Much ado about almost nothing

I didn’t think there was anything that would still shock those jaded newshounds at the desk, but there they were, slack-jawed and speechless, flabbergasted at a discussion three of us girls were having in the middle of the newsroom in the middle of a busy newsday.

The topic was cleavage (designer Vera Wang pronounces it "kle-vazh") or, perhaps more appropriately, the lack of it. The conversation was occasioned by a plunging t-shirt neckline and the unmistakable hint of a hollow in the center (I won’t tell you whose). One of the girls, a voracious reader of magazine articles and advertisements, launched into a discussion of wonder bras and maximizers and underwires and the engineering principles behind–or under–such modern-day innovations. The merits and demerits of such contraptions were then debated (do they cause cancer by constricting blood vessels?), rather vigorously I suppose, which was when the boys overheard and work on the day’s pressing news stories stopped for a few stunned moments.

Fashion magazines and fashion ads and television shows glorify cleavage as the be-all and end-all of a desirable babe–and we’re buying into it. Otherwise, why the popularity of Baywatch so that it now has a spin-off, Baywatch Hawaii? Although anorexic and flat-chested models were the rage sometime ago, they didn’t last many seasons on the ramp, whereas the long-running Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit edition is so popular it is even produced as a television special. The original Lara Croft is reportedly a 36DD, while the screen Croft is "only" a 36C. Supermodels admit to using silicon supports (called "chicken livers", I found out from a special on Sex and the City–the quintessential chick show–aired recently) when an outfit necessitates cleavage. (These last bits of trivia are from our voracious reader.)

There are many euphemisms for the lack of cleavage, such as "walang hinaharap", translated as "nothing to look forward to" by some not-so-smart aleck–male, of course. Boys, I’m sure, talk about cleavage (and other appendages) among themselves; so why can’t girls talk about cleavage too (and other appendages)? I don’t know why the boys were so shocked at and by our conversation; after all, girls can’t be talking about the Abu Sayyaf and the Middle East peace process all the time, can we?