Booby-Trapped^™
 Nili Sachs, Ph.D.
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 Beaver's Pond Press
 ISBN: 1931646457

How to Feel Normal in A Breast-Obsessed World^™

What I like about Nili Sachs' book is how she has mined the English language for all the double-entendres in reference to the female torso, those ones we don't think twice about using.

Perhaps it matters that I wasn't breast-fed as a war orphan, & I'm sure it has had something to do with my sense of disconnection. When I lived in Portugal, it was quite a normal thing to see women sitting quietly with lovely shawls draped over their shoulders & their babes, suckling away. As an art student I saw many, many paintings of Madonna & Child & thought nothing of the process. The same art school gave me access to hundreds of other paintings & sculptures of bare bosomed, bare everything, women. As a boarder at a girls only school, I often saw my contemporaries half-naked &, occasionally, at home I would have to use the bathroom when my mother was in there. On the other hand, the only naked males I ever saw were in paintings or sculptures, even though I had three older brothers & a father at home.

In my budding Feminism years, it always bothered me that men could wander about the streets with bare chests while women had to cover their nipples. That sculptures of near-naked females were all over the place, & statues of males were kept coyly hidden in places where “the children” were unlikely to look.

Perhaps I was lucky to have come up in a society & a time where bust size wasn't much mentioned. Few of my contemporaries commented on bosoms or their seductivity, or perhaps I never paid much mind to it. Back then brassieres (bras) were contraptions designed liked harnesses & were, naturally, a loathsome addition to our maidenhood. I have always enjoyed Madonna's flamboyant apparel, & Dolly Parton's exotic contours, without a particle of envy.

When it was my time to have children, it was a given that I'd breastfeed, more out of laziness than a political statement -- the idea of all that work of mixing & warming formulas in the middle of the night or while traveling -- simply bored me. Breastfeeding was so much more handy, & with the Portuguese shawl I'd kept all those years, my kidipoos had a good & calming start in life. & yes, my bust is no longer “stacked”. That my breasts have always been a source of my eroticism is simply a part of being a sensual being.

However, if you are at all troubled by your feelings of imperfection about your bosom, or what your mammalian glands are for, or the why or how Western societies developed so many contradictory taboos about female body images, then this exploration of how half a dozen women came together for group therapy to heal their shame & misery, will not only absorb you, it will bring quite a degree of healing.

Twenty years in the making, through Nili Sachs' work with hundreds of women, BOOBY-TRAPPED gives you both sides of the therapy -- the thoughts & struggles of the group, as well as the affects on their therapist.

While I disagree that this is a “world” problem -- there are cultures that pay little heed to the female chest -- BOOBY-TRAPPED has insights & humor & bravery in facing breast cancer, crippling body loathing, lifelong numbness & the perception that the quality of relationships depends upon size. Curiously, I was out on the Web, looking for images of melons when, lo & behold, up popped a young damsel with two of the most humongous artificial orbs I've ever seen. My reaction? Why on earth would she want to be that big, how uncomfortable, & what size would that be...MMMs?

BOOBY-TRAPPED also has social history, anthrobiology & interesting tidbits from the animal world. There are exercises to do & lots to think about. Most of which is that if we define our femininity by our cup size, then we truly are not in touch with what's wrong with either our lives or the world!

BOOBY-TRAPPED gives the uninitiated a good idea of how useful group therapy can be & how to go about healing one's warped self-image.
(09/07/03)

Rebecca