Fetch Your Copy Breasts: A Natural And Unnatural History Narrated By Florence Williams Offered As Publication
This is a weird read, It's scientific, it's medical, it's social, it's political, It had some humor, lots of paranoia inducing statistics, some sentiment,
It's about breasts, but ultimately is more of a social stance against big companies and pollution, Chemicals are in everything, toxins are everywhere,
Cancer is a large, large part of this thesis, And it makes sense, obviously, as breast cancer is real and rates are constantly increasing,
So this book begins with theories of the evolution of human breasts, Then the magnificence of the human breast, the enlargement of the magnificent human breast as its point is asthetic, the mother/child relationship that is the point of the breast, the breast milk which is the food of the mother/child relationship.
And sprinkled within is so much toxic chemical pollutant,
I'm already concerned, I'm not even a health nut, Just like a normal American who is aware of things, This book made me panic and rethink at least three things in my life right now!
It's a great scientific, medical, social read.
I just recommend knowing what you're going in for on this one, So, Florence Williams is not Mary Roach, Which is to say, she isn't as funny, and I've never found Mary Roach's books to have a hidden agenda, I'm obviously scared about the amount of pollutants and other environmental chemicals that have ended up in my body and breastmilk, and I'm understandably concerned about the effect those things are going to have on my daughter and future children I live next to both a freeway and an airport in California, Flame Retardant Capital of the universe, so it's a miracle Jane wasn't born with a third ear.
That said, this Breasts's purpose seemed to be to solely talk about chemicals and their ability to infiltrate and impact our bodies, even if particular topics within that area were only tangentially, if at all, related to breast health.
So, it's pretty well written, but a bit of a trojan horse book, Breasts, I got a pair! I pretty much know their purpose: they turn men in to babies and help babies grow into toddlers.
I also know they need to be squished between two metal plates once a year to screen for breast cancer, Other than that, whats to know Apparently lots of scary facts about how our breasts are ultrasensitive to chemicals, pollutants and other environmental factors, and how this makes us susceptible to disease.
Even worse, it raises the question that just maybe gasp breast may not be best for baby, Add that that the mix of confusing information pregnancy and nursing help protect against breast cancer, but only if you have your children young.
Sheesh, whats a girl to do
All scariness aside, Breasts is informative and quite readable, excellent medical journalism, It covers most everything to do with breasts including implants, fertility, nursing, development, how girls are developing at earlier and earlier ages, breasts in other mammals, hormones, breast cancer and male breast cancer rare, but it happens, and oddly enough it may the key to understanding the role of environmental factors in the disease.
She even explained why we still useyear old boobsmashing mammography technology today, surprise
The only topic that she did not cover, and why I am rating this book four instead of five bras! With all the scary medical related information, learning some brassiere fun facts might have been a nice respite.
Do bras play any role in the long term heath of our breasts Or is just a comfort thing Why can women with implants go braless where naturally endowed women need support How did cave women go about hunting and gathering braless when I cant go running without wearing two sports bras
Absolutely loved the narrator of this book.
Her voice was fantastic.
This is an interesting look at the history of breasts, Not just how and why they evolved no one knows but also what role they play in nature, nurture, and the history of the human species.
Why they are so fascinating on a cultural level but glaringly overlooked when it comes to the study of science, This book was depressing as hell, I added it to my To Read listor so years ago when I heard about it on Fresh Air, Don't get me wrong, the author has an entertaining style, There were lots of chuckles as I read various witty things she said, It's just that the core thesis of the book or at least the thread that seemed to tie everything together was that the modern world was screwing over everyone with breasts, men included.
And that's where things got depressing, More or less everything has endocrine disruptor chemicals that come off of it from car seats to plastics to various medicines, The chemical companies have so much money that regulators in the USA aren't doing anything, And when they do as that a chemical be changed like the bromine or some other element based flameproofing the chemical they pick to replace it is just as bad.
Also, there's the fact that I've grown a lot as a reader of nonfiction and I'm a lot more wary of these scientifically proscriptive books.
The problem is not that I'm conspiracyminded or that I don't want my mind changed, It's that I've seen too much quackery peddled as science that I'm not sure how much this book should freak me out about about my daughters' and wive's potential health issues.
A lot of animal studies don't end up to mean much when transferred to humans, On the other hand, we have a long history lead in paint/gas, medicines given to pregnant women, cigarettes, etc where we're told that things are OK and they aren't.
So I think my frustration comes from a mix of being powerless against rich corporations and not knowing how much of what's in this book is valid science.
My favorite chapters were about the evolution of breasts both in terms of animal evolution and culturally/socially and how a lot of what science believed believes about them have been greatly colored by societal and moral beliefs.
Wow. I did not enjoy this book,
I thought it was going to be a book about breasts and it turned out to be a book about breast cancer and chemicals.
I know there are bad chemicals all over the place and that there are many things that put women and men at a higher risk of getting breast cancer, but I specifically do not read books about those things because I don't feel like being terrified to touch and/or eat anything.
How am I supposed to feel now that I know there was likely flame retardants in my milk when I breastfed my children Or that pretty much any choice I make will increase my chances of getting breast cancer
This book was nothing more than fear mongering and I didn't appreciate it.
Maybe a better title would have been "Your Toxic Breasts: and there's nothing you can do about it", Yes, I'm fascinated by them, Have been all my life, I think this guy gets a good part of it right,
sitelinkWere you staring at my breasts!!! Because they're wonderful amp you're flaunting them, I glance at, even stare at fascinating, beautiful things,
So yeah, I went through the child's comfort, the adolescent sexual thrill OK, I'm not through that one, but I'm not evenyet.
then the father's jealousy Kids don't share well! amp now the mature relatively appreciation of the issues my well endowed wife has dealing with hers.
I should be used to them by now, but a showy pair can still drain every thought from my head with a perky bounce or dip of cleavage.
What's up with that Am I a sexist pig, creepy voyeur, or just a healthy male Is there a difference Depending on my wife's mood, I've been accused of all, generally just the latter, though.
After all, she wouldn't have put up with my ogling, pats, amp squeezes foryears if I was too obnoxious,
It turns out that I'm not alone amp it's not just a guy thing, One study showed the same A cup gal got more rides as a B cup amp even more as a C cup by both men amp women.
Unfortunately, they didn't take the study further to see when breast size became an impediment, Important info since the size of both natural boobs amp their artificial enhancements are increasing, There is too much of a good thing, but scientists have many hypothesis amp no real data on why they are a good thing in the first place.
We're the only mammal with this trait amp they speculate it might be a combination of factors such as lack of body hair, upright posture, amp lack of snout that meant a flexible, extended feeding tube was needed.
Breasts are the pretty, supportive packaging,
Williams describes herself as a 'granola girl' several times, She did an admirable job trying to balance her tendencies against statistics, but didn't always succeed, It's quite clear she freaked out when she found out just how polluted her breasts amp the milk they provided were, Yes, she fed her firstborn hazardous substances amp her second as well, although less so, Better or worse than formula Maybe, Her environmentally contaminated sponges had partially cleansed themselves on the first, something she said is showing up in dolphins who often lose their first baby due to pollutants in their breast milk.
If you're subject to panic over studies linking cancers to various genes amp chemicals, you should probably steer clear of this book or read it ALL the way through amp then thoroughly research your particulars.
What is contaminating them amp what are the effects A lot of things maybe, Toxicity amp long term effects are complicated amp she didn't always present them clearly, It wasn't always her fault, but several times she mentioned that the incidence of breast cancer in women is now up toin, but it wasn't until quite late in the book that she dropped the other shoe in women who live to be.
Another example showed the incidence of cancer doubled amp later we find out that's all the way up toin,, The odds of being struck by lightening are aboutin,which she doesn't mention, Anyway, don't freak out.
She did a great job of explaining how breasts work, They're fantastically complex structures that change constantly over a woman's life amp respond to the environment in a myriad of ways, This is part of what makes toxicity so difficult to narrow down, Dose doesn't make the toxin as much as timing does, What may cause cancer in a woman at one time might not at another, but it may wind up causing her grandchildren issues.
Fireproofing via chemicals is one of the most dangerous scams perpetrated by chemical companies, I hadn't realized how bad it was for breasts amp breast milk or how hard impossible!!! it is to avoid, but I have run across it in the construction industry where it was obviously hazardous, but still took several years to be pulled due to lobbying efforts.
Similar crap is stuffed into furniture to gainseconds before it combusts, at which point it will spew far more toxic smoke than if left untreated.
Why California is one of the most toxic states in this respect amp Ikea does it, although both are trying hard to be both environmentally friendly amp safety conscious.
I thought my lifelong fascination with breasts meant I knew something about them, I even have a set of my own, albeit just manly ones that don't give milk nor elicit wolf whistles, I found I knew very little, but I'm not alone, The best of our knowledge at this time is not nearly as good as it should be, but we're learning, DNA testing is super helpful amp is growing our understanding of epigenetics how environmental factors cause genes to express themselves, Tests for chemicals, including separating out complex ones, are getting better, too,
There's a lot of good info on breast cancer amp she mentions it in men quite often, Men may be one of the better ways to study breast cancer since ours don't change constantly, I'd heard mammograms aren't particularly helpful, but she gets into why amp discusses breast self exams including a silicone training product available through Amazon.
Apparently doing a proper self exam is far more difficult than I thought, but with training it can be far more effective than anything else.
Highly recommended to one amp all, .