This may be controversial, but I’m going to go on record and say: I love boobs. Loved em for as long as I can remember, and according to my mum I loved them pretty hard before then too.
Sadly, the older you get, the harder it is to get a peek in. Which also makes it tricky for women when they want to build some hype around the bountifulness of their own boobies. In order to find the right tone, they must run a PR campaign that is tasteful enough to stay self-assured, classy enough to draw the grudging respect of rival titty-vendors, while still screaming, “hey everyone, check out my sweet boobs!”
To that end, cleavage ought to go down as one of the all time greatest feats of marketing. Why, it’s as easy as taking a normal garment, cutting out a big peep-hole over the upper-boob region, and then putting it on and acting like the hole doesn’t exist. Pure genius.
The problem is, the nonchalant Jedi mind-trick of cleavage is fragile, and can only be sustained in the most discreet perving environments; you can get away with showing your boobs off at a fancy ball, but that shit won’t fly down at the food court.
From watching reruns of Friends and Charmed, it seems like in the 90s they tried to come up with a workaround for the problem of cleavage in the mundane setting by emphasising nipple protrusion. I don’t know what Jennifer Aniston’s nipples are made of – and I would dearly, dearly love to find out – but I’ll bet you could put her in a spacesuit and those things would still be visible, standing at attention. And it was great – don’t get me wrong, nipple is definitely great. But it just doesn’t quite quench that thirst for jiggle.
Moreover, we need that little signal of encouragement that an invitation to perve like cleavage represents. A small sign to say, “listen buddy, don’t get too distracted by the words coming out of my face; it’s probably bullshit – trust in the boobs!”. I’m sure I speak for every man in saying that the beckoning light of reproductive purpose is all that keeps me from seeing out my days as a caravan-park shut-in, nourished only by a steady stream of ubereats pizza and darkweb fentanyl.
Thankfully, the ladies of Australia have stepped up to the plate in a big way. I’m referring, of course, to the sudden ubiquity of yoga-pants/workout-leggings hugging every sashaying bum-cheek/outer-labia on every neighbourhood street as tightly as public indecency laws will allow. These pants are hands down the sexiest things women have ever pretended not to know they look good in. And therein lies the brilliance – ostensibly they’re some kind of innocent exercise suit! Women have somehow found a way to show off their bums and vaginas while simultaneously claiming the fitspo moral high ground.
This is big. Bigger than the invention of cleavage, you ask? Well, it’s early days yet, but 100% I reckon: vulvage is the new cleavage
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