![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Today's America being one of those times, Marilyn Yalom has chosen a rich and fascinating theme. Only long, abundant hair has rivaled the breast as a preeminent and spectacular sign of female sexuality at certain points in the history of desire. Early erotic associations, distinct from nurture and survival, seem to stir in such famous wonders of antiquity as the snake goddess of the Minoans, brandishing serpents in her flounced Sunday best, and in the coquettishness of the Venus pudica pose, when the goddess shields her breast and her pubic cleft and, in so doing, draws attention to them. The word in Greek for a woman's breast - mamme - clearly identifies it above all with motherhood. The shrine beneath the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem, where, according to tradition, the stable itself once stood, is called the Milk Grotto, because some drops fell as Mary was nursing the Christ Child and turned the rocks nearby limestone-white. $29.95 WAX REPLICAS of parts of the body have been found in the most ancient shrines some of these reproduce women's breasts, offerings made no doubt to forestall infant mortality or wasting disease. A HISTORY OF THE BREAST By Marilyn Yalom Knopf. ![]()
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