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" \nGirls Gone Wild creator and now-multimillionaire Joe Francis may have put the impulsively topless trend on the map with his insanely popular tapes and DVDs, but the GGW empire is only the tip of the breast-obsessed iceberg. America already seems to lead the world in cup size (courtesy of an ever growing breast-augmentation industry). Now it looks like the country wants to take the lead in crazy breast behavior of all kinds. At concerts, festivals, college parties, and athletic events, chicks are grinning and baring their boobs. Which begs the question: Why are so many young women making their breasts public property? And who really ends up getting the best end of this deal \u2014 the girls who say all this flaunting makes them feel empowered and free or the men ogling them?  Boobs on Parade Until recently, the most common theater for the nice-girls-go-topless show was spring break. And not surprisingly: Most participants are drinking, already stripped down to barely there bikinis, and the whole situation is loaded with wild expectations now that spring break has become known as an annual booze-and- promiscuity fest. A poll of college women and graduates ages 17 to 35, conducted in 2006 by the American Medical Association, confirmed that reputation \u2014 three quarters of respondents said that on spring break, women use drinking as an excuse for outrageous behavior, which might include public nudity, dancing on tables or bars, and participating in drinking contests. But now it&amp;#039;s not uncommon for shirts to go up in all kinds of contexts...and for cameras to snap the action. Photos of college girls flashing the crowd surfaced after the University of Connecticut men&amp;#039;s basketball team won the NCAA championship in 2004. The pictures reportedly ended up being circulated on a voyeuristic Website called what boyswant.com \u2014 one of many sites that are packed with topless party pictures. In Calgary, Alberta, female hockey fans flashed their breasts in celebration of the Calgary Flames making the Stanley Cup finals. Believe it or not, even a young American military policewoman was caught baring her breasts for her fellow soldiers at a wild party at an Army prison in Southern Iraq. &amp;quot;There do seem to be more &amp;#039;sightings&amp;#039; at athletic events and even in some nightclubs,&amp;quot; says Mary Valentich, PhD, professor emerita of social work at the University of Calgary and a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, who conducted a study of attitudes after the Calgary flashing incident hit the news. And yet, the apparent popularity of baring one&amp;#039;s body is at odds with a generally puritanical national atmosphere \u2014 the same ethic that made America almost a laughingstock in many countries, for instance, for flipping out over the Janet Jackson nip slip at the Super Bowl in 2004 and that makes topless beaches seem terribly risqu\u00E9 rather than simply a blas\u00E9 fact of life, as they are throughout much of Europe. &amp;quot;On the one hand, this generation is very prudish,&amp;quot; says Peter Andersen, PhD, a professor of communication at San Diego State University and author of The Complete Idiot&amp;#039;s Guide to Body Language. &amp;quot;People now in their 20s tend not to shower together at the gym or go skinny-dipping, and there&amp;#039;s a feeling that nudity is not a natural thing. Yet there&amp;#039;s a corresponding attitude that is hypersexual, and in fact, surveys have shown that this is probably the most sexual generation in history and, in some ways, the most open about it.&amp;quot; For all the dichotomy, there is one constant as far as the hypersexuality goes, however: For the most part, young women are showing, and young men are watching. &amp;quot;Men are actually covering their bodies up much more than they used to,&amp;quot; points out Andersen. &amp;quot;Look at men&amp;#039;s shorts \u2014 they&amp;#039;ve gone down to around the knees. And women are exposing themselves more, with very low-slung pants and very skimpy tops that show the belly.&amp;quot;  Why Girls Go Wild All you have to do is turn on the TV or cruise the Internet for a few minutes to observe the current exhibitionistic climate. Reality shows like The Girls Next Door, about Hugh Hefner and his multiple live-in girlfriends, offer a voyeuristic view into a m\u00E9nage-a-many; photos of female stars&amp;#039; numerous nip slips, which may or may not be unintentional, circulate in perpetuity on the Web. Exposing yourself can feel like the fast track to some kind of dubious fame, which seems to be the goal of many of the women who bare their &amp;quot;cans&amp;quot; in Howard Stern&amp;#039;s radio studio. The yearning for attention and fame \u2014 and the idea that you&amp;#039;re somehow becoming part of a shared public history \u2014 is one of three motivations that Valentich uncovered when she interviewed some of the women who had flashed after the Stanley Cup playoff victory. The other two themes, she says, were celebration and defiance. &amp;quot;In other words, these women were not just being &amp;#039;drunk and stupid,&amp;#039; as some people portrayed them,&amp;quot; says Valentich. But there is no question that being &amp;quot;drunk and stupid&amp;quot; is indeed often another key element in the process of &amp;quot;going wild.&amp;quot; The AMA spring-break study firmly put the blame on booze for girls&amp;#039; misbehavior during what the AMA&amp;#039;s president characterized as &amp;quot;a dangerous binge fest.&amp;quot; But which comes first, the alcohol or the desire to flash? &amp;quot;Alcohol may partly enable some of this behavior,&amp;quot; says M. Lynne Cooper, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia and an expert in alcohol use and risky behavior. And yet, she says, alcohol is unlikely to make someone take off her top who truly doesn&amp;#039;t want to do so. Instead, quantities of alcohol can, as Cooper puts it, &amp;quot;grease the skids&amp;quot; if you start out on the fence about doing it \u2014 maybe you wonder what it would be like; you&amp;#039;re afraid you might regret it, but you also secretly think it could be fun to have this wild experience, just once. Those skids are further greased by the intoxication of the moment itself, the dynamic of being in a riotous, rowdy setting \u2014 the celebration part of Valentich&amp;#039;s equation. After all, no one just goes out and lifts her top on a quiet street in Los Angeles or Miami. If the drinks are flowing, the crowd is urging you on, and others around you are lifting their tops, says Andersen, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s a situation where you feel you can act disinhibited \u2014 it feels socially sanctioned.&amp;quot; Not only does the context seem to justify it, he says, but you know you can always blame it on the alcohol later on.  Topless Politics But beyond the impulse of the moment, many women who decide to flash their breasts are actually expressing the defiance motivation that Valentich found in her research, a kind of breast-liberation that challenges the secrecy and fetishizing of breasts in our culture. &amp;quot;Young women today are children of the sexual revolution,&amp;quot; says Donna Lisker, PhD, director of the Duke University Women&amp;#039;s Center, &amp;quot;and many have grown up with the explicitly feminist message that they should be proud of their bodies. So they can cast their behavior as a form of feminism \u2014 as girl power, being in charge of their own sexuality.&amp;quot; But that&amp;#039;s where it gets complicated, because when you whip off your top, your audience may have very different ideas about what it means. James Garbarino, PhD, professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago and author of See Jane Hit, is concerned about that disconnect and about what he calls the &amp;quot;comprehensive sexualization of girls&amp;#039; cultural space.&amp;quot; It seems like a bad sign, he says, &amp;quot;when only one group [i.e. the girls] is getting nude.&amp;quot; The problem is that breasts are so sexualized in our culture \u2014 much more so than in many places around the world, says documentary filmmaker Francine Strickwerda, codirector of the film Busting Out, which examines Americans&amp;#039; fascination with breasts. &amp;quot;The obsession with breasts in America is so great,&amp;quot; she adds, &amp;quot;that just having breasts is both a blessing and a burden.&amp;quot; And the decision about whether they are neutral body parts equivalent to men&amp;#039;s chests or sexual playthings that only a lover should see can end up out of your control and in the hands of your audience.  Worst-Case Scenarios Here&amp;#039;s the problem, says Cooper: Our culture ends up investing the behavior of &amp;quot;freeing your breasts&amp;quot; with a certain meaning, and it may not be the meaning you want to project when you lift your top. &amp;quot;This is not necessarily a benign behavior in this culture,&amp;quot; says Cooper, &amp;quot;because we have fostered some unhealthy attitudes about sex and nudity.&amp;quot; The possible consequences are threefold: You can be seen as someone you&amp;#039;re not (that is, as someone promiscuous or looking for casual sex), you could be at greater risk of assault, and you could put your future at risk. As far as the first problem, says Lisker, &amp;quot;even if you believe that flashing is a sign of your power, the guys watching you are not interpreting it that way. You are allowing yourself to be made into an object, even if that&amp;#039;s not your intent.&amp;quot; Frustrating but true \u2014 as Strickwerda points out, &amp;quot;the double standard is still very much alive.&amp;quot; Reputation is one thing, safety is another, and in this case, the two may be interrelated. What happens, asks Cooper, when you flash the crowd as a statement of freedom or celebration of girl power and then go back into that crowd? &amp;quot;You start talking to men who have just observed this,&amp;quot; Cooper says, &amp;quot;and they have their own set of beliefs about why you did this, and they&amp;#039;re going to act on their interpretations of your behavior \u2014 interpretations that could be radically different from yours and not flattering.&amp;quot; Plenty of date-rape situations in general, she adds, evolve because people come into a situation with two sets of ideas about what a certain behavior means. Finally, there is a danger that may seem insignificant at the time \u2014 especially after a few too many beers. That threat is to your future reputation, beyond the events of one night or your social rep among acquaintances: your image in the world at large. In our age of instant Internet picture-sharing and personal Websites such as Facebook and MySpace, you could find yourself haunted in the working world by images you wish didn&amp;#039;t exist \u2014 or ones you didn&amp;#039;t know were being taken. &amp;quot;I was showing off my stuff with my friends at a Mardi Gras celebration,&amp;quot; says Jill (not her real name), a repentant flasher. &amp;quot;The experience felt mischievous, but now I regret it. Someone snapped a photo that ended up in everyone&amp;#039;s e-mail at work \u2014 even my boyfriend&amp;#039;s! I was so embarrassed.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Spring break\u2013type pictures may cost you a job or, down the line, a promotion or a confirmation hearing,&amp;quot; says Lisker. You might ask yourself this before freeing your breasts: Would you like your future boss \u2014 or your future mother-in-law \u2014 to witness the emancipation? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/advice/a2844/stupid-boob-behavior/>