My Intro to Psychology professor one day was lecturing us on childhood development from the womb, and somehow, I don't really know how, he went off on one of his wild tangents to tell a freshmen college class a story in the hopes of teaching us some important life lesson. But it's about boobs

One semester many years ago in the same class, there was a very quiet girl who always sat in the back corner and stared at the wall for the duration of the class. She did this all semester long and never talked to anyone in the class. My prof remembered this, he said, because it was fairly odd behavior. After the semester was over he never saw her in school again. But one day about five years later, there was a knock at the door of his office. He opened the door, and there was the same girl.

She was smiling, and as Professor Kennedy put it, she thrust her "upper anatomy" at him promptly and asked, "Well, what do you think?"

"Well...", he said, "you're obviously trying to show me something about your upper anatomy." After a moment he said, "Would you like to come in and tell me your story?" And she did.

When this girl was younger she was very athletic. She played baseball, soccer, what-have-you. Puberty had not blessed her the way it has some women, namely her breasts never filled out. This is not something that had ever bothered her before, she never gave the subject any thought because she had other things on her mind. But one day when she was about fourteen, while wrestling with a neighborhood boy her shirt came off. Not being a very sensitive kind of guy, his comment was (paraphrased): "Wow, even my seven-year old sister has bigger ones than that!". Of course, she was very embarrassed and upset, and ran straight home.

A few years later, this girl had a boyfriend. She and he were being intimate for the first time and she began to disrobe. When he saw her breasts he laughed and said something like "I thought they'd be bigger than that!". Naturally she was hurt and he had to take a cold shower.

Her self-esteem crippled by these events (and probably one or two more), she went to college. She did not play any sports or make any good friends. By the end of the semester the girl had decided to join the Air Force.

At some point while enlisted she also decided to save up all her money and get breast implants.

Her point of course, was that she was now happy with herself. Science had corrected Nature's mistake and for her everything was right with the world. As she and my prof walked down the hallway she got the attention of more than one boy, turning and pointing her headlights at each of them in turn.

My professor's point was that this girl had been victimized by a culture which places demands on people (especially women), to meet certain expectations which are just plain crazy. She had been given certain features by chance and our modern culture was asking her to somehow change that. So she had.

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