“When I turned 13, my breasts started growing.
Like two little nuts overflowing from a child's tank top, its two bumps told the world that I was becoming a woman,” remembers Angèle Marrey, director of the documentary
Bless our breasts
(to be viewed on the independent streaming platform on.suzane) .
In the film, the journalist questions the weight of patriarchy on our chests.
These breasts once stifled in corsets, today in bras, vilified when they point the tip of their nipple to breastfeed, and criticized because they are too small or too big.
Interview.
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Madame Figaro.-
Why make a documentary on breasts?
Angèle Marrey.-
I have been working for several years on beauty diktats, feminism, the injunctions made to the female body, and the sexist and sexual violence that results from them.
And this last year, I realized that there was a return of puritanism, especially linked to the female body.
This is evidenced by criticism of the crop top, the censorship of nipples on Instagram, or even the expulsion of mothers from public places because they are breastfeeding.
What relationship do women have with their breasts? How does the male perspective have an influence?
Among all the people I interviewed, most had a complex relationship with this part of their body, which accumulates injunctions.
The first is aesthetic: this breast which must be ideal, round, high on the bust, without hair, without pimples, with a nipple of a certain size and a certain color, always desirable, erect, that is- that is to say, which stands by itself as if it were weightless... Like balloons which float.
How to translate these injunctions?
By controlling the aging of women's bodies.
This results in the sagging of the chest and in reality we don't want this image.
We would like to freeze youth.
How does puberty happen, when the breasts start to expand?
Having breasts, for a long time in the collective imagination, was the moment when we went from child to woman, and therefore sexually mature and capable of having sexual relations.
Even today, the appearance of breasts creates a big fracture.
It is also at this time that we observe an increase in sexist violence, in particular misogynistic jokes, street harassment... This raises questions about our society: how do we look at the bodies of very young girls, who we consider desirable in contrast to aging bodies that we stop looking at?
When we look at the figures for sexual violence outside the home, we realize that it concerns 40% of young girls aged 10 to 19.
From the moment breasts grow, the female body is seen as a body available, which can be possessed, which can be desirable.
This hypersexualization can be traumatic for those who experience it.
What role do social networks play today on our relationship with breasts? Do they favor showing the diversity of breasts? Does it help to lift diktats or reinforce injunctions?
I have long thought that social networks lead to a form of liberation of the body, but we have seen for several years that the beauty diktats that have been imposed on us for ages persist on the platforms.
Despite the
body positive
movement and accounts that do a lot of good by showing different bodies and deconstructing gender stereotypes, the networks are full of injunctions.
They are the mirror of society.
Society in which we remain subject to a whole bunch of beauty injunctions.
At one time, they were conveyed in magazines or in high school;
today, there are millions of videos where we see sublime women.
Even if we try not to fall into these beauty dictates, it's a constant struggle because we all want to be loved.
The divide that is being created in the minds of young girls is that the body in ads and networks - photoshopped, covered in self-tanner, without hair, without rolls - is the standard.
While theirs would be atypical.
However, the body of magazines and networks remains art, it should not become a reference.
Why are the breasts so eroticized?
It's complicated to say where the hypersexualization of the female body comes from.
Nevertheless, there are elements of an answer.
First, the chest is seen as an element in opposition to the male body.
And for good reason, we live in a heteronormative society where we desire what makes us different: size, breasts, hair.
I also think that we have hypersexualized breasts because they appear as something to be grabbed and we have therefore created a whole desirable aspect on this piece of flesh which comes out of the body, easy to grab.
That being said, if breasts are so sexualized, they turn out to be the ugly duckling of sexuality...
The proof: breast orgasm exists, many people ignore it and there are very few explanations on the subject.
In reality, very few people have sex with their breasts, except intercourse which will often be the receptacle of male desires.
Breasts have never taken up so much space in the bed.
In addition, we observe that removing the bra is sometimes a more complicated process than removing panties for young women.
One of those I interviewed for my documentary explained to me that she kept her bra on a lot during her first sexual encounters because of complexes, once again linked to the injunctions.
Another told me that she always gave herself chills before sex so that her breasts stood out.
How has the lingerie market controlled our breasts? And is this still the case today?
This was the case before, and it is more so today.
This is evidenced by all the products found there: corsets, Wonderbras (bras with a push-up effect), straps... And all this, with the aim of keeping the breasts high.
Because a maintained body brings back the idea of a body that is not old.
So through lingerie, there is this idea of controlling the aging of women's bodies.
The lingerie industry has also created these accessories that enhance the breasts so that they are pleasant to look at.
In your documentary, you make the analogy of small and large breasts with the fact that we would classify women according to two boxes, that of the “mom” or the “whore”…
It is the journalist Mélodie Thomas who makes this parallel.
This dichotomy between the mother and the whore is the fact that women are to be classified according to two boxes in society: the woman, the one who is chosen, pampered, has a social role, is sheltered, will become the mother of children, but who no longer attracts;
and the whore, the one we desire but who will never be chosen, the one we are ashamed of and at the same time crazy about.
This opposition applies in the way of classifying the female body: on one side, there is the thin, firm body, with a small chest, which does not overflow, maintains itself and which would be the body of the woman "mother". ".
On the other, the body of the seductress, of the “whore”: the one that overflows, is luscious, has shapes, does not fit into the nails, that we can consume and with which we can play.
You also show that the chest still suffers from the ambivalence between motherhood and eroticism...
Breasts are as much adored as they are hated.
In this case, the nipple played a large part in causing them to be a problem.
In our Western society and in France in particular, this nipple is very complicated to manage because it is the place where motherhood and sexuality come together.
By becoming maternal, the breast raises the question of incest on the table, since our society has difficulty classifying it between maternal and sexual.
Hence the fact that breastfeeding in public provokes so much debate.
For mothers, this passage is not problematic.
In the case of breastfeeding, the body is not sexual, only the means of nourishing your baby.
However, for the male gaze, breastfeeding is seen as undressing.
Things have changed in recent years, since medicine has advocated breastfeeding and more natural motherhood without sweeteners.
But at the same time it is paradoxical since we are in a society where there is zero infrastructure for breastfeeding, zero support.