Fussing over Kate’s bits and bo(o)bs

Our frenzied political parties have hogged the limelight with a whole list of ‘family’ activities and lengthy political speeches, this past week, but the truth is that no one, while scoffing down hot dogs tal-gabbana, was discussing the electoral programmes. Everyone had Kate on their mind, and it certainly wasn’t Kate Gonzi.

We are in a ridiculous situation: a picture of a pair of royal boobs is worth a goldmine- Kristina Chetcuti

The question on everyone’s lips is: Have you seen the photos? By photos we mean, of course, the pictures of topless Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cornwall.

Joseph Muscat will tut-tut at my non-feminist stance, but reader, I did see the pictures. I didn’t buy the magazine, Lord, no. But at the bookstore the other day, I did flick through the culprit pages.

And, then at a picnic with the girls the next day, we spent a good chunk of time discussing the whole saga. We all concurred: the future Queen either shouldn’t have taken her top off, or else she shouldn’t have kicked up a fuss because she is who she is, and there’s always bound to be a paparazzo up a tree (we all felt very Marcelle-D’Argy-Smith-like-experts, as we lazed in the sun).

By the time we got back home, our television screens were flashing with another urgent breaking news: ‘Topless women greet Kate in Solomon Islands’. At the tiny village of Marau on the Solomon Islands, Kate was greeted with a line-up of bare-breasted dancers wearing traditional female dress in the South Pacific, and – gasp – “she didn’t bat an eyelid”. You don’t say. What did they expect her to do? Shriek? Cover her eyes? Throw a wobbly?

“They don’t like you to show your legs – people use a sarong – but they don’t mind if you show your sou-sous,” said Pamela Kimberley, co-owner of the island of Tavanipupo.

Which, of course, makes you think: On these Pacific Ocean islands, boobs definitely don’t make the headlines, and once the whole world was all like that.

Tits can’t have made the news in the cavemen days when everything was permanently on show. So where and when did this boob obsession of ours come from?

The story, according to Florence Williams, author of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, begins with evolutionary biology. The sex-selection theory goes that breasts signify health and youth, “so a man who is prepared to inspect them quite closely will be less likely to waste his seed”. This might explain why men supposedly prefer large breasts, “since they show the sag”.

In other words, small breasts, less prone to gravity, would have misled a caveman into being age-fobbed and thinking that a 35-year-old is 25. Remember, in those days, signs of wrinkles would have been hidden by, ahem, excessive facial hair.

This explains the size obsession, but when did the boob obsession start?

Certainly not at the time of the Greek and Romans. That’s when we have the first records of bras in use. A friend of mine, a dedicated classicist, can list chunks of Graeco-Roman scripts that show that breasts weren’t considered to be erotic in those days, but merely nurturing and healthy.

From some translations it transpires that bras were actually recommended as a prevention for headaches or migraines (the link is baffling, but who knows – next time I’ll have a headache, I’ll fasten on two bras, just in case).

So what happened? Did women gradually start covering up too much, and over the centuries breasts became the unseen fruit? Or was it the Victorian era that turned us all into puritans and breasts became the forbidden fruit?

Whatever the historic path, we are today in a ridiculous and incredulous situation: a picture of a pair of royal boobs is worth a goldmine.

Even the papers not publishing them – like the British tabloids, outraged and foaming at the mouth on the front pages against the magazines that are making Kate unhappy (they conveniently overlook their very own topless girl on page three) – are secretly happy with the increase in sales.

My solution is this: forget ‘Car Free’ days. Every year, preferably in August, we should hold a ‘Top Free’ weekend. It would be a weekend when we’d all forgo our shirts. Yes, we’ll go topless on the beaches, in the hills, in the fields and in the streets. And – lest we forget – on Arriva buses.

Men will ogle on Friday, a bit less on Saturday, and by Sunday, they’ll be going “Boobs? Ah yes, those nurturing, healthy things”.

For the rest of the year, just like in the Solomon Islands, our sou-sous won’t be news anymore; we won’t have ‘paps’ climbing trees to snap a princess’s pair, and we won’t be lured to flick through trash magazines.

Oh dear, whatever will we gossip about?

krischetcuti@gmail.com