restrictions to women's bodily autonomy and diminish women's political status. Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, Thornton has one overriding ambition―to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice.
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Reviews
"Required reading that expertly covers the ways in which social constructions, sexualization, and economic viability influence people's views of bodies, their own and others'."
"It's to Thornton's credit that, her polemical tone notwithstanding, she is open-minded enough to entertain paradoxes ..."
"Regarding herself as a mere vessel, Thornton insists, in an aside on method, that 'judgment gets in the way of vigorous research.' Her academic training, though, at times gets in the way of her aspirations to the role of, as she puts it, 'titty connoisseur' ..."
"Thornton's research and interviews are exhaustive, entertaining and enlightening ..."
"With intelligence and humor, Thornton examines how breasts can help women create new visions of themselves."
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