Boob Origami

The last few posts have been pretty heavy, so I thought I'd lighten things up a little with some thoughts on "boob origami". For those of you who don't have breasts large enough - or the right shape - to fold, this may be either illuminating, frightening or way more than you wanted to know. You have been warned.

"Boob origami" or "breast origami" is what you do if you have formerly substantial breasts (aka "boobs of heft") and you have found yourself, um, recently deflated, as the Japanese say. This is actually, one of the few phrases I remember from my pre-pubescent romance with Nihongo, and you have no idea how seldom this comes up in normal cocktail party conversation, even (especially with) native speakers. In order to get your breasts into a regular bra - especially an underwire - and to get your nipples both pointing in the preferred direction at the same time, you have to literally fold your breats to get them to fit properly into the cup.

This takes more practice than one might think on first blush. First of all, for those of you who have misplaced your owner's - or operator's - manuals, most women have one breast larger than the other. When fully inflated, this may be a slight oddity to be noted in the mirror or discussed with one's more intimate friends, but after WLS the disparity can become quite marked, necessitating yet another fold to get one's breasts looking not even symmetrical, but like the owner/operator isn't standing on a listing ship in a hard wind.

Secondly, gravity is indeed a cruel mistress. I don't know if any of you have seen the t-shirt saying, "Tell your boobs to stop staring at my eyes", but I think the enterpreneur who comes up with the "Tell my boobs to stop staring at my thighs" might sell a few shirts among my people. While many of us genuinely enjoy not advertising our recent food choices on our chests, that lack of "shelf action" comes at a price. The old joke about going from a 44D to a 44 extra long suddenly takes on new meaning and nipples that were once perky extroverts take on a distressingly introspective bent.

Without proper adjustment, once corralled into a boob hammock, also known as a bra, one can have the disconcertingly nipple-less look once reserved for Barbie, Mailbu Stacy and their ilk. On the positive side, no one need know if you've detected a sudden chill. On this distressing note, my very own grandmother once suggested that I put scotch tape over my nipples to keep my, er, profile smooth. This message was quite unsettling for a twelve year old just getting used to Life in the Land of the Developed - and was undoubtedly a use never even dreamed of by the fertile - yet clean - minds of the good marketing folks at Minnesota Mining and Mineral HQ in St. Paul.

Like in paper origami, there are pitfalls if you don't make the folds in the correct manner or place. One ugly and disquieting possibility is the "wall-eyed bust" look, with each nipple staring forlornly off in the opposite direction. It makes a seriously uncoordinated impression. Should you crease too firmly, you might end up with anotomically unlikely, "sky nipples" phenomenon, with your nipples pointing up at the ceiling. When this happens, the unfortunate owner/operator looks like she's about to make a last-ditch attempt desparately reinflate her personal flotation devices manually, much in the fashion described by pinchy-lipped airline crew members the world over.

The good news is, again, practice makes perfect. You gain all the benefits of "schematic learning through repeatable actions" and enjoy this "unique exercise in spatial reasoning". And you never need to worry about running out of paper or feeling compelled to try to make eleventythousand paper cranes out of your origami set to save some mortally ill child you read about in a book. In fact, if this catches on, we may have to change the word "origami" which literally means "fold paper" in Japanese. I modestly suggest, "orioppai" - something along the line of "fold breasts". On the other hand, shaky as my Japanese is, I may just have developed a term that is the equivalent of the "murphy tit" or "camp boob".