"It’s not that I mind seeing breasts everywhere; after all, I have two of my own that I quite like."

"But it’s disheartening that breasts are often considered more interesting than the women they’re attached to – as if we’re an afterthought compared to our body parts. But now a bevy of women, in a matter of days, have taken back the tit. We’re reclaiming the rack, whether you like or not.... You don’t like it? Tough titties."

Writes Jessica Valenti in a Guardian column titled "Topless Keira Knightley is not alone: 2014 is the year women reclaimed our boobs."

For a prescient Althouse post — pinpointing 2006 as the year of "boob" reclamation — see "Let's take a closer look at those breasts."

(I put "boob" in quotes because that is not my style of slang. Nor is "tits," for that matter. I never use any word other than "breasts" (unless I'm quoting someone else).)

ADDED: 2 more things:

1. A "bevy of women"? I don't think I've ever seen the word "bevy" used outside of the trite phrase "bevy of beauties," where it seems old-fashioned and insufficiently attentive to the personhood of women but at least alliterates.

2. Why is it "disheartening that breasts are often considered more interesting than the women they’re attached to"? Lots of women aren't very interesting, whereas breasts have a base level of interestingness. If you're someone who believes you are regarded as less interesting than your breasts, become more interesting. I don't see how calling more attention to your breasts — in some sort of out-and-proud move like baring them in a magazine — is supposed to boost the relative interestingness of the aspects of you that are not your breasts. Do you imagine there's something especially feisty and feminist about posing with naked breasts that somehow transcends all those women in the past who thought they were baring their breasts in an exciting new way? I've heard this self-deception for at least 40 years. I'm sure Hugh Hefner has whispered it to bevies of beauties.

"Anyone calling these shots ‘sexy’ is horribly, horribly misguided."

Writes Claire Cohen in a UK Telegraph piece (that predates the naked-celebrities-iCloud leak) titled "Keira Knightley's topless pictures are a victory for small breasted women/Notoriously private actress Keira Knightley has posed topless for a fashion magazine to widespread surprise. Claire Cohen welcomes her decision and explains why it's a powerful statement for all women with less-than-voluptuous chests").

The photos of the strikingly beautiful actress are redacted at that link. Why does Cohen — who claims to have small breasts too — declare Knightley's pictures unsexy... or, to be perfectly accurate, not to be called "sexy"?

Cohen contends that her small breasts "just don’t factor much in my day-to-day thoughts and never when it comes to my feelings of attractiveness." And she's got a quote of Knightley saying "I don’t mind exposing my tits because they’re so small – people aren’t really that interested." Cohen says "really small boobs aren’t traditionally seen as desirable." And: "They’re often overlooked."

I would think the point would be that Keira Knightley proves that they are in fact extremely attractive. But Cohen "salute[s]" Knightley for "throwing out ideas of what the naked female form should, or shouldn’t, look like" and "taking control of her own image." In that light, Cohen says, it's "horribly, horribly misguided" to call the pictures "sexy."

To me, it’s clear that Keira hasn’t got her tits out for the purpose of male titillation. Powerful, yes. Strong, yes. Feminist, absolutely. X-rated? Not even close. And that’s why this is a victory for small breasted women.

Too bad Knightley "got her tits out" right when all these other stars were having their "tits" gotten out for them. Knightley's message — whatever it is — got stepped on badly.

But let's pretend we can hear the message Knightley intended to send by posing with her shirt off. I don't believe for one second that she meant small breasts, being small, can be seen naked without being sexy. She's saying: No one is more beautiful than I am — me, the ideal, including the tiny breasts. Tiny breasts should be the new thing, because I am so perfectly beautiful.

Now, who read the signaling headlamps properly, me or Cohen?

Reading TNR's "Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker" is "like going to a movie called 'Godzilla,' only to find out that it's a Keira Knightley Victorian era period piece."

Christian Schneider "kept waiting for a single example of Walker's 'toxic racial politics' and found exactly none."

In monster movies, directors have to make a decision as to when to finally reveal the monster. Audiences generally get at least a half hour of rustling trees and shaking water glasses before the monster finally bursts onto the screen.

But in MacGillis' article, though the trees rustle and the water ripples, the monster never appears.

"Just as the Russian aristocracy of the 19th century could be described as living upon a stage, our story unfolds in a dilapidated theatre."

"We shot almost all of the film in this single location, over 100 sets were built within the theater, creating a kind of fluid linearity. You can walk from one house under the stage, straight onto the horse-training ground, or go through a door and there's a Russian landscape."

The important-film packaging for "Anna Karenina" includes a 6-minute clip.

Does Keira Knightley seem like Anna Karenina? We're also getting a "Great Gatsby" this fall, and we'll be invited to contemplate whether Carey Mulligan seems like Daisy? I'm going to go out a limb and predict that Carey Mulligan is more like Daisy than Keira Knightley is like Anna Karenina.

For the annals of anorexia.

Keira Knightley. A great beauty has lost track of what beauty looks like, and that look on her face, which once would have seemed to reflect sly, knowing sexuality, now expresses -- at best -- wacky quirkiness.

Where is this woman?

I've been seeing a lot of anorexic women this year, both in Madison and New York City. I'm not talking about slender women who have dieted their way to the low end of normal, so that they look sharp and modern as their clothes hang so well on them. (Remember in "Some Like It Hot" when Marilyn Monroe expresses envy of Jack Lemmon's figure -- he's in drag -- because "clothes hang so well on you"?)

I'm talking about women who radiate ill health, who stalk about unsteadily, who make you think of concentration camps and skeletons. Their skin is withered and their arms and legs are weird shapes. This is an aesthetic that does not include the appearance of health. What does an inviting look from such a woman mean? Not join me in bed -- in the realm of life and fertility -- but join me in the grave.

Fashion focuses eyes on women's chests.

Upper chests, that is. It's all about the clavicle, the clavicle that you've etched out through hardcore exercise and stringent dieting.



Because what could be sexier that a woman who is shockingly, graphically demonstrating how thoroughly she has excluded all pleasure from her life?

Toned shoppers who want to show off their self-discipline in the face of dessert are choosing dresses with a low, but not plunging neckline, a look that is transforming the area above the breasts into an unlikely new subject for women to obsess over....

Why the new emphasis on a body part most women — and more men — have paid little attention to in the past? Credit a swing of the fashion pendulum, and a malaise over “Girls Gone Wild” style.

Yes, we're bored with breasts now. Haven't you heard? We've had enough of "Girls Gone Wild." We want "Girls Gone Abstemious."

[The clavicle is] an area whose prominence is unlikely to be enhanced surgically (at least for now).

Come on, you slacker plastic surgeons. Get on this, now. Where are my clavicle implants? Figure out how to add bony-looking bumps all over the body. You've been limiting yourself to cheekbones and chins for too long.

This region has been emphasized by the skinny celebrity acolytes of the stylist Rachel Zoe, including Nicole Richie and Keira Knightley. Their ubiquitous deep V-neck tops show off sometimes skeletal frames, and other actresses have taken their cue and sized down as well, to the point that the Internet teems with fashion and celebrity bloggers and message board posters carping about protruding A-list clavicles.

Talk about me, blog about me, say what you like but talk about me. How frighteningly must I cause my bones to protrude to get you to talk about me? Blog about me, dammit!

Courtney E. Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body” (Free Press, 2007), said that many of the girls and women she interviewed for her book “talked about how far their collarbone stuck out” with pride, as an indicator of their skinniness.

Ms. Martin contends that a generation of young women raised after Title IX and the women’s movement pursue slender figures with the same rigor as they pursue admission to an Ivy League university.

Title IX?! See what happens when you make women competitive? They're just choosing their sport, the extreme sport of thinning.

When Jessica Braff, who works at an advertising agency in New York, lost 15 pounds in her freshmen year of college, the first thing she noticed was that her clavicles were more pronounced.

“I loved it,” she said. She continues to wear clothes that show off her collarbones, which she calls the “easiest and least controversial expression of a kind of sex appeal.”

Yes, it's a kind of sex appeal. The kind that says there is not the slightest thing luscious or sybaritic about me.

On the pro-clavicle side, the most interesting voice is Consuelo Castiglioni, a fashion designer:

[Her] label, Marni, incorporates chest-baring necklines into tops and dresses. The brand has long been a favorite of women seeking clothing that isn’t expressly made to attract men, including skirts with bustles and tops that flare out to obscure any semblance of a waist.

“I think it is clear from my designs that deep cleavages, tight silhouettes, visible tummies or behinds are not part of my aesthetic,” Ms. Castiglioni said in an e-mail message. “What I try to express is elegance and femininity and a more cerebral, hidden sensuality.”

Don't you see? It's intellectual.

"I'm not anorexic."

Okay.



That's Keira Knightley at the premiere of "Dead Man's Chest." That photo along with that movie title ... a little disconcerting.

ADDED: I actually think the dress, creating a breastless look, is cool. Really daring and different.