Tonight's the Oscars, and we all know that what we really care about isn't the movies, but the outfits. Who's going to wear what, who's going to look great, whose outfit is going to look like a coked-out fashion designer's nightmare?

And, a related question: whose cleavage is going to look awesome (cough:: Penélope Cruz::cough), and who's going to have the hard-as-a-rock half-melons that suggest too much time at the plastic surgeons?

With the latter in mind, folks who are interested in all things breast-related might want to put Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front on their reading lists. What is up with our collective cultural obsession on breasts? I mean, they're nice and all, but you'd think they held the promise of world peace, the way we get hung up on them. According to this reviewSeligson's book doesn't promise to be a Serious Cultural Analysis, but it does look like food for thought. Might make a nice pair (pun intended) with Marilyn Yalom's more scholarly A History of the Breast. Yalom (who teaches at Stanford) points out, for those who will inevitably want to argue that our tit-obsession is "only natural," that actually breasts as objects of sexual focus is actually a modern invention.

My vote is that our modern preoccupation with boobs has got something to do with the modern reification of domestic motherhood: kids aren't just extra hands on the farm, or little savages waiting to be tamed any more; now they're precious innocents who need nurturing and devotion. And by extension, we're all just looking for the perfect mommy to cradle our modernity-buffeted heads.



Which is, in fact, the role Cruz's play in Almodóvar's Volver. Just another piece of evidence that Almodóvar is the fillmmaking genius of our age.

Bitch_PhD's own breast obsession mostly has to do with finding well-fitting bras