I once had a boyfriend who declared to me that he was a ‘Boob Man’.
“Some guys are more attracted to butts, some guys are more attracted to boobs. You are pretty much either a Boob Man or a Butt Man,” he told me.
“I’m a definite Boob Man,” he said.
Were there any men that were ‘Being Men’?
You know, the type of man that loves the Beingness of a woman first, before any one single body part?
Apparently, this wasn’t a category that had made the cut in popular lad’s mags.
Nor was it a question that I even thought to even ask myself at the time because hey, I was safe. I was a young woman with big breasts and he was basically telling me, in his round about way – I find you attractive and you can feel secure in the fact.
And I did.
I knew I had his attention.
He loved breasts. Particularly large natural breasts. Not implants. He was very specific about this. This also made me feel more assured, after all, what girl can compete with silicone right?
But as it turned out, he wasn’t a lover of boobs.
He certainly obsessed over them, and he was turned on by them, but he didn’t love them.
How did I know this?
When we were having sex, he would occasionally just out of the blue, bite my nipples. It wasn’t sexy, it was damn painful. Or he would suddenly pinch my nipples and twist them leaving me recoiling and trying to recover myself into an ‘enjoyment’ of the moment.
It didn’t compute. Why was a guy who said he loved breasts, treating my breasts this way?
After sex I would sometimes cry. Not voluntarily, my body would just have to immediately release the trauma of the sex we had just had and what I had just put my body through.
The joys of young heterosexual consensual sex, right?
What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I in touch with my own pleasure or ‘power in the bedroom’? I would silently berate myself as I curled in the foetal position while he passed out, post-coitally, beside me.
As it turned out my breasts alone, weren’t enough of a fix either. Some nights he would be up late looking at porn. True to form, ‘Big natural boobs’ was his search term. Out of curiosity I visited his history and saw the walls of women who were optioning up their breasts for the internet, breasts so big and heavy they filled the frame. Their faces, when they were in the shot at all, showed sad looking eyes and posed sexual pouts.
Eventually I decided to talk to someone about this. I went to a practitioner of healing therapies. I discussed how I felt uncomfortable with how my partner treated my breasts but said I don’t get it because he says that he ‘loves boobs.’
The practitioner was a man, a man who I knew I could trust implicitly to offer a fuller understanding of the situation.
His response took me a back somewhat.
In a matter of fact tone he said, “He doesn’t love breasts he actually hates them.”
“That seems a bit extreme,” was my first thought. But I was willing to hear him out.
He expanded, “More specifically he seeks to dominate and control breasts because of unresolved issues with his mother.”
It certainly felt true that there was an element of both obsession and control when it came to how he was with my breasts.
“Is his mother overbearing?” The practitioner asked.
I had in fact never met a mother more overbearing. If he didn’t call her frequently, she would be ropeable. She was best described as a ‘doting dragon lady’ – extremely dependent on him as a son and confidante but equally as quick to abuse him verbally at the drop of a hat.
Was she overbearing?
“Yes,” I said… “Very.”
“Well that emotionally toxic energy has probably been imposed on him since he was a baby at the breast. Since an age where he was completely dependent and had no choice in the matter.”
I reflected on the fact that yes, the breast that had literally been shoved in his face since birth, belonged to a very emotionally domineering woman and it made sense that he was now seeking unconsciously to dominate back.
Breast feeding was clearly not just a functional physical act but belonged to a much more wholesome experience of nurturing (or not) between two beings.
The breast after all belongs to a woman, and a woman cannot compartmentalise her body parts and consider them separate to her quality of being overall.
Or can she?
She could take the reductionist approach that her body parts are discrete objects for the consumption of others. But then isn’t this kind of compartmentalisation of a woman’s body parts that is rightly rallied against when we see it in sexualized advertising and pop-porn culture?
Feminist theorists note that male ill-behaviours are frequently attributed to ‘bad mothering’ and this is often used as a go to ‘get out of jail free card’ to excuse men’s behaviours.
But this wasn’t the sense I got from the practitioner’s observation.
He spoke without judgment of either my partner or his mother and at the same time shed light on the ways in which men and women both energetically and physically hurt each other, in a seemingly never-ending generational cycle. His mother wasn’t to blame, she was mothering from her insecurities and hurts, no doubt accumulated from her own experiences of life…
But at what point do we get off the merry go round?
And is toxic masculinity more closely related to toxic femininity than we care to see?
I am no longer with a ‘boob man’. That relationship didn’t last for various reasons, but mostly because I started to take my power back and no longer wanted to be controlled in the bedroom or out. Once I broke the contract, I was no longer attractive to him, large breasts or not.
The man I am with today is a ‘being man’. And in truth, this is really the only kind of man there is.
He is much more concerned with the quality of me. Me in my power and delicateness, me surrendered and in the space of my own sacredness, this is his aphrodisiac. He is not fooled by appearances. I can be wearing the sexiest dress and have my hair done perfectly but if I am not in my power, if I am needy or playing myself down he will clock it – he reads my movements and behaviours well before my physical looks.
Boob man, Butt man…Thighs guy.
The labels, as it turns out, are a front. A superficial sexual appetite. Don’t get me wrong. I am sure that men everywhere desire boobs and butts and thighs (as the porn industry will attest to) but if this is all they think they love then they are simply avoiding the full package – accepting a piecemeal substitute for the woman as a whole.
And what of the woman? Does she offer herself as a whole, or, like me at that time, accept the security and currency of desire, over asking the man to treat her with nothing less than the fullness of his love and sensitivity.
This is not to whitewash the truth of the true beauty of breasts either. A breast is not a foot or a hand. It has a beauty that many men wholesomely cherish and adore and this article in no way discounts that. But when obsession masquerades as adoration we have to read behind the words. And it is only in our willingness to love ourselves fully that we are able to read it. Otherwise why would we let go of the substitute we have found security in, where ‘desirability’ becomes our marker of worthiness?
What if we were to all accept our loveability instead? Imagine how rich the love making if it was love between two beings, (and not just sex between body parts) being made? Why would we settle for anything less than this?
No doubt, as men and women deepen their appreciation for each other, we will start to see through the surface attractions and ideals that blind us to each others true nature. Through appreciation, the past hurts and protections no longer apply and the control we thought we needed to exert is no longer required.
And so a question to the men, are you ‘Boob men’, or are you ‘Being men’? Are you owned by pictures of what you think you desire or is there much more to you than meets the eye?
And to the women, myself included: what could be more desirable than truly being cherished and adored? Do we accept the security (and prevalence) of sex and consensual abuse – or – from our own sacredness do we call for our men to know themselves by a tenderness equally exquisite?
By Anon