So some silly newspaper focused on her cleavage. And she retorted like a wounded Lioness. A sexist response was of course that of a whole generation asking if she wasn’t making a mountain out of a molehill. But another generation is up in arms and asking the lady and many like her why they wear clothes designed to flaunt their cleavages (deep or otherwise) if the intention was not to show off what they’ve inherently realised is a perceived asset.

While I, as someone mentioned in a blog, am a normal male who will instinctively glance at a leg, or a waist or yes, even the odd cleavage or two, I don’t make a big thing of it and listen more to the mind and the heart…I know that there are some of my fellow men who may glance just that little longer and perhaps fantasise that much more.

But the sudden outrage caught me by surprise. And I wondered…so all the actresses who get make up done on their chest so as to show a deeper cleavage than they actually have is a figment of my imagination? so all the girls who wear bras that have some engineering advantages need to be pulled up…or pushed up as the case may be.

I remember an old joke from the 60s or 70s I think…where a young woman objected to a young man looking at her Airplane shaped locket that was hanging enticingly around her cleavage. And the man retorted that he was not looking at the aircraft but admiring instead…the landing field.

For Chrissakes, people were laughing about cleavages then…now what’s happened? Have they stopped being the joke? Has modesty suddenly been revived?

Talking of modesty…think of the men! For years after they became civilized and started wearing shirts, they were buttoned up to the neck. A bare chest was but a swimming pool delicacy or a labourer’s woe. Only in some exceptional cases some of the men tried to translate macho into a couple of unbuttoned shirts. But they knew what they were doing and possibly even why.

And that is what irritates me about this whole ‘wolf, wolf’ scenario. Is there any actress so dumb that she doesn’t know why a top angle shot is being framed. Or why she is made to bend low and look seductively into a camera. Or when the camera follows her butt. Oh come on, I know actresses who know which angle they look better from…and I am not talking facial profiles.

So let’s not get all hypocritical and upset when someone verbalises the female equivalent of a cleft in a male  chin…or when someone articulates the sensuousness of a valley.

Seriously, you can’t have it both ways. Show off whatever you feel like. But object to being stared at. What do you want? A stop watch that times men when they stare…and ten seconds later a placard appears says ‘Time Up’…

Learn from the men I say. Keep things to yourself. Tell others only when you’re sure you want to. I haven’t seen any of the young men walking round in costumes that make their groin more attractive or even prominent. And those poor fellows who allow their arms and pectorals to strain their t-shirts with ungainly bulges…they realise very soon that body building works first on the brain and converts intelligent matter into dumb muscles faster than you can say Arnold Schwarzenegger…ooops, sorry. Didn’t that hulk become Governor of an American State? Aah well…Americans