A couple of months ago, I was at a house party. A couple of guys I was with started commenting on the appearance of a woman sitting across the room. She was wearing what they considered to be a very inappropriate shirt—a low-cut v-neck that revealed what registered to them as an obscene level of cleavage. They were speculating as to why a woman would wear such a shirt in public and what her intentions were in putting it on. "If I were wearing that same shirt, it wouldn't seem inappropriate at all," I noted. Of course, it wasn't really the shirt—it was the size of the woman's breasts that was deemed socially unacceptable.

Big boobs: I don't have them. And good thing, too, because if I did, I'd have to dress myself with the expectation that others would view my anatomy as inherently obscene. This week, plus-size clothing company Lane Bryant accused FOX and ABC of refusing to air its latest lingerie commercial over decency concerns. The central objection? Lane Bryant's well-endowed underwear models revealed cleavage that was just too ample. The low-down, from Ad Week:

In a post on LB's Inside Curve blog, the company complains that "ABC and Fox have made the decision to define beauty for you by denying our new, groundbreaking Cacique commercial from airing freely on their networks." . . . The post also claims that ABC "restricted our airtime" and refused to air the spot during Dancing With the Stars, while Fox "demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of American Idol, but only after we threatened to pull the ad buy."

The post continues: "Yes, these are the same networks that have scantily-clad housewives so desperate they seduce every man on the block—and don't forget Bart Simpson, who has shown us the moon more often than NASA—all in what they call 'family hour.'"

The ad depicts several attractive, plus-sized models in the latest line of Lane Bryant lingerie. Ample cleavage—which Bryant says was a problem for the nets—is on display in the ad. "The networks exclaimed, 'She has . . . cleavage!' Gasp!'' the blog post states.

Ah, "ample cleavage"—not to be confused with the socially acceptable amount of cleavage displayed by Victoria's -Secret-sized models, who generally possess large—but apparently not obscenely large—breasts. Fox and ABC didn't respond to Ad Week's request for comment; Lane Bryant has since removed the accusatory post from its blog, Inside Curve, but it still touts the offending ad on its website as "The Lingerie Commercial Fox and ABC Didn't Want Its Viewers to See."

The lesson, ladies, is that great cleavage comes with great responsibility. People who shame women for wearing "too-revealing" clothes like to center their objections on women's clothing "choices," but make no mistake—this is not about what we choose. This is about the things we don't choose—having chests or butts or legs or necks or hair or any other part of our human bodies that others decide to project their particular sexual interests—and their slut-shaming—upon. The man who is horrified at a woman's "overly exposed" breasts will likely never have to worry about wearing one shirt—one shirt out of a lifetime of shirts—that happens to accidentally set off some random person's slut meter, because of the way his body just is. And because my breasts are smaller, less visible, less imposing than other women's breasts—because there's less boob there—I can feel free to wear the more revealing top without attracting claims of public obscenity. It seems that some women's bodies are just naturally sluttier than other women's bodies—and all women's bodies are naturally sluttier than men's bodies.

I'm pretty sure these two items are simply unfortunately juxtaposed, and entirely unrelated. Meanwhile, "Barebreasted Women Swordfighting and Kids" is still available for someone's  inevitable childhood trauma memoir.

Bizarre Breast-feeding Contraption: The Breastfeeding Hat

Patent No.: Patent pending.

Inventor: Sam, Diane Margaret

Description: "The breastfeeding device includes a head-receiving portion sized and shaped to receive the head of a child, and a brim portion extending radially outwardly from the head-receiving portion. The brim portion is sized and shaped to substantially cover a woman's breast when the head-receiving portion is received on the head of a child breastfeeding."

Milkable: In doubling as baby sun-hat or Panamanian costume, the Breastfeeding Hat (patent pending) may very well help shield the mother's breasts from public view—without inadvertently calling more attention to the mother's breasts. The hat will get a lot of stares, though, I'm sure.

Sucks: Just a fucking hat.

Ella Laseinde is accustomed to seeing strangers’ breasts. “I’m a mammographer, so I’m with the breasts constantly,” says Laseinde, 71, who spent 30 years in government service—including five at the National Institutes of Health screening women’s chests. That’s not to say she’s interested in catching sight of stray bosoms outside the office. “I think in today’s time, they need to cover,” Laseinde says of nursing mothers. “There are so many people walking around who can catch a look.”

In 1995, Laseinde patented a contraption to help women breast-feed in public without sacrificing modesty. Laseinde’s Shield-Me-Baby Nursing Bib, inspired by the birth of a granddaughter, is a halter-style bib that attaches with Velcro around a woman’s neck and fits over her breast.

A circular hole, tailored to the woman’s cup size, allows the breast to peek through the innovative device, enabling the infant to latch on to the food source. To minimize the public visibility of this transaction, the device has a flap that rests on the head or perhaps cheek area of the infant. Though it’s possible that some flesh could be exposed even with Laseinde’s patented breakthrough, there’ll be no full-on breast views with the Shield-Me-Baby Nursing Bib.

Though Laseinde’s 14-year patent on the bib expired last week, it’s recently found new life courtesy of neighbor and public-relations mouthpiece Linda Jones, 55. Jones began helping Laseinde market the product a few months ago in order to address what she calls “the ongoing public breast-feeding controversy.” Which side is Jones on? “I believe in covering,” says Jones, who breast-fed her two children, now 36 and 26 years old. “I don’t believe in showing my girls.”

Laseinde began producing the cotton contraptions as gifts before realizing, in the 1990s, that she could be charging $25 and up to help new mothers cover up.

Laseinde’s nursing garment isn’t the first modesty saver to hit the market, but it is one of the simplest. When Laseinde was breast-feeding in the 1960s, necessity mandated consistent public breast-feeding, and modesty could be maintained with a well-draped handkerchief. With the advent of formula and pumps, however, the public display inched toward taboo. Laseinde designed the bib to help a daughter-in-law breast-feed on the go without offending the public’s newly sensitive eyes.

But in the decade-and-a-half since Laseinde first laid out her design, Bill Clinton signed the Right to Breastfeed Act into law, public breast-feeding has emerged from the back room—and upscale new-mama fashion became en vogue. The maternity market has responded with increasingly ridiculous ways to guard a new mother’s breasts from curious onlookers.

One “apparatus and method for breast feeding,” patented in 2007, “provides a nursing mother a true sense of privacy and modesty”—complete with peep-show atmosphere. Here’s how: “[A] curtain is attached around the neck of the mother by a semi-rigid annular hoop. A layer of material lies across the front panel forming a valance or curtain for added privacy.”

Another nursing garment, titled “an improved garment for providing a privacy screen for the body,” has more of a hardhat-area feel. “The garment lies over the shoulder of the wearer extending down the back to a weighting means and down the front to an expanded lower portion,” the 2002 patent reads. “The weighting means provides a counter-balance to adequately retain the position of the garment on the wearer. The expanded lower portion drapes over the midriff of the wearer to provide breathable privacy to the wearer and contents within.

At least one invention attempts to place the modesty burden onto the newborn. The Breastfeeding Hat (patent pending) “includes a head-receiving portion sized and shaped to receive the head of a child, and a brim portion extending radially outwardly from the head-receiving portion. The brim portion is sized and shaped to substantially cover a woman’s breast.”

There’s even a contraption to help eliminate the need for breastfeeding contraptions. My Third Hand, patented in 2004, “holds the mother’s shirt securely out of the way by hooking onto her bra and her shirt, thereby freeing her hands to hold her baby and making expensive maternity shirts unnecessary.”
Laseinde’s Shield-Me-Baby bibs, too, have grown more sophisticated since their mid-’90s debut; she’s currently working on disposable models as well as party-ready versions “to match her evening-wear.” Perfect for the black-tie diaper bag.

Nowadays, many modern moms see no need to borrow baby’s bib before a public breast-feeding session. Dia Michels, 50, a local breast-feeding advocate, spent a combined 15 years breast-feeding on Capitol Hill, no modesty device required. “The reason women are so freaked out about breast-feeding in public is because we have completely sexualized the breast,” she says. “The only way to make breast-feeding easier for women is to desensitize the public to breast exposure. If these devices allow women to hide what they’re doing and cover it because it’s shameful and because it’s embarrassing, it’s just perpetuating the sexualization of the breast.” Though Shield-Me-Baby’s duckline-printed bibs fail to cover the larger issue, they can help individual women still held down by an outdated taboo. “If your goal is to help a woman with her issues—if the bib allows her to get over the hurdle that’s causing her discomfort—it becomes an empowering device,” Michels says.

Though Michels says that breast-feeding still hasn’t recovered from the rise of formula, the cause to desensitize the public to a dropped breast is alive and well. These days, a good deal of breast-feeding etiquette is now directed not at mothers but at passersby. One guide, published at families.com, advises flashed parties not to bother a mother with questions, complaints, or idle conversation—and to never call security on her. In April’s Atlantic Monthly, Hanna Rosin argued that the dirtiest of playground looks are now reserved for women who refuse to serve up product on demand. When Rosin voiced an appreciation for formula, “[t]he reaction was always the same: circles were redrawn such that I ended up in the class of mom who, in a pinch, might feed her baby mashed-up Chicken McNuggets,” she wrote. “In my playground set…breast-feeding is the real ticket into the club.”

Even among less-exclusive mothering circles, breast-feeding etiquette remains a hotly contested issue. “It’s like fashion,” says Jones. “It’s a cycle. One minute it’s in, the next minute it’s out”—meaning the marketing opportunities are endless. The cyclical nature of breast-feeding acceptance also explains why, in 2009, “a lot of people are still debating this issue,” Jones says. The echo chamber on breast-feeding is exacerbated by the eternal impressionability of expecting mothers. “It’s a scary situation, having a baby,” Jones says. “You don’t know what to expect. When a woman is pregnant, she’s going to be looking for any help she can get.”

And when she does, Laseinde and Jones will be waiting for her. Laseinde’s home is located directly across the street from a reliable stream of impressionable customers: Providence Hospital. Laseinde hasn’t staked out maternity ward graduates just yet. “I’ve thought about it, seeing people coming out,” she says. Adds Jones, “We plan to catch them as they leave—there are so many of them coming out with babies.” CP

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Show Earl a photo of a topless woman, and he’ll respond like most heterosexual men—sure, he’ll take a look at the boobs. Show Earl two photos of a topless woman, and he’ll ditch the boobs—that’s an amateur move—and look for the color of her thong, the pattern of her rug, or how many eyes her dog has.

Earl is a connoisseur of Erotic Photo Hunt, an electronic bar game that puts a bawdy twist on the “spot the difference” puzzles that fill out kids magazines or the comics page. The rules of Erotic Photo Hunt are simple. Drop in a quarter. Choose “Babes” or “Hunks.” Inspect two photos of the same soft-core pinup, identical except for five Photoshopped differences. Touch all the variations before time runs out, and you advance to the next round. Each round is faster than the last. Never go straight for the boobs—differences are most likely to reveal themselves in the less titillating areas of the screen, like foliage, motorcycles, or pets.

“It’s like playing the one-eyed monster,” says Earl, a semi-retired mechanic who prefers to go by his first name. “You just put your money in, and it just takes it and stares back at you—challenging you.”

Earl is up to the challenge. He’s been playing the game for just over a year, but he’s already dominated the machines at most of the downtown bars where it’s on offer. When a new topless woman pops up—be she lounging on a yacht, surrounded by bananas, or with an Easter basket placed fortuitously between her legs—Earl instantly touches the screen five times, as if working from muscle memory. He seems to barely glance at the screen as he coaxes out a succession of “mmms,” “aahs,” and “yahoos” from the game, payment for accurate touches. Earl attributes his ability to a lifetime working on cars and houses. “I just look, and it’s different,” he says. “You just look at something, and see what the difference is, and bada-bing, bada-bang. One, two, three, four, five.”

The temptation comes courtesy of game distributor Megatouch, whose touch-screen consoles also provide less risqué bar fare, like poker and glorified crosswords. But not all Megatouch consoles are created equal. Since Earl began photo hunting, he’s tried about three dozen District machines, each providing varying levels of screen quality and sensory response. L Street basement bar Recessions “has the best-calibrated machine in the city,” Earl swears. In addition to its prized machine, Recessions also has one of the city’s worst Erotic Photo Hunt consoles—the bar’s second machine, which is smaller, poorly lit, and often requires several finger-pushes to register a hit. Earl holds the high scores on both of them. He’s also the top-scorer on the machine in Mackey’s Public House, a flight above Recessions. Earl harbors a particular distaste for the Black Rooster machine just down the street. He has a high score there, too.

The Recessions machine isn’t just the best—it’s also a couple blocks from Earl’s home. You can find him camped in front of it daily, peering at topless women under a black eagle-embroidered hat when he’s not helping out with barback work and small repairs. When Earl sits down to play, he first locks the machine “so it don’t swivel on you,” then camps on the right side of the screen. “I’m always on the right. I always sit on the right. I’m right-handed, so I’m just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” he says. Earl can sometimes find all the differences before even one of the game’s units of time disappears, “until things really speed up,” he says, “after Round 26.”

On lower rounds, Earl takes the time to crack jokes or explain technique. “Will somebody give her a hand?” he says, after finding an upper extremity missing from one model. “See, it looks like her tit is covered up more on that one,” he says. Sometimes, he plays with friends. “When I play with them, they sit back and let me play, and if I’m missing something, they hit it. They’re like backup.”

Earl’s personal bests—428,000 points alone, and 492,000 with a team—may be modest in comparison to national records. While there’s no national body that keeps an official count, in 2006, a guy going by the name “Tanman” scored 1,042,768 on a Tampa, Fla., machine, and has the cell phone shot posted online to prove it.

Earl doesn’t keep such records. He doesn’t maintain a consistent handle. He will always heed another player’s call for assistance. “Everyone asks for my help,” says Earl, whose games are largely funded by rookie bargoers who need an extra hand. As a result, even Recessions management can’t recognize Earl’s complete dominance of the board. “I don’t know who’s the best,” says Mohammad, a bartender. “I don’t play the game. But he plays a lot. He loves the game.”

Erika, a Mackey’s employee who sometimes serves as backup for Earl, confirms Earl’s generous habit. “Earl takes this seriously, like it’s a job,” says Erika, who says she joins in only on weekends, after her own workday is through. “But 99.9 percent of the time, it’s other people calling him—‘Where’s Earl?’” she says.

“Where the fuck is Earl,” adds Earl.

But Earl remembers which scores are his own and which he still needs to beat. Sometimes Earl signs his games as “ECinDC”; sometimes, simply “Me.” If he gets a high score with the help of a friend, he’ll sign it “Us” or use a double attribution like “Kenny Earl.” For a time, he concentrated on filling an entire leader board—the top 10 scores—under the name “Death to Balls.”

“A while back, a bunch of players were coming in, calling themselves ‘Team Balls,’ ‘Cow Balls,’ ‘Pig Balls,’” Earl explains. “At some point, I just got tired of the balls.” For a month, Earl worked methodically to rid the leader board of balls. “I’ve had people come in and say, ‘Who’s Death to Balls?’ I just don’t say anything, because I’ve got the whole screen filled. I had to go in there and clear the whole screen to get people to try and compete again.”

Earl isn’t an Erotic Photo Hunt completist, but he is a purist. He never plays “Hunks”: “I don’t care if he’s wearing short shorts—I don’t want to be touching his johnson, you know what I mean?” He also avoids Megatouch’s other variations on the classic version—“Chippendales Photo Hunt” and “Penthouse Photo Hunt,” which provide additional distractions for an extra quarter. “You can guess what those are like,” says Earl. “Swinging dicks? I’m not going down that avenue,” he says of the Chippendales version. The Penthouse game has similarly failed to entice him. “So you see the pubic hair. They’re not spread open or anything,” he says. “If I wanted to see a hairy crotch, I wouldn’t be paying for it.”

Earl would just prefer if everyone kept his or her pants on. In the classic game, neither Babes nor Hunks reveal any genitalia, and some of the women even appear with modest bikinis covering their breasts. Earl doesn’t claim to favor any of the few dozen models offered up to him every evening. He has, however, begun to resent some of the women who appear in the more frustrating puzzles. “A couple of them on there, I would smack the shit out of them. I’m just tired of them,” says Earl. “This is a bitch I hate,” Earl says, indicating a busty woman posing suggestively on a director’s chair. “She’s in like seven different pictures, and they’re all terrible—just in a kitchen with so much bullshit behind her.”

To Earl, Erotic Photo Hunt is hardly erotic—just highly addictive. Earl gives one reason as to why he keeps playing the one-eyed monster, and it has nothing to do with boobs. “After 400,000 points,” he says, “you get a free game if you beat the high score.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery.