Treating with teats

From time to time, when I feel the need to adopt some pretension of wisdom or the correct variables tumble together upon my fertile mind, I reflect upon the love-hate relationship America has with the nipple. Generally, it would be the female version, but there are also circumstances where males too stray into the sinful fires of tawdriness.

Seen logically, it doesn't make much sense. It's minor feature of the body. It plays no vital role in sex. It doesn't even make a highly pronounced secondary sexual characteristic since other than a moderate increase in size along with the areola during puberty in women it's largely unaffected.

That isn't to say the nipple is a passive nub of flesh outside of the process of venting lactation. That is probably the biggest grudge society has against it. It does things. It contracts, changes texture, and protrudes stiffly. It betrays that the body is affected by stimuli.

And for that crime, along with other erectile bits, it has been so highly sexualized that the merest notice of such physical features will be freighted with pure lust. Good people don't have erections of any type in public. To do otherwise is almost as unseemly as masturbation in the middle of the street. You just know that any lady with her high beams on is only an eyeblink away from grabbing her ankles for any creature that seems randy. Men largely find their concern centered around what might be stiffening blatantly below their belt, unless someone calls their attention to their pert pectorals. After all a man with conspicuous nipples is either some form of aberrance or glistens with the rancid sheen of sleaziness. Women arm themselves with thick bras or nipple shields to obscure a possible THO from casual observation. Or should they decide to play up the frisson of sexual arousal, they can also utilize inserts to add that "able to cut glass" image to their bust-line.

It sounds almost too fantastic to be reality. Examine animation however. The existence of tits on a female character is trivial. Small or immense, they are acceptable for all ages until the suggestion of a nipple is added. She could look like she has two beach balls affixed to her chest in a dress with cleavage ending just above her assumed pubic arch and skirt slit to the top of her hip and that drawing won't cross the line into pornography until you add a nipple.

In stores, mannequins, even those realistic ones cast from actual human beings, are not allowed to possess nipples. Even to the point of having employees file the offending protuberances off. Customers find it obscene otherwise. It continues into photography too. If a hand or other physical obscurement of the nipple isn't present, it will be photoshopped out. Hell, even with package lingerie packages specifically for sale in adult only stores, there will be no visible nipples. Every breast is an unmarred tear-drop or orb flanking the sternum.

I'm continually amazed that so much significance has been attached to an anatomical bite-valve.