Nowadays, the innocent appreciation of the breast is a limited practice at best, excluded from popular culture and forcefully confined to pervy Scouse readers of Viz and a regiment of cropped-haired women belonging to a certain all-female college. Think about it: the emergence of feminism has made people feel guilty about the merits of the mammary. Even your average Essex girl in her white-stilletoed glory feels the burden.
When accosted by the geezer-like cadences of “phwoar, look at them knockers” at the The Slug and Something-or-other pub, the Essex girl obligingly talks of objectification and sexism, despite the attention she gets from her 32DD jugs.
Appreciating a breast’s circularity, its noble roundness, its pink, brown and olive warmthis invariably perversion to most people. Should we call the great breastobserver, the artist Poussin, a pervert? Should the genius of Virgil, who said, “can heavenly breasts such stormy passions feels”, be accused of voyeurism?
In such an unjust world, figures like Jordan a.k.a. Katie Price only do the breast greater wrongs, with their own travestied aesthetic. Her long awaited autobiography Being Jordan is not a glimpse into the real identity behind Jordan, but a biased history of her failed performances. Anyone who was lucky enough to hear Jordan reading extracts from the book on Radio 1 will know that not only did she have no clue what was in the book, but when she came to read it aloud it contained some tricky words far beyond her comprehension.
It is not unusual these days to intellectualise an odd phenomenon (Big Brother, Pop Idol, etc.) but let’s be honest, the only reason Jordan exists is because of her mammoth breasts and unnatural propensity to shed clothes in jungles. To be fair, one would find more interest in the medical records of a septuagenarian trying to rid himself of his leathery man-breasts than in this botched clap-trap; Jordan is the mere embodiment of plebeian culture obsessed with Footballer’s Wives, Heat and blondness, a cultural booby-trap, period. Now, back to the innocence of breasts.ARCHIVE: 4th week TT 2004
Being Jordan – Katie Price
