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She admits: "My boobs are killing me - and I don't know if I can stand the pain any longer. "My boobs have been a trademark for me - but I've paid one hell of a price."

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I've created this and played it up -- the makeup, the whole persona. I've over-exaggerated and made things worse. But I've had a good time doing it, and it all came from a serious place: a country girl's idea of what glamour is. But this isn't all I am. It's not even most of what I am.

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I actually had a girl express surprise at the fact that I could string a coherent sentence together once. 

She said she assumed I'd be much less intelligent because I was so top-heavy. I was so amazed I was speechless.

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Of course! Male musicians can slap on a pair of jeans that they've worn two weeks in a row, and girls are all over them. But as a female, you have to be groomed and manicured -- not that it's bad. 

I like to feel feminine. I like to get dressed up. But now what someone wears is more important than the actual craft, than the art, than the record, than the film. 

And there is this intense pressure. I'm pretty shy about things that I wear, and I don't want to wear six-inch heels and a bra and a miniskirt on the cover of a magazine. And, at first, I'd show up at a shoot, and there'd be racks of six-inch heels, bras and miniskirts for me to wear.

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No matter how much pressure there was to have this image that wasn't me, I just couldn't do it. ... 

Now that I'm 19... I will say, though, that I'm really enjoying being a woman. Just eight months ago, I got boobs! ... 

I'm probably 15 pounds heavier than I was four years ago; I even have hips now! So I'll do sexier photo shoots than I used to do, because I've grown into my own skin.

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changing self-perception through natural nudes

Dear Domai, 
I'm 18 years old, female, an actress and an artist all around. ...

After months of casual glancing around, I found your site. I was completely shocked at how stunning these women are! And how effortless they displayed their beauty for their pictures. 

I myself have a rather large bottom and bosom and curvy features and thought that in order to be considered pretty I had to be skinny....

I don't have to be a skinny blond with perky breasts and an ant-waist with perfect skin. I don't have to have satin skin. It's doesn't have to be perfect. ... 

I want you to know that you helped me come to that. Thank you. Kaitlyn

I dip my hair in it and proceed to mop the floor with my hair. When I begin the performance, the room is filled with people. 

As I slowly mop the floor, I mop the people out of the room. This is an important aspect of the piece, because what I'm doing is very vulnerable. 

By mopping the people out of the room, I take over the space, and that's empowering. 

A lot of my work deals with traditions of art-making. I was interested in the tradition of painting, and the relationship between the notion of aesthetics passed down to us through art history and the ideas of women and beauty.

So for me, this piece relates to abstract expressionism, to Jackson Pollock and probably most closely to Yves Klein, with the performances where there were women covered in blue paint and then rolled on the canvas.

Klein has a great quote: "Rather than to paint the model, I wanted to paint with the model." 

My response is that this is about the conflict of trying to be the model and the master at the same time.

I thought I was buying an icon of sixties misogyny, but for my fifty cents, I received what football fans would call a late hit. As I paid for this "fabulous object," the church lady running the rummage sale remarked, "You look like you could use it." ... 

Indeed, the Fabulous Mark Eden Bust Developer is a true example of a complete lack of taste with the goal of exploiting women's vanity and insecurity in order to make heaps of money. Fortunately, this effort failed due to the intervention of the U.S. Postal Service.

Julie Mangin - photo and quotes from her site: Julie's Tacky Treasures

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We give up some things for others that mean more to us. It's going to feel a lot better when you're winning a gold medal than it does feeling bad when one guy doesn't like you because you have big muscles. So it's a trade-off.

You feel like you've accomplished something huge. There's nothing better than having a great workout, and doing that over and over again really gives you an edge on other people - especially growing up. You feel you can conquer things.

I think any female athlete has a sense of being kind of like Wonder Woman. You are able to do things that are a little closer to superhuman than normal girls. There's a little bit of Wonder Woman in everyone. Jessica, age 20

I would spend time searching for fluffy blouses to suggest there was something more underneath there. 

My discomfort with small breasts was more than just cosmetic. I felt the lack as a poverty of being, as if my very nature were somehow stark and bony. 

A hollow chest equaled a hollow heart. I was so used to this feeling that it puzzled me after I gave birth to my first child and began walking around in public with those big, lactating breasts on the same old skinny body. 

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I was turning heads on the street. Later, when I saw my first copy of Playboy, I experienced a shock of recognition. My God, I thought, these women all look like nursing mothers. ...Carolyn Latteier

Focusing on adult joys and anxieties about breasts, sex, and breastfeeding, this text uses research and expert opinions from several different fields, including psychology, anthropology, sociology, mythology, and sexology. Topics include: breast implants; human psychology and breasts; beauty standards and breast sexuality; how breasts are portrayed in mythology and art; adolescent girls and breasts ... [Amazon.com review]

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Soon, her producer convinced her to get breast implants, and her record label paid for the surgery. Magazines began approaching her, and she began her acting career. 

"But it was a mask. The older I got, being naked [in films], the more vulnerable I felt. And all of a sudden, the boobs weren't working any more." 

Kari did some serious soul-searching and got in touch with her spiritual side... The more she started liking who she was inside and building self-esteem, the more her implants became embarrassing to her. 

After 13 years of "fake boobs," Kari removed her implants and is a natural AA cup. She says, "Now I'm unique in Hollywood!" 

       [Oprah.com  Oct 14 2002]

"When I was doing a one-woman show about four years ago I tried to get off book (memorize) with 70 pages," Kirkland says. "It was almost impossible because of the amount of toxicity all over my system. The silicone is out of me now."

from Channel2000.com interview by Steven Sato [posted on sallykirkland.com]

But the thing that was so piercing for me was that things aren't beautiful without substance. It's like a plastic flower; it looks so attractive and you want to take in the fragrance, but then you go to inhale and you suddenly realize there's nothing there. 

And I felt like I was getting into that, that I was sort of in danger of having that happen to me. Because I think I soaked in too much the way that people were objectifying me, and the more that they did, the more I did. ... 

I really think that sexuality -- if you are a person than can elicit that kind of response -- gives you a lot of power in a way. But it's a very specific thing. It doesn't really open the door to other things, because sexuality is traditionally something that's behind closed doors. 

So really then, you're only a fantasy figure. And if you're a fantasy figure, nobody wants to wake up from the dream. Nobody wants you to be in real situations. It's just not very fulfilling to be a "thing" day after day. 

On the other hand, they said, men baring the most flesh appeared to fare even better in the tests.

The problem, says psychologists Barbara Frederickson of the University of Michigan and Tomi-Ann Roberts of Colorado College, is that women are so self-conscious about baring their bodies that they tend to "step outside their bodies" to view their looks critically. 

Female test subjects "were so self-conscious about wearing a bathing suit that it affected their mental alertness," Roberts said.

"Women are raised in a culture that has them habitually monitoring their bodies," she added.

"When their clothes come off, they can't concentrate on anything apart from how they look -- but it's no big deal for men," who did not appear to associate their appearance with any such powerful negative emotions. .....[from ThirdAge.com story]