Leslie Lehr

This is one of those odd split-personality books that can’t decide if it wants to be a memoir, social history, or a feminist commentary, with the waters further muddied by a punch-line title and cartoonish cover art.

Through too much of the book, author Leslie Lehr comes off as a woman obsessed with her own breasts. As an adolescent, she longed for them; as a nursing mother, she gloried in them; as a professional filmmaker, she hid them in 90s power suits; as a divorcee she thought she had realized her dream by having them surgically augmented; and as a victim of cancer, she struggled with debilitating and disfiguring treatments to keep them from killing her.

And through it all, as a writer, filmmaker, wife, mother, and daughter, she struggled with the myriad ways in which American society continues to value women mostly based on their sexual desirability, personified most readily by the size, shape, and display of … breasts.

The fact-sheets dropped at intervals through the narrative are informative, chilling, and infuriating:
• The U.S. ranks 53rd in gender equality, according to the world Economic Forum;
• Women are less likely to get CPR due to rescuers’ fear of touching breasts – and the lack of dummies with breasts for training;
• Average NFL game earnings for a cheerleader is $120. For an NFL player, $1.2 million;
• 40 of the 51 Miss USA competitors in 1998 had breast implants;
• The breast is the only organ in the body which has no medical specialty devoted to its treatment, and;
• Between 1985 and 2004, more American women died of breast cancer than the number of Americans who died in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined.

There are some interesting byways here, some conclusions with which the reader may disagree, and perhaps more than is really necessary about Lehr’s personal family history, but overall it’s a thoughtful look at our cultural obsession with female breasts.… (más)

When my daughter was younger, she told me that she didn't ever want breasts. Given her genetics, that was not going to be an option. We, on both sides of her family, have been given more than our fair share and in the end, she has too. But other than bemoaning the ways shirts don't fit properly when you're so over-endowed, or how your back hurts from the extra weight up front, or the inability to go braless, none of us has really given much consideration to these things stuck on our fronts, at least not until my mom got breast cancer. Sure, I breast fed my kids and I know that breasts are both sexual and functional but I never really considered them in the way that Leslie Lehr does in her fascinating book A Boob's Life: How America's Obsession Shaped Me...And You.

Opening with the realization that her reconstructed breasts are not even, and the shame this affords her despite her husband's assertion that, like pizza, there are no bad breasts, Lehr gives us an intriguing mix of history, memoir, and feminism told through the lens of the female body, and specifically breasts. She skillfully blends her growing childhood understanding of "pretty" and women's bodies with the reality of American culture from the 50s, 60s, and onward. She talks of the sexualization of breasts using things like lists of movies that feature women topless, including many Oscar winning films you might never suspect. She tracks her own desire for needing a bra to auditioning (as a flat-chested woman) for Playboy. She even chooses her college based in part on her perception of women's worth, as modelled by her father. She looks at the beauty standards for women that played into her own life, her parents' divorce (her father then married a younger woman), her sense of belonging, and the way that the cultural stance on beauty and breasts added to her fears as she was diagnosed with breast cancer not many years into her second marriage.

Lehr does a good job integrating the very personal and the larger general cultural realities, pointing out that while she never relinquished her identity as "the smart one," she was, nonetheless, negatively impacted by society's view of women, their bodies, and their place in the world. Short, dated, and bullet-pointed inserts of the history of bras, the history of Victoria's Secret, nicknames for breasts, first females in huge political positions, and the progression of women's legal rights, among others, add cultural touchpoints throughout her story of growing from a child through adulthood to fully aware womanhood, a woman formed, outraged, and still, amazingly, hopeful for the future.

This is one of the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads for 2023.… (más)

I had no expectations prior to picking up this book to read it. I am on the smaller size, so I have not really been affected too much by appearances. However, when I was younger, I do admit that I would see the magazines and tv shows, and even comics and wish that I had a larger bust size. However, as I grew up, I became thankful for the smaller size. One I did not have to encounter back pain or finding the right bra to wear and two as the times changed, so did the culture on what was acceptable and smaller was "in".

So, in reading this book, I could see how our culture did shape Leslie's life. Reading this book did make me reexamine just how much culture/perception of what is "in" affects our way of thinking and how we look at ourselves. Who knew that a specific body part could be both an obsession and a curse. I did thoroughly enjoy reading this book.… (más)

This is a share-all tragi-comedy memoir, featuring a small breasted woman's obsession with the role that large breasts play in her family. Leslie finds a nude picture of her beautiful mother hidden away in a drawer and then moves on to examining the Playboys her dad has bound in leather on a high shelf in the garage. She subsequently marinates in feelings of inadequacy, aided by her father walking out on her mother, and winds up in a terrible marriage herself, albeit with artificially added bigger, softer pillows. Dispersed within are useful facts and lists about Miss America, womens' rights, emotional abuse, famous female firsts, and breast nicknames. Both the writer and her mother develop virulent forms of breast cancer, which leaves her questioning whether or not her surgery was the cause. And then her daughter tells her that she wants implants! The author’s honesty and self-examination skills are remarkable.

Quote: "We need to normalize representation by someone who put on their bras one strap at a time, just like the majority of Americans."… (más)