A phrase I didn't think I'd ever heard used as a slur turns out to have been slung as slur in the most important movie in the history of this blog.

Remember the post from a few days ago about the lawsuit involving a woman who allegedly bared her chest and said "I bet your little Asian, fish head wife doesn’t have these cannons." I didn't believe anyone would say that, in part because I didn't recognize "fish head" as a standard slur.

But now I see that I had heard it before, because I'd seen the movie "Gran Torino." Twice. In fact, "Gran Torino" is the most important movie in the history of this blog. Click the tag — "Gran Torino" — and start at the bottom, the earliest post, to relive the movie's interweaving with my life story. 

I've updated the old post now, based on this email from a reader: "In the Clint Eastwood Movie Gran Torino, there is a scene where he is invited to party by the girl he has befriended. The party is next door and everyone (except Eastwood) is Hmong. Eastwood makes a reference to them as 'Fish Heads.'"

Here's the scene:

"I have to say, I’m pretty much on my own with this question, and I’m at a loss."

Said the director Wim Wenders, 80, asked about his movie "Wrong Move" (1975) which made the now easily perceptibly wrong move of gazing at the breasts of a 13 year old. But what to do about that now?

I'm reading, "Wim Wenders Pulls Film With Teenage Nudity After Actress’s Pleas/Nastassja Kinski was 13 years old when she was shown topless in the 1975 film 'Wrong Move.' 'I could already tell that wasn’t right,' she told a German newspaper" (NYT).

"On Wednesday, Wenders released a statement on his foundation’s website," the NYT says, linking to a German text. I used Grok to put it in English:

Bill Maher lay in wait for Spencer Pratt, then suddenly sprang the trap: "Your wife... look I hate to put it this way, but what I remember about this story was huge tits...."

"What is the state of the tits? They're not what you would call huge but they were at one point. At one time they were okay. So what happened there?"

Yes, that's what Maher said to the man's face, 37 minutes into the interview, after some drinking.

I think Maher wanted to destroy Pratt and had that planned. Either Pratt loses his temper and struggles to respond or he displays a Dukakis-like coldness or Franken-like jocularity that would turn women against him.

But no:

Maher: "But so then she had breast reduction?"

Pratt: "Yes, she did.... So I don't think you respectfully would notice anything."

Maher: "I respectfully wouldn't comment...."

Pratt: "Well, you brought it up."

Touché. Maher blabbers — "Well, I just... I'm telling you..." — then jumps to his backup attack: "My history of you is like 2007 douchebag and then years of nothing?"

Anyway, I think Maher came in wanting to reduce Pratt to the nothing he believed he was — a washed up reality show star who's pissed that his own house burned down — but Pratt prevailed and I think by the end Maher either felt supportive or wanted to manufacture some last-minute evidence that he had backed the winner. 

Why would it have been considered good comedy to use naked "full plump butts" to celebrate Hillary's victory?

Last night's "Late Show with Stephen Colbert," the first night of the last week of the show, featured various segments from over the years that were never aired. The first one is from election night, 2016, where they were prepared to gloat over Trump's defeat. Unlike the usual show, this thing was live and on Showtime, which meant they had the option to use nudity, and they did:

"We were so sure that the New York Times prediction needle was right, we hired a bunch of naked male models with the words, 'I'm with her,' painted on their full plump butts. Sadly, all of those models had to be put down. But first, we tried to save the bit. And as the outcome became clear, we repainted their butts to say 'We're fucked.'"

When I saw that clip on X this morning — at 3 a.m. — I hit the Grok button and got into a conversation that I'm only going to give you my side of. No Grok-writing below. This is all me:

"[B]reast reduction and implant-removal procedures have surpassed enlargements for the first time. This is amid a cultural shift away from 'exaggerated curves'..."

"... to a smaller, lighter, more 'delicate' shape, aka 'ballerina boobs,' also known as 'yoga tits.' Well, this is all great to know. I look forward to hearing this kind of talk applied to male appendages.... But may I also say that I suspect much of this might be a load of balls? Could the well-endowed women who are having reductions simply be sick of having back pain and two grooves on their shoulders like a workman’s ditch? Could the women having their implants removed simply have realised it’s hard to get clothes to fit and they don’t want to hoik two silicone jellyfish everywhere with them that may at some point leak?"

Writes Carol Midgley, in "Now is no time to have a voluminous bosom (and M&S won’t measure you)/It turns out that big ones are over and the ‘ballerina boob’ is in" (London Times).

I like that word "hoik." It has an interesting array of meanings. According to Wiktionary:

"Le Droop" — "the natural-looking — not floppy but not pneumatic — breasts that you can bet are about to be the look everyone in Hollywood wants."

"Le Droop, c’est chic, or it’s about to be.... Let’s be in no doubt that there are people whose job it is to work out where to take the boob brag next. We’ve seen it with Lily Allen, who has embraced all the breast exposure tricks in the past six months while staying one step ahead of the game. The Thirties lingerie look — an unstructured flat bra with a hint of underboob — was one that stood out recently, not least because it was in the droopy, natural-looks-best zone. Underboob is still top of the breast brag charts but, unlike a few years ago, the look now is soft and accidental, not travel-pillow taut under a tight cropped T-shirt.... Florence Pugh is keen on a nipple reveal under a gauzy red carpet dress, and thanks to her and one or two others nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity. But they’re not the breast flex of the moment. That’s Le Droop."

From "Charlize Theron and why ‘Le Droop’ is the red carpet breast flex of 2026/Is this the ultimate boob brag?" (London Times).

Did you, like me, stumble over "nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity"? Apparently, "marmalade dropper" is a British expression. Something is a "marmalade dropper" if it would shock you to the point where you'd drop your marmalade-covered toast.

"This foray into looking at humans as creatures that are governed by instinct and biology offered little in the way of advancing Darwinist theory..."

"... nor was his explicit approach of studying man as a mere ape a novel one. What ensured the popularity of The Naked Ape was first its clarity of prose, and second, the era in which it was published, where a popularised 'back to nature' philosophy and sexual liberation were all the rage.... [T]he salacious manner of the book helped to guarantee it success. During copulation, he wrote, 'the female breasts … shows a significant increase in size. By the time orgasm has been reached, the breast of the average female will have increased by anything up to 25 per cent of its normal dimensions. It becomes firmer, more rounded and more protuberant.' Elsewhere, Morris would tell readers that the human penis is the largest of all primates, and the only one without a bone, making it harder to achieve an erection.... The Naked Woman (2004) was a similar blend of zoological observation and detailed titillation, with an analysis of women’s backs ('even at rest … naturally more arched than a man’s back'), legs ('part of the sexual fascination … is that they focus attention on the point where they meet'), buttocks (they 'transmit a powerful gender signal') and breasts (which 'operate first as visual stimuli and then as tactile ones'). Never short of ideas, Morris also advanced the theory that female breasts had developed as imitation buttocks 'to shift the interest of the male to the front.'..."

From "Desmond Morris obituary: natural world expert/Zoologist, broadcaster and author best known for The Naked Ape dies aged 98" (London Times).

That can't feel good.

"Her custom negligee dress and matching cape were crafted in silk georgette in a deep red garnet. But once Roan removed the cape, the result was a naked dress that seemingly exposed her breasts, with the silk georgette suspended by nipple rings."

I'm reading "Chappell Roan’s Naked Dress at Grammys Shocks Social Media/The double Grammy nominee created what was arguably the night's first viral moment when she turned up in a sheer look by Mugler" (Hollywood Reporter).

Congratulations on getting attention. It's quite a look, and it kind of looks good. But I'm just worried about that kind of weight suspended from pierced nipples. You're treating your breasts like hooks on the back of a bathroom door, things to hang clothing on.

Here's a closeup (on X) that highlights the pulling. It's not just an illusion that the whole bottom of the dress is hanging from those nipple rings. You can see the distortion from the weight. You can see the risk of injury. The viewer is drawn into the experience of pain and danger. Who is that for? 

"I never liked the MAGA Mar-a-Lago sexualization. I believe how women in leadership present themselves sends a message to younger women."

"I have two daughters, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with how those women puff up their lips and enlarge their breasts. I’ve never spoken about it publicly, but I’ve been planning to."

Said Marjorie Taylor Greene, quoted in "'I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump/How the Georgia congresswoman went from the president’s loudest cheerleader to his loudest Republican critic" (NYT).

This is a very long article, by Robert Draper. Let me just pull out 3 more things:

"I'm alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies. If I saw a penis in the ladies rocker room, I would freak out too."

"This is nothing against trans anybody. What it's saying is if I turn around and I see a pee pee — a penis — in front of me inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, 'Wait a minute. Why is there somebody a naked man in this room?' Because... just from a safety standpoint and just from a, you know, from a privacy standpoint, I would so I can see why she would have gone and reported to management. There's a man naked in the — now, if they clarified and they said, 'Well, trans, okay,' but I think they should take her concerns also seriously because if she's uncomfortable, does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with this situation is what I'm saying...."

Said Joy Reid on her Reid This Reid That podcast:

I only quoted part of what's at that clip. Joy Reid goes on and on about nakedness and extensively details what's wrong with "dangling boobies." Nor is she a fan of the "flat ass." Jacque Reid joins in. Both women assert that they are not transphobic... as they go on and on saying what has been getting people called transphobic. It's quite amusing (and, to some, I presume, enraging).

Here's the NY Post article about it: "Joy Reid joins outrage at trans members in locker rooms: 'If I saw a penis … I would freak out, too.'"

"Mr. Gutfeld’s style mixes anti-liberal insult comedy with relentless punchlines about women’s bodies — their age, their weight, their sexual attractiveness."

"Each night, Ms. Timpf sits at his right-hand side, playfully challenging him while staking out an alternate style of physical humor — one that centers her own experience inhabiting a woman’s body. I met Ms. Timpf on a Tuesday morning in August, on her second day back at 'Gutfeld!' after a reconstructive surgery in which the tissue expanders inserted behind her chest muscle during the mastectomy she underwent in March were replaced with permanent breast implants. She wore baggy jeans and a tight gray T-shirt, which she had second-guessed that morning. “Would I be better off wearing a looser shirt?' she asked. 'Something about breast cancer is — I don’t want to say embarrassing,' she said. 'People are like, Are you breastfeeding? And you have to be like, I just cut my tits off.' She added, 'It’s a weird thing, which is part of the reason why I’ve decided to be so open about it.'... She will have her nipples reconstructed over the next year. It will be her first tattoo. 'I don’t think that those are small things,' Ms. Timpf said. 'I think that those are big things.'"

That's from the New York Times: "A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers. Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show 'Gutfeld!' — all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health."

"Today I’m releasing those false narratives, the parts of me that were never actually parts of me."

"I’m letting go of the body that was sexualized, that was abused, that I believed was necessary for me to be attractive; to be loved; to be successful; to be happy.... Today I am loved, I am feminine, I am attractive, and I am successful. None of that is because of my implants. I will still be all of those things when I wake up and they are gone. There is so much and joy in that knowledge and freedom in letting go of what was never me in the first place. Today, I’m my authentic self. Today, I’m free."

Said Alyssa Milano, quoted in "Alyssa Milano removes her breast implants: 'Letting go of the body that was sexualized and abused'"(NY Post).

"It's tricknological, when white people invoke the holocaust. allows them to step out of their whiteness and slip on fake oppression."

Wrote Doreen St. Félix, in an X post screencapped in an Instapundit post by Ed Driscoll.

St. Félix published an article — in The New Yorker — about the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes foofaraw. I'd skipped that article — I was Sweeneyed out by the time it appeared — but I see from the excerpt at Instapundit that it contained lines like "Interestingly, breasts, and the desire for them, are stereotyped as objects of white desire, as opposed to, say, the Black man’s hunger for ass." The desire is the object of desire? That's defective writing, and The New Yorker got its lofty reputation in part because of its punctilious word editing. But St. Félix is in The New Yorker, thus making her statements conspicuous and goofier than they would be somewhere else, like X (or a blog). 

Hey! It says "Black man’s hunger for ass" in The New Yorker.

The screencappers of X plunged into St. Félix's X account, homing in on posts with the words "hate" and "white people." Go to the Instapundit link to see what they found. 

What calls me is that new word: "tricknological." The adjective is, apparently, formed from the word "Tricknology," which is in the OED and traced back to 1938. It's marked "U.S. disparaging." It means:

The Department of Homeland Security — on Facebook — invites us to reveal ourselves in the discussion of a painting.

Here's the link to the Facebook page, where the image is quite large and clear and it's easy to read the comments. The government's caption is: "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending."

"Proud"? "Worth defending"? This sets some people off.

Even if you like that European-Americans moved across the continent and made it their own — and now your own — you may be taken aback to see America symbolized by a gigantic white woman in a diaphanous gown that whirls and swirls in the breeze — but doesn't slip off of her tenacious left tit — as she brings light, a telegraph line, and a school book westward.

The painting, "American Progress," was done by John Gast in 1872. Here's the Wikipedia article. The piece is very well composed and executed, and it's a good thing to stare at to contemplate Manifest Destiny. The Department of Homeland Security is challenging us to step up and feel proud, to see the westward expansion as beautiful... as beautiful as a half-naked woman.

"I know this might come as a shock, because my whole page used to be about loving my flat chest and being confident with it."

"I literally built my entire career around that. Was everything a lie? Was I secretly insecure this whole time, and just using body positivity to make money so I could finally afford a boob job? No."

Said Clara Dao, on TikTok, quoted in "When Beauty Standards and Body Positivity Collide/A new cultural ideal for women is ultrathin and cloaked in the language of inclusivity and self-acceptance" (NYT).

Dao got the implants for “fun,” she explained. After six years and more than 900 videos of “flat-chest content,” she “got bored.”... Dao’s followers are flooding her comments with anger and disappointment, but all the analytics show is that the engagement is through the roof....

I don't understand the choice of the word "but." The "flooding" of comments is engagement. It's a bad use of the human capacity for emotion to get angry at someone like this and to reward her with the attention she sought by doing the thing that made you angry. When will we ever learn?

"Liberal French women dress up as Nazis to protest against the so called ‘Fascist Epidemic’ during Women’s Day."

Weird photo, but since I don't want to suddenly thrust naked breasts in your face, I'll send you over to X to see it: here.

"Most men live lives of quiet desperation," said Joe Rogan.

On the new episode of Duncan Trussell's podcast — audio and transcript here.

The guys were not talking about Henry David Thoreau. They were talking about men struggling to live with women. Here's the context (which begins at 00:57:11):

ROGAN: I had a buddy of mine who was an actor and he got this part, I think it was in a movie. It was good, you know, good little, small part. He was real excited and his girlfriend started crying and she said, when is something gonna happen for me?... That was her response....

TRUSSELL: Jesus, dude. That's so dark.

ROGAN: I think about that guy sometimes. 'cause I was, I was on a, a show with him, one day, just bit part on a show. And I was like, this guy's gonna be a movie star.... But I remember him telling me, he's like, she started crying, man.... She was crying saying, when is it gonna happen to me? So [he says] I don't know what to do. And I was like Captain Fucking Jettison — I'm Captain Fucking Pull the Parachutes — that's me.... So I was like, dude, you gotta bail out.... You gotta bail now. This one, you can't fix that girl....

TRUSSELL: That's so fucked up.

ROGAN: But she's pretty hot.... 

TRUSSELL: Dude, I wouldn't have bailed.

ROGAN: She had the heavies... she had natural heavies.

TRUSSELL: Natural heavies. It's worth it!

"On certain days — mainly when I feel broke — I wish I had it all back. Although it was money I never expected to have, $19,000 is an awful lot of money."

"It’s impossible for me not to wonder if I might be happier now had I saved it and continued to live with my body as it was. Like most people who pursue cosmetic surgery, I believed I’d made a decision for and by myself. But what if no one had ever commented on my breasts, or the prior lack thereof? What if I hadn’t seen 50 million TikTok videos of young women with flat chests in baggy T-shirts? What if my doctor had told me that I might be depressed for a month and my scars might look much worse than the pictures in his portfolio? Would I still have done it? Less often, and less practically, I worry, too, that by giving up breast tissue, I’ve sacrificed some future, as-yet-discovered version of myself: What if one day I want to dress like Sydney Sweeney but no longer have the rack for it? Never mind that I’m a homebody writer and almost 40. Never mind that I stopped showing any cleavage 15 years ago. I’m more than capable of feeling regret for not doing things I never wanted to do in the first place; I do it all the time."

Writes Katie Heaney, in "My Breast Reduction From Hell/After my divorce, I wanted to make a change. Then the complications started" (New York Magazine).

"Not only do more women want to be small; they want to be smaller. Jerry Chidester, a plastic surgeon in Salt Lake City, said his patients used to ask for C cups."

"Now, they want Bs. He often does five breast reductions a week, mostly on young, postpartum mothers.... Small breasts may not draw as much attention on the subway or the street as bigger breasts do, but they are also a fashion. Whereas big breasts signal motherhood and sexual availability, smaller breasts can convey youth, girlishness, puberty, thinness, androgyny.... They can also indicate class. In March, a meme circulated on X... 'MEN,' it said. 'Which do you prefer? The aristocratic elegance of the small breasted woman OR the Nietzschean pro-sex, pro-beauty large breasted woman?' Thornton agrees that smaller breasts signal the self-assurance of affluence whereas breast augmentation can signify social ambition — a desire to attain wealth and status via the attention of men.... For a woman to withdraw from the male gaze, to assert herself in her refusal to be ogled, to relieve her own pain, to be able to comfortably train for a marathon or dance at her own birthday party — that is liberation. But it’s a personal, individual one, said Thornton. 'If women are going to have an emancipated rack,' she said, 'then men need to change.'"

I'm reading "The Power of a Smaller Breast/Breast reduction is all the rage in cosmetic surgery. Are women asserting their independence or capitulating to a yet another impossible standard of beauty?" (NYT).

Thornton is "Sarah Thornton, 59, a sociologist who lives in San Francisco, was a B cup before her double mastectomy. After breast reconstruction she had Ds, which felt huge to her — 'bulky and cartoony,' she wrote in 'Tits Up,' her recent social history of the breast."

"The most basic part of gender identity is what I call our transcendent sense of gender. In a way that goes beyond language..."

"... people often just feel male or female, and some more strongly than others. This can manifest in different ways. Some of my young patients draw themselves as a certain gender and have a 'wow, this is me' feeling.... [I]t’s hard to describe this transcendent feeling in words. But it is the foundation of our gender identity, the scaffolding we’re born with...."

Writes Jack Turban, a psychiatrist, in "Not Everyone Thinks About Gender the Same Way. Here’s One Way to Talk About It" (NYT).