Democrat, Illinois - The ElectroLounge

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B Is for Body
Ralph H. Emerson
Previously published in VERBATUM magazine, Vol XXVII, Number 2
Copyright 2002 VERBATUM magazine
http://www.verbatimmag.com
Let’s play a shapes game. Let’s pretend for a moment that B isn’t a letter but a
picture. What does it show? Look: B. Turn the page clockwise for a
second so the curves of the B come down toward you. What do you
see? I see breasts. Wishful thinking, you say? Well, maybe, but why
shouldn’t we have a picture of breasts in our alphabet? They’re
important. The Chinese root for “mother,” mu, is written with a Blike
pictogram showing breasts, and no one thinks that’s strange.
Besides, not only does B look like breasts; it also begins most English words for them: breasts,
boobs, bazooms, bust, bosom.
Breasts are rounded body parts that come in pairs. So are eyeballs, the balls of the
feet, and the balls or bollocks of men’s groins. Likewise the buns or buttocks: the bottom,
backside, or behind—further known as the bum to Brits, booty or boots to American blacks,
and butt to Americans in general. I’ve also heard the ad hoc B expressions “move your
Buxton” and “shake your bon-bon,” for the fact is, it’s not breasts that are B’s true
specialty—it’s bottoms, and not just in English, either. “Make your butt like candy,” says a
Brazilian ad for a diet clinic: “Make your bom bom like a bon-bon.” Another Brazilian word
for “butt” is bundas. (National Geographic Traveler, Jan.-Feb. 2001, p. 54.) Indonesians say
buntut and bokong. The Dutch say billen. Afrikaaners say boude.
All Blown Up
B means womanly roundness. Personal-ad shorthand for a
non-thin female is BBW, “Big Beautiful Woman.” A woman with a
plentiful bottom is broad-beamed. A big-breasted woman is buxom,
and if that’s all she’s got going for her, she’s a bimbo. The French
artist Sophie Calle, who has devoted individual days to living out
different letters of the English alphabet, chose on her B day to
become a “Big-Time Blond Bimbo.” (See the cover photo of her
2001 book Double Game.) But why stop at one bimbo when you
can evoke a whole bunch? A few years ago I saw this teaser for a
graphics file on America Online: “A bevy of bovinely blossomed
bronzed bikinied blockhead blonde babes bouncing bodaciously become brainlessly, blindly
beachward bound.” Woman, archetypally round! Camille Paglia, writing about the Venus of
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