I tease men with my breasts and I make them forbidden. My breasts are always exposed like those peep shows where you put in a quarter and the movies run out till you pay another quarter to see more. But I don't condemn decolletage entirely because I really enjoy certain playful aspects of the mating situation, and my breasts are a very playful part of me.
Yet I am always much more excited by mystery than the revelation of mystery. Breasts can be very mysterious but sometimes they are overexposed. I like to have work to do -- when I look at somebody I like to be able to mentally undress them.

I don't ever like to completely expose my breasts -- I like to imply them. When you walk around naked in front of someone, when there's no anticipation, it makes the body less interesting. I think of my body as my temple and when exposing it becomes an everyday thing, it somehow becomes less sacred.

Revealing my breasts is like giving a present. When I'm being unwrapped they're the prize or the treasure, and not just for sexual reasons, but because breasts are particularly inspiring to me artistically -- how they've been painted and conceived and sculpted all through history. To me breasts are the artwork of the human body. Even when I doodle, most of the drawings that come out are breasts. (2)

This divine nakedness may give us a hint about the numinosity in human nakedness. A powerful aura surrounds the well-painted, well-photographed nude and may give a certain halo to a lover in the flesh as well. Unclothe the human body, and we are granted a glimpse of the nymph, the Aphrodite that gives life such pleasure and satisfaction. If the sexual body were not numinous, people would not be hypnotically drawn to it, nor would religion be so concerned about its propriety. (3)

The body is always available for poetic reading, and there is no need to become rigid about a particular way of interpreting it. Each person, each culture, each historical period,and each theory has the right to its own storytelling based on images that lie piled on each other in every inch of human tissue. The skin is thick with stories, told and untold, already explored and yet to be discovered. (4)

Mary Gaitskill in her introduction to Infanta tells us, "When I dance topless, I see the way the guys look at me, and I...uh...sorta get this thing inside of me that says, Hell, I'm teasin' you, and you can't touch me!
And I've never really been able to do that before without someone callin' me a dirty name for teasin' 'em, or for just bein' affectionate toward 'em when they thought that I meant more. And this way, I really like doin' it 'cause I can tease 'em and they can't touch me. It's a real power trip -- it is! I don't know if that's wrong or not, but that's the way I feel about it. (5)
I was very shy and insecure at that time, and when I told people I was a stripper they were pretty surprised. What they didn't realize was that to perform naked in that context was easy because the almost formal poses and routines of stripping actually shielded my shyness. I was embarrassed when the store clerk saw my ass because I didn't realize, at first, that I was being watched and so I felt that I'd been caught out. Not so when I stripped. In presenting my body in a certain stereotypical way it was almost as if I held my nakedness out before me, hiding my less visible self. I could do this partly because of the intensity of male projection and male desire; I never felt less exposed than when on a strip stage; for whatever part of my anatomy I revealed I could rest assured that my audience was not seeing me -- unless I wanted them to. I could choose to step fully into the role I was playing, to let real vulnerability infuse my "little girl" act, or to let a true experience of cruelty come into my childish fatale posturing. I especially liked admitting the silliness of it to the audience, striking some trite pose and then making a joke of it. And at its best it was like turning a sometimes painful dilemma of female identity into my personal playground. At the other end, it could be degrading to lend myself to the fantasies of an audience which was not always kind." (6)

Carol Queen states that exhibitionism is about projecting and feeling our eroticism. It's true that society doesn't give us much credit or show us much esteem when we do; in fact, we may have to muster up enough courage to transgress the boundaries of propriety our family, religious background, and community claim to uphold. The promise of sexual satisfaction, though, can help us jump a log of fences -- and arousal and gratification are the direct payoffs an exhibitionist seeks. We are worlds away from the asylum-bound exhibitionists the nineteenth century doctors studied (though if you think dropping your pants and jacking off in church is a hot fantasy, I don't blame you); we're in charge of our own sexuality, and we're going to learn to show off with a lot more finesse. (7)

1. Moore, T., The Soul of Sex . Harper Collins 1998. 2. Ayalah, D. and I. Weinstock. Breasts .  Summit Books 1979. 3. The Soul of Sex. 4. The Soul of Sex. 5. Breasts. 6. Gaitskill, M. in Infanta, Gibson, R. Takarajima Books, 1995 7. Queen, C. Exhibitionism for the Shy. Down There Press, 1995.

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