(This is my article from the Spring 2004 issue of Kitsch Magazine.)

According to data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov), the world population is currently tipping the scales at 6.38 billion. Approximately 3.2 billion of those people are female, and approximately 2.3 billion of those women are over the age of 14. Assuming that most females have at least begun puberty by 14 years of age, these figures all point to one staggering statistic: there are nearly 4.6 billion breasts on our humble, blue-green planet, give or take several hundred million.

Let’s say that the average bra size, worldwide, is 34B — the size that graced the most bra labels in America before we started supersizing everything, including ourselves (now our country proudly lugs around a pair of 36Cs). If we estimate the volume of a single 34B breast at about 400cc, and assume that it is composed almost entirely of human fat (which has a density of 0.918 grams per cc), then the breast mass index (BMI) of the world is roughly 1.9 million tons, and the total breast volume (TBV) of the world is nearly 500 million gallons. That’s enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan in breasts to a depth of a foot.

In short, there are more breasts in the world than you can shake a stick at. But despite their abundance, and the fact that they are a perfectly normal physical feature just like arms or legs or noses, Western culture treats breasts as a physical anomaly that must be covered up, while arguably indecent noses are constantly exposed. Why is it such a necessity to cover up these benign lumps of flesh?
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Ever since I hit the big two-oh, I’ve been feeling… old. I’ve lost that spring in my step, that conquer-the-world attitude I had in my teens. When I look in the mirror now, I see a strange face staring back at me: the face of a twenty-year-old. The sagging skin, the glassy eyes. And I don’t like it.

So I’m doing something about it. With the help of a facelift, rhinoplasty, liposuction and a generous breast reduction, I can regain that fresh-faced teenager look I once had, oh so long ago. The only thing standing between my youth and me is several hundred thousand dollars of extensive cosmetic surgery. At that price, I can’t afford not to do it!
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