Milking Our Fears- A Book Review

Reading Time: 5 min

“Why would you want to read a book about Breasts?” asked a friend of mine when I announced in one of my WhatsApp groups about a government funded research in New Zealand for just “looking at human breasts”.  What’s even ironic was the fact that research was to prove, what possibly is a known fact anyways - men look at a woman's breasts before her face.

Well, now before you begin to associate perverseness with it, let me tell you- the original reason for me to actually first look for and then read this book- it was a news snippet from  India, about a self-acclaimed spiritual guru with shadowy past having made a “scientific” statement in a conference. It has become increasingly common under present regime in India to make outlandish or even outright illogical “scientific claims” , and this was no different: “When a woman delivers opposite-sex twins, one breast will produce one type of milk and the other will produce other type of milk". Much as incredulous as it may sound, there were enough people trying to backup that claim. So I decided to do a fact check of my own, and in course of that labyrinthine journey, stumbled upon this book.

On to the review then.

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams is not a straightforward popular science write-up in the league of  Fermat’s Last Theorem or the seminal A Short History of Nearly Everythihng. It falls more like a part -memoir, part research thesis – a gallimaufry, a hodgepodge of varied topics associated with breasts, chemical pollution and cancer.

Starting off with the evolutionary aspects- differentiating the evolution of mammary glands as a survival tool for pre-dinosaurian synapsids and their descendants,  from that of the breasts themselves- which serve primarily an erogenous purpose and a secondarily as a lactating tool  (!) ; the book quickly veers off into the history and commerce of breast implants from Vincenz Crezerny, through Thomas Croning & Dow Corning to modern day $3 Billion industry -a story of chutzpah, greed, and corporate malfeasance. And from there it transforms into a chronicle of horror stories involving damage caused by chemicals, pollutants and poisons, delivered to the next generation through the 2 sacs of soft sponges. A full half of the book is relentlessly overwhelming – as if to warn you of dangers in everything that you touch -plastic bottles, food containers, chopping boards, sofa, soap and seeding that idea that breast-milk could actually be harmful for your infants (though she herself doesn’t say so directly!)

Instead of getting a light-hearted/ erogenous or even udderly-scientific trip about nurturance, we are offered by Williams  a saga of sheer horror akin to “Hot Zone” or “The Emperor of All Maladies”  inducing tales of cancers,  reduced IQ,  and behavorial, chromosomal & auto-immune disorders induced in children being breast-fed a cocktail of BPA, paint thinners, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides, along with milk! When taken on face value, it is scary enough for all mothers, but even as a male reader- Williams shows that these dangers aren’t exclusive to female- Breast cancer cases in males are swelling by the year!

As with popular science books, interesting trivia abound- reason behind the presence of nipples in men, the strict mathematical formulae behind bra designs, scientifically most voluptuous size, function of the little bumps on the aerola,  rare disorders leading to actual milk producing breasts on men (galactorrhoea), or infants (witches’ milk!), impact of marijuana on male virility (not a folklore),   link between age of onset of puberty and chances of breast cancer and many more. However, it does commit that cardinal sin for a “popular science” book- presenting myths as scientific trivia- for example the myth of Marie Antoinette’s breasts being original cast for the champagne coupe. The only historically verifiable thing they served a mold for was the ceramic bol sein (literally, a "breast bowl") by Jean-Jacques Lagreneé of Sévres, a legendary French porcelain producer.

The biggest flaw of the book, IMHO, are the frequent intrusions of the author's personal anecdotes, as well as numerous asides on irrelevant tangents; which not only break the flow – but also could have been replaced by better /detailed topics. I started this book with an intent of getting to know a few facts about the organs which attract us males right from infancy until at least the middle ages- and while I did end up getting a fair share of that and more, I felt I could have easily done so with half of the 250+ pages of this book.  So much text in this book is about chemicals, pollutants and cancers that the sub-title of the book might as well be “All the chemicals you are feeding your children”

And yes, by the way, the book in itself,  didn’t  bust the flaw in Jaggi Vasudev’s quote. For that, Google baba yielded this – Some studies have “indicated” that Breast milk does change its composition based on the gender of the fetus, but not as espoused by him. Both breasts always produce same type of milk!

Favorite quote from the book: Her (Helen of Troy) face may have launched a thousand ships, but it was her breasts which buoyed the army