Tits Up

What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts

By: Sarah Thornton

Narrated by: Sarah Thornton

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 chauvinistic 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.

©2024 Sarah Thornton (P)2024 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

“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… Exquisitely written and consistently illuminating.”—Mary Roach, New York Times best-selling author

diverse perspectives

Not to be confused with erotica, Tits Up is an interesting book about the “meaning” of a certain anatomy. Very informative!

Informative, Insightful and Often Funny

This is an informative, insightful and often witty and funny book that might be subtitled “Everything you wanted to know about the female breast in society but were afraid (or too clueless) to ask.” The author brings a sociologist/ethnographer’s approach to the book and indicates that her curiosity to write the book was stimulated by having a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. The book has a strong feminist narrative and is largely based on interviews and experiences of the author with frequent reference to published writings and studies.

Chapters focus on: 1) The author’s personal experience as a breast cancer patient and having undergone double mastectomy and adjusting to reconstructive surgery and implants; 2) The author’s research on the role and use of breasts in strip bars, in onstage sexual performance art, by international pornography, by sex workers, and by transgender performers; 3) International societal perceptions and traditions of lactating mothers, allomaternal nursing and the role of lactation and nursing in infant neurologic and emotional development; 4) Fashion trends and practices in breast cosmetic and reconstructive surgery based largely on interviews with and the perspective of female plastic surgeons; 5) Fashion industry and clothes designer ideals in designing and modeling bras and the politics of deciding to free or cover the nipple (the author calls for a campaign to free the nipple and for women to reclaim/liberate the breast and oppose the patriarchy); and finally 6) the symbolism and use of images of bare breasted women in Paleolithic art, Greek mythology, world-wide religions and spiritualism.

The book is narrated by the author who does an excellent job. I ran the book at 1.3X speed for most enjoyable listening.

Note for Would-Be Male Readers:
The book has a heavy-handed feminist narrative that at times takes on the quality of a tiresome rant by end of the book. Passages in the book often seem to be powered by feminist outrage and misandrist hostility orchestrated to smite the patriarchy. This does not detract in my opinion from the value of the author’s observations, insights, and humor. On the other hand, you don’t have to drink the Kool Aid either.