Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts

by Sarah Thornton

Overview

An innovative investigation of the five strange worlds that worship women’s chests.

After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? An experienced sleuth, she resolved to venture behind the scenes to uncover the social and cultural significance of breasts.

Riotous and galvanizing, Tits Up excavates the diverse truths of mammary glands from the strip club to the operating room, from the nation’s oldest human milk bank to the fit rooms of bra designers. Thornton draws insights from plastic surgeons, lactation consultants, body-positive witches, lingerie models, and “free the nipple” activists to explore the status of breasts as emblems of femininity. She examines how women’s chests have become a billion-dollar business, as well as a stage for debates about race, class, gender, and desire. Everywhere she turns, Thornton encounters chauvinist myths about this elemental body part that quietly justify deficits in women’s bodily autonomy and endorse shortfalls in their political status. Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, Thornton has one overriding ambition—to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393881035
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	123,641
File size:	75 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sarah Thornton is a sociologist and author of three critically acclaimed books, including the international bestseller Seven Days in the Art World. She was a scholar-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley, for three years while writing Tits Up. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Editorial Reviews

06/03/2024

In this fun and far-ranging account, sociologist Thornton (Seven Days in the Art World) explores the topic of women’s breasts from a female perspective—tying in multiple aesthetic, professional, and spiritual threads of analysis while eschewing the “male gaze.” Relating her own anecdotes on breastfeeding in the 1990s—when it still had a strongly taboo feeling, especially in public—and her postmastectomy mismatched synthetic breasts (nicknamed Bert and Ernie), she explains that losing her natural breasts for medical reasons inspired her to discover more about how other women (including trans women) relate to their tits. In sections covering the sex industry, breastfeeding, plastic surgeons, bra designers, and the body positivity movement, Thornton draws from informative, intimate conversations with experts. These include a wry, thoughtful plastic surgeon; sex workers who perform feats of asymmetric breast movement; cheerfully aging hippies who revel in the freedom of topless communal events; and Old Navy bra designers (the model who serves as the template for all the company’s bras has perfectly average breasts and a master’s degree in economics that helps her give market-oriented feedback). What emerges is an arresting look at how these subjects’ niche experiences have erased, in their own minds, any perception of breasts as merely “passive erotic playthings.” It’s an inviting and down-to-earth portrayal of women’s relationship with their bodies. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] colorful new volume…The book’s trajectory is an uplifting one, with its five chapters exploring different hard-to-access Bay Area arenas rife with breast-related decisions and transactions…All of these immersive experiences left Thornton in a newfound state of wonder about the magic of mammaries."

San Francisco Standard - Julie Zigoris

"Thornton's research and interviews are exhaustive, entertaining and enlightening…Tits Up is a revelatory look at many different facets of this oh-so-vital body part…One thing is for sure, you'll never think of boobs the same way again."

BookPage

"Sarah Thornton offers a revealing look at our most misunderstood organ. Her message is both powerful and overdue: it’s time for us to shape the narrative of our own bodies."

Florence Williams

"With a sociologist's eye, a reporter's nose, and a Double D brain, Sarah Thornton explores the contradictions, power, and fundamental formidability of breasts. What a treat to follow her into worlds largely unknown as she upends culture-bound thinking and exposes breasts for what they are (or should be): a part of a woman, to be shown or not shown, used or not used, as she and she alone deems fit. Exquisitely written and consistently illuminating."

Mary Roach

"Thornton honors her subject throughout Tits Up through her meticulous research and critical contemplation…Tits Up might read like an ethnographic dissertation about breasts with the thesis that words matter. And they do. But just underneath that is a softer, more subtle message that art heals—as do encounters with the spectacular array of souls out there in the wide and varied world."

ZYZZYVA - Mieke Marple

"Ms Thornton succeeds in offering an appreciation of the oft-derided, oft-maligned organ. Though the terminology for them tends towards the silly and frivolous—think of “bazookas”, “jugs”, “norks” or “funbags”—this book suggests they are anything but. Owners and admirers will not look at breasts in the same way again."

The Economist

"[Thornton’s] impassioned polemic makes a convincing case that the derogatory way Western culture views tits…helps perpetuate the patriarchy…Tits Up asks readers to reimagine the bosom, no matter its size and shape, as a site of empowerment and even divinity…[D]eceptively trenchant."

Lucinda Rosenfeld

"Liberated breasts can do and be so many things. Thornton is less interested in how they appear than in how they can be put to work…[Tits Up's] interest lies with the many interviewees in possession of behind-the-scenes knowledge, some of whom provide the book’s strongest views on breasts."

The New Yorker - Lauren Michele Jackson

"Tits Up is Sarah Thornton at her best: irreverent, witty, deeply researched, and enlightening. I learned a lot."

Judy Chicago

★ 04/01/2024

After years of biopsies and a double mastectomy, sociologist Thornton (Seven Days in the Art World) decided to write this book about the history, cultural significance, and social valuing of breasts. The book is often hilarious, but it's consistently grounded in research and a nuanced understanding of intersectionality. The humorous parts are underscored by Thornton's clear awareness of broader systems and the deeply rooted sexism that she experienced during her own mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Her book is replete with stories of sex workers, milk bankers, plastic surgeons, and myriad people and industries that profit from and prey on breasts. She includes historical images that show how persistently breasts figure in society's cultural milieu. Thornton says she wants to "improve women's esteem for their torsos" but acknowledges that one must first understand the forces behind negative views on breasts. This drives her interrogation of patriarchal structures and the ways in which women have subverted them to achieve a degree of ownership of their bodies, still too often bound up in dominant discourses. VERDICT Required reading that expertly covers the ways in which social constructions, sexualization, and economic viability influence people's views of bodies, their own and others'.—Emily Bowles

Library Journal

2024-01-18
A respected sociologist delves into the story of the breast and finds complex layers of meaning.

Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World and 33 Artists in 3 Acts, calls her breasts Bert and Ernie. They are not the original models but prosthetic constructions, which she acquired after a double mastectomy to preempt likely cancer. Her complicated relationship with her new body parts set her on an exploration of the social meaning of breasts. In her latest book, she seeks “to shift the definition of breasts away from the dominant patriarchal version of them as passive erotic playthings.” Thornton chronicles her interviews with a diverse selection of interesting people, including strippers, women who contribute to milk banks, and cosmetic surgeons, who suggest that the bigger-is-better era might be passing. There are intriguing perspectives from bra designers (they prefer the term “bra engineers”), who see themselves as playing a crucial role in breast care and female identity. Some feminists are wary that a focus on breasts might reduce women to their sexualized, biological functions, but Thornton decides that there is more to it than that, showing how plenty of women see their breasts as opportunities for self-expression and body positivity. Part of this stems from her meeting with women who identify as modern-day witches and who are intent on loudly celebrating their breasts as their connection to primal forces. Thornton can see their point, but she concludes that this is not for everyone. Perhaps “thoughtful appreciation” of their breasts is a better outcome for many women. In any case, Thornton comes to accept Bert and Ernie as part of her life, creating a suitable ending to a story told with insight, wit, and self-awareness.

With intelligence and humor, Thornton examines how breasts can help women create new visions of themselves.

Kirkus Reviews