American media is fascinated with large breasts? Has it always been that way? It seems to predate Hugh Hefner‘s founding of Playboy magazine in the 1950s or Howard Hughes‘ mammary engineering of Jane Russell in the 1943 film The Outlaw. I think it might have started with the Gibson girls at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
Though Americans of both genders probably appreciated large breasts before that, the feminine idea (i.e., figure) had been much less top-heavily. Though the French revolutionary symbol of Liberty, Marianne, shows the contents of her C-cups whiling the people over the barricades, most depictions of women prior to the Twentieth Century, notably females in classical Greek and Roman sculptures and medieval and Renaissance art, featured neither wasp waists nor C- or D-cups. In fact, the concept of bra cup sizes is a Twentieth Century American invention, as is the brassiere or ‘bra’ itself. And, after all, everything is big in America.
So forgive 21 year-old British actress Keira Knightley‘s surprise to discover her images in the pictures and posters promoting her films in the U.S. have digitally enhanced her breasts. (Click the picture above to, er, enlarge). According to the Daily Mail of London, Knightley claims that American magazines ban stars from appearing on their front covers unless they have at least a C-cup size, or are willing to be digitally enhanced to make it appear as if they have.
If true — and, from being around the U.S. magazine industry for years, I suspect it is true — then it’s too bad, because Ms. Knightley has beautiful breasts that don’t need enhancement. Any fan of the young Charlotte Rampling (or even young Michelle Pfieffer in the film Scarface) knows that.
A- and B-cup breasts don’t need enhancements but display, or more realistically the tantilization of near display. Like a present that’s partially but not yet identifiable unwrapped, a woman with A- or B-cup breasts who keeps an extra button or two open atop her blouse is far more tantilizing to men than a woman her displays C- or D-cup cleavage. We men like to know what we’re about to get more than what we’ve already got.