In the Slate-iest thing you'll read all week, Simon Doonan -- of Barneys New York fame -- is given the opportunity to consider whether that small breasts might make a comeback. I think, anyway?
He begins by saying the "larger boob became the norm around the turn of the century, and it shows no signs of deflating" and then contradicts himself a couple of paragraphs later. So I'm not sure what's going on here, but the use of the word "deflating" in the first paragraph should probably be a signal that I'm about to get washed away in a tsunami of boob puns:
Despite the worldwide embrace of enormous knockers, I remain convinced that the pendulous pendulum will, at some point, begin to swing in the other direction. Style is, after all, cyclical in nature. I know what you are thinking: Only a gay man could seriously posit the notion that big boobs might "go out of fashion." However, being d'un certain age, I am old enough to remember when tiny titties roamed the Earth.
You know, hats off to anyone whose life and career inevitably leads to being permitted to write, "I am old enough to remember when tiny titties roamed the Earth." Few earn that sort of privilege, and those that do, often fail to use it. I have longed for the day that sentence might show up in a George Will column, for example.
Anyway, as to answering the question, "Will small breasts make a comeback?" Doonan posits that it all rests in the hands of Rooney Mara and David Fincher:
Images of Mademoiselle Breton's boobies came flooding back on a recent trip to the cinema. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, as those of you have seen it will be painfully aware, intermittently enlivened with startling bursts of no-holds-barred sado-masochistic porn. Whenever the narrative starts flagging, off come the clothes, and here come Rooney Mara's modest, well-shaped natural chests.
I guess not everyone had the same takeaway from Lisbeth Salander's rape scene as I did!
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