Boobs...Yuck! - Page 3

[mambera]

Originally Posted by StrongBeliever

More simple yet... Hooray for boobies of all shapes and sizes, high or low. Hooray for no bra. There is my point.

I'm with you.

What's yours?

That it's a huge stretch to draw conclusions about average body types in other times and places - never mind their dietary habits!! - based on the idealized bodies depicted in their art.

And further, that the statement "toxic chemicals in the diet lead to saggy boobs" is a totally unsupported and, to my ears, kind of silly assertion. Although if you can link a controlled study to support your point I'll be happy to reconsider mine.

[Rivka5]

Originally Posted by StrongBeliever

I was referencing a comment from another poster related to how all of those old-school paintings(many of them painted prior to the 1800s) don't have saggy baggy boobs... Even when the women in them tend to be a little "fluffier" which these days seems to correlate with "sag".

Back then they just DIDN'T have the toxic chemical exposure in their food that we do today. Even the people who were "impoverished" and had limited diets were still eating better than many people today... Minus the additives and taking into account the fact that the used natural farming and didn't have depleted soil. A healthy resilient body requires quality input. Compare the diet of an impoverished woman from a couple hundred years ago to the standard American diet eaten by many women today, and I'll bet the impoverished gal ate better. I think it is safe to assume that a body taking in only quality natural food and very little toxic crap would have healthier tissue(maybe far better boobs) than we have today. Generation after generation has been consuming more and more junk, and we are what our Grandmothers ate(your diet effects what is expressed in your DNA). Yeah, I am making some generalizations, but think about it and do some research. I say "the 1800s" and I might be off... But I *think* that is around the time that refined grains and sugars became available, and the nastiness in our food has just gotten worse from that point... Not to mention the environmental toxins that came about with industrialization around the same time.

I wonder where you're getting your data on the healthiness of the historical diets of the poor. Just to take one example, rickets was extremely common among northern Europeans and Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. One reason why death in childbirth was so common was that women's pelvises had often been deformed by rickets.

Concerns about diet quality are probably at an all-time high, but stop and reflect for a moment: have you ever seen someone with rickets, scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, or pellagra? Have you ever considered night blindness to be a normal symptom of pregnancy? Why are these all diseases of the past or diseases of parts of the world without modern agriculture?

As for toxins, mercury was a common ingredient in 18th and 19th century medicines, often at heavy concentrations. Lead was in common use as a cosmetic, and alcohol was often contaminated with lead during the distilling process or via adulteration with sugar of lead. And that's just two examples.

It's tempting to romanticize the past, but seriously: diets were not healthier.

[StrongBeliever]

Originally Posted by mambera

I'm with you.

That it's a huge stretch to draw conclusions about average body types in other times and places - never mind their dietary habits!! - based on the idealized bodies depicted in their art.

And further, that the statement "toxic chemicals in the diet lead to saggy boobs" is a totally unsupported and, to my ears, kind of silly assertion. Although if you can link a controlled study to support your point I'll be happy to reconsider mine.

Eh, sure it's a stretch. I did say I was generalizing and that is was all subjective. Just speculation, theories and all. I think it's pretty safe to say that their was less toxic exposure back in the day, and we all know toxic exposure does nasty stuff to the body. Therefore I think it is safe to assume that someone from that time(as their art might be saying) might have a healthier body.

I don't think it is unsupported to say that poor diet is one of the causes of saggy boobs. Chemical exposure is part of poor diet, though certainly not the only factor that might lead to unhealthy tissue. We know that eating a poor unbalanced diet and smoking cigarettes(as a for-instance on chemical exposure) can lead to less collagen in the skin resulting in saggy skin(wrinkles!). Is it to far to assume that saggy skin might also mean saggy breasts? I'm not going to go digging for studies that support my theory... I think it's pretty clear cut that if you are exposed to multiple chemicals that are present in our modern world(though whatever means) and eating food that is missing key nutrients, that you will have a less healthy body. Boobs are part of your body. It makes sense to me.

[peainthepod]

Originally Posted by WatermelonSnow

It must have been the superior diets that kept the average life expectancy in 1880 at around 39 years.

Actually, that's not quite accurate. Life expectancy and life span are not synonymous. With infant mortality very high, the life expectancy averages were dragged way down. People who survived to adulthood long ago had a fair chance of living to be quite old, barring events like plague and war.

A common misunderstanding is that life expectancy means average life span. This is untrue since, for example, life expectancy takes into account infant mortality and hence while in some age life expectancy may had been low, several people may had had long lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_ex..._vs._life_span

[StrongBeliever]

Originally Posted by Rivka5

I wonder where you're getting your data on the healthiness of the historical diets of the poor. Just to take one example, rickets was extremely common among northern Europeans and Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. One reason why death in childbirth was so common was that women's pelvises had often been deformed by rickets.

Concerns about diet quality are probably at an all-time high, but stop and reflect for a moment: have you ever seen someone with rickets, scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, or pellagra? Have you ever considered night blindness to be a normal symptom of pregnancy? Why are these all diseases of the past or diseases of parts of the world without modern agriculture?

As for toxins, mercury was a common ingredient in 18th and 19th century medicines, often at heavy concentrations. Lead was in common use as a cosmetic, and alcohol was often contaminated with lead during the distilling process or via adulteration with sugar of lead. And that's just two examples.

It's tempting to romanticize the past, but seriously: diets were not healthier.

Many of the diseases you state are post-industrial diseases. They came about with the advent of more modern agriculture and "medicine" and food production. I think that people who stuck to their native, whole food, traditional diets were less likely to have these problems. You're using the the Northern Europeans and the Americans in the 18th and 19th century... Big proponents of white flour and white sugar. I was thinking more along the lines of more rural, isolated groups in this period... The folks who hadn't yet jumped on the trash food bandwagon. The folks who were too "poor" to afford the fancy white foods or who didn't have access to them. Folks who still ate out of gardens and were able to raise animals.

Modern agriculture didn't do anyone any favors. But that is from the mouth of a Traditional Foodie. We certainly aren't seeing any less disease these days, it's just of a different variety. Sad thing is, they are ALL related to diet and the crazy things we do to it/leave out of it/want to add to it.

[mom2happy]

It's genetics!

Why do some woman have stretch marks all over their abdomens from one baby and when they only gained 25 pounds and other's have 4 kids and gained 65 lbs each time and have no marks.
Why has my DH NEVER had one cavity when his diet was ring dings and soda growing up?
Why do some skinny healthy eating athlete women have cellulite on the back of their thighs?
Why can some people smoke a pack a day and live till 100 when others can eat a diet of organic greens and salmon and die of cancer at 50?
I think it's one of those things.
I grew up with a hippie mom who fed us all whole foods and I never wore bras. My boobies are dilapidated when Im done nursing.
But, my belly (when I stop eating chocolate every night) will be great again.
For some reason that part of me is allowed to stretch, but the breast skin- NOT.
Oh well, we get what we get and do the best we can with it.
Still, I wish implants werent dangerous.
Oh, and we should eat organic whole foods even though they wont give us nice boobs.
Trying to have fun with this, but it is hard to take when a body part causes a feeling of not good enoughness. I know- cuz I have em.

[~PurityLake~]

I love your posts here, StrongBeliever. What's not to love about natural health on a natural family living forum?

[CorasMama]

when, exactly, is "back then" and "back in the day"? I'm confused, because you are saying it's pre-1800, but then not including the 18th century (1700-1799) in this time of magical, toxin-free, healthy well-rounded diets. And which isolated rural communities? Because, afaik, infant mortality as well as maternal mortality are at pretty much a low point, especially when compared to "long ago". Also, rickets is not a recent development.

[WatermelonSnow]

Originally Posted by StrongBeliever

Many of the diseases you state are post-industrial diseases. They came about with the advent of more modern agriculture and "medicine" and food production. I think that people who stuck to their native, whole food, traditional diets were less likely to have these problems. You're using the the Northern Europeans and the Americans in the 18th and 19th century... Big proponents of white flour and white sugar. I was thinking more along the lines of more rural, isolated groups in this period... The folks who hadn't yet jumped on the trash food bandwagon. The folks who were too "poor" to afford the fancy white foods or who didn't have access to them. Folks who still ate out of gardens and were able to raise animals.

Modern agriculture didn't do anyone any favors. But that is from the mouth of a Traditional Foodie. We certainly aren't seeing any less disease these days, it's just of a different variety. Sad thing is, they are ALL related to diet and the crazy things we do to it/leave out of it/want to add to it.

That's interesting. From what I've been reading, beriberi was first described in 2697 B.C.E in the Niching, and rickets, a common disease in 17th century England, was first described by Arnold de Boot in 1649. A disease likely to be scurvy was described in the Ebers papyrus, dating to 1500 B.C.E. At any rate, Hippocrates definitively wrote about scurvy in 460 B.C.E. I wonder if there is evidence that rates have increased since those times.

[StrongBeliever]

Originally Posted by CorasMama

when, exactly, is "back then" and "back in the day"? I'm confused, because you are saying it's pre-1800, but then not including the 18th century (1700-1799) in this time of magical, toxin-free, healthy well-rounded diets. And which isolated rural communities? Because, afaik, infant mortality as well as maternal mortality are at pretty much a low point, especially when compared to "long ago". Also, rickets is not a recent development.

Yeah, I'm talking pre-1800... That 1800s seems to be the definitive time when poorer quality food became readily available. Sure, there was refined foods around prior to this, in the 18th century, but not to the degree to come later. Do some research on the work of Weston A. Price. He was a doctor in the early 1900s who happened to catch the tail-end of many of these rural isolated communities before they were tainted with modern crap food. I'm not talking infant and maternal mortality, I'm talking how a healthy diet is bound to lead to a healthier body. Of course I understand that a healthy body is more likely to survive childbirth and bear healthy babies... But I think our gains in that regard today are more due to knowledge than proper diet.

Rickets is not a recent development... Rickets is from undernourishment which had been around a long time. I might be wrong(I am no history major), but I have a hunch that if you were to look at the populations that suffered from these diseases of undernourishment, it will be populations that relied heavily on staple agricultural products(grains, beans, ect) before the advent of fortified foods(I am get an image of some grubby little boy working in a dark textile factory all day and going home to eat his daily bowl of gruel). And I would guess that many of the modern cases of these diseases present themselves in the same way... People who are dependent upon staple foods which they often can't get, and who are trying to emulate other cultures in their eating habits and suffer for it.

[CorasMama]

Yeah, I've read all about Weston A Price (who, btw, was a dentist, not a doctor.)

[graceomalley]

Originally Posted by peainthepod

Actually, that's not quite accurate. Life expectancy and life span are not synonymous. With infant mortality very high, the life expectancy averages were dragged way down. People who survived to adulthood long ago had a fair chance of living to be quite old, barring events like plague and war.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_ex..._vs._life_span

The average age of death in 1880 was 40.5.

[StrongBeliever]

Originally Posted by CorasMama

Yeah, I've read all about Weston A Price (who, btw, was a dentist, not a doctor.)

Why mince about it? I know he was a dentist(I'm sure anybody who drops his name does). He had is doctorate in dentistry, therefore he was also a doctor... Maybe just not the kind you are used to thinking of as a "doctor".

Anyway, all in all... I am not making precise statements about anything in particular, OTHER THAN THAT A HEALTHIER LIFESTYLE EQUALS HEALTHY BODY TISSUE. We can go round and round all day trying to refute what each other are saying, and how they came to that conclusion. Diseases from malnutrition are just that... They are just as common today as they were "back in the day". The same old ones from thousands of years ago, plus many others we might not want to admit are from a faulty diet. Only today, ON TOP OF MALNUTRITION, we also have chemical laden pseudo-food and TONS of environmental pollutants and toxins to deal with, far more than they would have had in previous centuries. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that women in ages past may have had healthier tissue, and therefore may have had more resilient breasts.

Even if you set aside what you put in your own mouth... Your diet may be terrific... The diets of the people you descended from affects your DNA, your genetics. And seeing how they have been adding more and more stuff to our food over time, many of which is untested for safety or entirely new in the history of food, we really don't know what kind of impact that is having on our bodies, and the bodies of our children. My great-great grandmother could have been exposed to something that affected a gene in my grandmother, altering how her body responded to any given variable, which in turn would alter how MY body responds to diet and environment. It's all connected.

Think about all the crazy hormone mimicking junk in our food, like BPAs from plastic, for instance. How will that effect the health(and look) of children's breasts that are exposed to it? How will that effect their daughters and granddaughters? I know what kind of diet my mom had, and my grandmother, and I have a really good idea of what kind of chemical exposure they had based on where they were living and the kind of work they were doing... I know for sure that some of this has effected my health, my breast health especially. Maybe that is why I am so gung-ho about people understanding the connection between diet, chemical exposure, and health.

We might not be able to do anything about what is expressed in our DNA... Saggy duds might just be our lot in life. But we CAN do things, like not wear a bra and eat healthier, that will make our breasts healthier. We can be educated about the link between our world and our breast health, and how that might effect the generations to come.

[peainthepod]

Originally Posted by graceomalley

The average age of death in 1880 was 40.5.

Yes, that was the average life expectancy, not life span.

If many many babies died before age two, it would drag the average age of death down to around 40 or so. But the average life span shoots up for the people who survived to adulthood.

As I said, there were plenty of elderly around back then and most people who survived childhood had a fair chance of living to be quite old. It was just surviving to adulthood that was hard.

[mambera]

Originally Posted by StrongBeliever

A HEALTHIER LIFESTYLE EQUALS HEALTHY BODY TISSUE.

I actually agree with that (it doesn't seem very controversial) but I think the reason you are getting resistance is because you are making absolutely sweeping statements like this one:

women in ages past may have had healthier tissue

as if "ages past" were some kind of monolithic Eden in which everybody in the world had a perfect diet and therefore perfect endlessly perky boobies just like the ones in the paintings! until our horrible modern era of toxins and BPA and stuff made everyone's boobs sag! Seriously??


(And I STILL think it's nutty to equate perky with healthy. In one very important sense a saggy breast is a healthier breast, since breast cancer risk goes down with number of pregnancies and time spent breastfeeding - activities which mature and differentiate the breast tissue and make it less prone to cancer but also less perky.)

[StrongBeliever]

It is a sweeping statement... I've been pretty clear this whole time that I AM generalizing. Yes, they MAY have had healthier tissue than what many modern women possess, for many reasons. Is that too far out? It seems to me as if you're choosing to perceive my generalizations and theories as if they are fact, and therefore you are feeling resistance. I think it's all in how riled up you choose to get. I believe there are far too many variables and unknowns to say anything FOR SURE, but I don't think what I've surmised is insane by any stretch.

Again, you're using the word perky as if it is some icon of evil that no one should say, for fear of demeaning the mature breast. Saying it yet again, I am not equating perkiness with healthiness. The truth of the matter is that many women have perky boobs before they gave birth and breastfed babies. Afterwards, due to societal conditioning(or their own perception, or whatever) some women miss the "perkiness" they had before. What I am saying is that wearing a bra can actually be contributing to the destruction of breast tissue and that when a woman chooses to stop wearing a bra her breasts might restructure and return to the place where they would have been had the never worn a bra in the first place(not where she was had she never breastfed). This might mean they could become more *GASP* perky. Not wearing a bra makes for healthier boobs. Not wearing a bra might also lead to a perkier breast. That is not to say that the only healthy breast is a perky breast. I've never implied that, as far as I know. I don't have perky boobs, but they are perkier than when I was wearing a bra. This was my experience. I'm not sure that every woman would have the same. But I know there are others who have. Does it make us nutty to feel that our breasts are healthier and to enjoy our new-found return to perkier boobs? I think not.

[EdnaMarie]

I'm loving the debate about how people hundreds of years ago lived and died, but here's my tack:

I have small breasts. Always have. I love them. Not just because they fed my kids but because I think they're sexy and beautiful. I don't give a flying fudge at a rolling doughnut what other people like. I love my "B as in Barely" Boobies.

So, all I can say is, there are a lot of people out there that do love itty bitty titties and if you want to, feel free to join us or ask why.

I am saying that healthy boobs are more likely to exhibit and maintain the traits that are considered attractive than unhealthy boobs.

There was actually an incredibly fascinating study done on why people find exaggerated representations of beauty preferable to truly healthy beauty (e.g. Barbie figures, which are just not even POSSIBLE, vs. my own small boobed figure) and why this comes up again and again in art. I saw this on the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture3.shtml

Read it up until the part where he starts talking about the second law, Grouping. (Well read the whole series if you want, my point is the first part of that essay.)

[mambera]

Originally Posted by EdnaMarie

There was actually an incredibly fascinating study done on why people find exaggerated representations of beauty preferable to truly healthy beauty (e.g. Barbie figures, which are just not even POSSIBLE, vs. my own small boobed figure) and why this comes up again and again in art.

Many years ago, the ethologist Konrad Lorenz found that a when a goose egg rolls out of the nest, the goose has a complex stereotyped behavior of nudging it back in with her nose.

If you roll the egg out of the nest and put a volleyball next to it, the goose will ignore the egg and roll the volleyball into the nest. It's just so much bigger and whiter and eggier than her actual egg! :

Whenever I see men lusting after Barbie boobies, I think about the volleyball-rolling goose and have a little private chuckle.

[graceomalley]

Originally Posted by peainthepod

Yes, that was the average life expectancy, not life span.

If many many babies died before age two, it would drag the average age of death down to around 40 or so. But the average life span shoots up for the people who survived to adulthood.

As I said, there were plenty of elderly around back then and most people who survived childhood had a fair chance of living to be quite old. It was just surviving to adulthood that was hard.

You are correct wrt the term, however for a life expectancy of 40 years, approximately half of the population has to die before their 5th birthday. This was not the case in the 1880s outside severely impoverished areas of London.

So I should have said for most people in the 1880s, if they survived past their 5th birthday they predominantly died shortly after their 40th birthday.

Edited to clarify.

[EdnaMarie]

If you roll the egg out of the nest and put a volleyball next to it, the goose will ignore the egg and roll the volleyball into the nest. It's just so much bigger and whiter and eggier than her actual egg! :

That is hilarious. She's thinking, "This is going to be my biggest, smoothest, roundest baby YET!!!"