Causing a little boobquake every day
Mia and I hiked to the German Tourist Club for a beer and a spirited Scrabble game last weekend when we passed by a cute 30-something couple. The woman smiled at us, but the guy’s eyes went quickly from our faces to Mia’s chest.
The girl has a rack.
“Did you see that?”
“What?” she said, obliviously. 
“Sweetie, you just created a bit of a Boobquake on Mount Tam!”
“Oh, did he look at my tits? Whatever.”
I guess it is a “whatever” if that’s what people focus on all the time; I wouldn’t know, as life
has not given me my fair share of mammary action, let’s say.
I have no idea what it’s like to have men
stare at only a certain part of my anatomy. Oh, men have sometimes stared in general and that’s obviously been quite nice — if I find him attractive, that is. Funny how we think he’s a creep if he’s not.
All girls discover the power of their breasts once they develop them — or not. Guys who never paid attention to you suddenly act, well, like boobs around you. Breasts have been behind many a middle school romance and many a middle school depression. The girls who develop early were the ones who either used their breasts to their advantage or who hated their body. We flat-chested girls watched in a mixture of awe, jealousy and gratitude.
I’ll never be able to enter a Pamela Anderson lookalike contest. I have accepted that. However, I have, thankfully, been rewarded with what used to be the most-ogled body part — a butt — before boobs muscled in to the No. 1 spot.
J.Lo and Beyonce helped us booty types regain a little of our stature, enough for butt cracks to be considered the new cleavage — although, honestly, those gals are working it from both sides.
I can’t say I’d be a happier person if I had bigger boobs, but you bet I love it when a certain bra or a shirt or some combination thereof gives me the appearance of actual cleavage (of course, in light of my recent wardrobe malfunction, sometimes being small works to one’s advantage).
And, fortunately, it hasn’t been an issue with the guys I’ve dated — because I wouldn’t have dated them in the first place, doh — although I’m sure none of them would have objected if they woke up one day and my boobs were magically, naturally, bigger (smaller? Hmm …).
Why are we so obsessed with breasts? I don’t know, but I look at them, too. It’s easy to tell the fake ones from the real — they’re so many of them around! So many men have said although they hate the feel of fake boobs, “They’re so nice to look at.”
Sure, I do my share of ogling men’s butts. As for a guy’s package, unless we go back to the days of the cock rockers, it’s like Vegas; you place your bets and pray. The truth is revealed once they’re naked. There aren’t any dick jobs … yet.
Ah, but here’s where we gals have it slightly over you guys — big dicks are not only nice to look at, but they feel good, too!
- Where do you stand on boobs — big or small?
- Are you a boobs or butts person?
- If you’re a woman, do you wish you were bigger? Smaller?
- What about fake boobs?
The boyfriend-teen smackdown
We were near the end of a family-like dinner, The Kid, Sean and me, when Trent said something rude to me.
I let it slide — Sean was our guest and was a bit embarrassed — although inside I was pissed.
“Why are you letting him get away with that?” Sean asked me later, as I washed the dishes and he dried.
“Well, I know he’s really upset because he bombed his history test.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s not really upset at me.” 
“That doesn’t mean he should be rude, which he’s been a number of times. Stop excusing him! Do you want me to say something?”
“No, let it be.”
Sean sighed deeply and started drying a little more vigorously; I thought for sure he was going to take the glaze off my plates. Now, I had a rude kid, a pissed-off mom and a frustrated boyfriend on my hands.
Nice!
Sean was right; Trent has dissed me from time to time. I’ve tended to shrug it off as a teenage thing — I pick my battles carefully, opting for the biggies like drugs and booze. Still, I don’t like rudeness from anyone, and I certainly don’t want to indulge it in my own kid — but I wrestle with how much of that Sean should be part of.
How much parenting should a boyfriend do?
I asked the experts — my friends — and like most experts, they were all over the map.
“You’ve been seeing each other long enough. It’s absolutely his right to say something,” Sara said when she, Mia and I met for coffee the next morning.
“I don’t think so,” Mia said, shaking her head. “He’s not his stepdad and you guys aren’t married or even living together. You could split tomorrow, and Trent knows that. Sean doesn’t have full creds. If anything, you should tell Rob about the rudeness so he could say something. You may be divorced, but you’re still the mom and he’s still the dad.”
Both of them made sense, especially since my discipline techniques wouldn’t be anything I’d put on a resume; sometime they work, sometimes not. Like a lot of moms — especially single or divorced moms — I tend to feel guilty. I just wimp out.
But in what way should my partner step into the fray, if he should at all?
It’s not like we’re talking about “go to your room” or “washing your mouth out with soap” disciplining. And Trent’s hardly a baby or a little kid who’ll work the angles, like Single Mom Seeking blogged about. He’s as tall as Sean and he shaves as often (sometimes more, because it’s still new and exciting).
Honestly, though, it would be so nice to have the support of another adult saying, “Don’t talk that way to your mother!” That’s one thing married couples have that single parents don’t. Still, there’s a part of me that thinks divorced or not, parents need to be a united front so the kids know where the boundaries are and, guess what? — the front exists at mom’s house and dad’s house.
- Who disciplines better, you or your spouse/ex-spouse?
- What role should a boyfriend/girlfriend have, if any?
- Are men better at disciplining than women?
Other single parenting dilemmas:
Help! I saw my dad’s girlfriend naked!
photo © j0yce – Fotolia.com
The end of the world as we know it
I’m not a big fan of those multibillion-dollar apocalyptic movies like “Doomsday” and “I Am Legend”; there’s just so may ways you can destroy the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty and Golden Gate Bridge without getting somewhat numb to it all.
Not to get all 2012 on you, but I do feel the apocalypse is coming, it’s just not going to be in the form of a comet smashing into the Earth, another Ice Age, a pandemic or an alien invasion. In fact, it isn’t going to destroy the world at all. It’s going to be a more personal apocalypse, just for us Homo sapiens.
And it’s going to come with just a whimper, certainly (if you read further) not a bang. From us.
We’re just going to stop having sex. 
Not me, mind you, but a lot of other people, the ones who should be having sex because they still can make babies (and thus populate the world).
I know it sounds weird, but there have been a few things in the news lately that have led me to this conclusion.
A few months ago, I read that quite a number of women in a survey said that fitting into their “skinny” jeans again would be better than having sex (this according to Special K, which sponsored the survey so, granted, it’s not entirely unbiased). Of course, they’d be able to fit into those jeans quicker if they had an energetic romp a few times a week, but whatever.
In any event, that shows you what a lot of women think about sex; not much, especially when those $125 pair of size 28 True Religion jeans look so friggin’ hot on!
Oh, but don’t go pointing your finger at the ladies. Guys aren’t stepping up to the sexual plate, either. In fact, most of the men who participated in the MALES study (that’s Men’s Attitudes to Life Events and Sexuality) put having a satisfying sex life right up there with having “a nice home”; in other words, dead last (because have you ever been with a man who jumped at the chance to help pick out the living room curtains? No!). This from 27,839 men ages 20 to 75 in eight countries — a pretty broad selection. More important than sex was “being in good health” (OK, makes sense); “a harmonious family life” (ditto); and “good relationship with partner/wife” (which is great, but it would be a hell of a lot better if you were going down on her nightly; just an idea).
OK, but what does that have to do with the apocalypse, you might ask.
Not much, except some UC Berkeley researchers discovered that some freaky things have been happening to frogs. Like, gender confusion. Some frogs living in water contaminated by a common weed killer began acting weird: they hardly developed sperm, their testosterone levels were practically nil and they lost their mojo, forgetting to “sing” the calls that not only attracted the ladies to a personal party but also threw the stink-eye to their competitors.
In other words, they were becoming like manpurse-toting modern-day male novelists — too cool for sex.
And the few that, thankfully, didn’t had other, uh, interesting, results. They started to resemble post-op trannies, not only producing estrogen and developing female external reproductive organs, but acting like a cougar at happy hour, flirting with other other male frogs and even letting them fertilize their eggs (yes, the males had eggs).
Which grew into healthy frogs — male frogs.
OK, we’re not frogs, but there are parts of the country where the same levels of the herbicide — known as atrazine — are in our drinking water.
So — follow me here — a good portion of women would rather be skinny than have sex, and a good portion of men would rather be enjoying a lot of other emo things instead of banging their old lady. OK, that portion of the population can go over in a corner somewhere and have their genitals shrivel up. But if the rest of the guys who place sex a little higher than having a house straight out of a Pottery Barn catalog are drinking water, it’s likely they’ll either:
- become demasculinized or
- become feminized, and give birth to boys only
Who will either not be interested in sex, or will, as long as they can turn all girlie and let some guy do the nasty deed so they can have a nice little family of boys.
See where this is leading? It’s just like a Cormac McCarthy novel; it’s not going to end pretty.
I know that I obsess a bit about sex — who’s not having it, who’s having it but not enjoying it, who’s wanting it with me, etc. — but this time, I have a good reason.
So, if you want to save the planet, please start having more sex. No, girls, those jeans do not make your butt look fat. Yes, guys, you can place a pair of European overstuffed club chairs in a modern living room (just pay attention to the accessories).
And whatever you do, don’t drink the water!
Photo © Nathalie P – Fotolia.com
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