Overview

After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? An experienced sleuth, she resolved to venture behind the scenes to uncover the social and cultural significance of breasts. Riotous and galvanizing, Tits Up excavates the diverse truths of mammary glands from the strip club to the operating room, from the nation’s oldest human milk bank to the fit rooms of bra designers. Thornton draws insights from plastic surgeons, lactation consultants, body-positive witches, lingerie models, and “free the nipple” activists to explore the status of breasts as emblems of femininity. She examines how women’s chests have become a billion-dollar business, as well as a stage for debates about race, class, gender, and desire. Everywhere she turns, Thornton encounters chauvinist myths about this elemental body part that quietly justify deficits in women’s bodily autonomy and endorse shortfalls in their political status. Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, Thornton has one overriding ambition—to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice.

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9781324110415

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Reviews

""[Thornton’s] impassioned polemic makes a convincing case that the derogatory way Western culture views tits…helps perpetuate the patriarchy.… Tits Up asks readers to reimagine the bosom, no matter its size and shape, as a site of empowerment and even divinity."" -- Lucinda Rosenfeld - New York Times Book Review ""Thornton’s book is premised on the broad truth that most American women are ‘dissatisfied with, indifferent to, or ambivalent about their breasts.’…[Tits Up] wants to set these organs free with the goal of gaining a greater understanding of and appreciation for the women to which they are attached."" -- Lauren Michele Jackson - The New Yorker ""[Tits Up’s] trajectory is an uplifting one, with its five chapters exploring different hard-to-access Bay Area arenas rife with breast-related decisions and transactions.… All of these immersive experiences left [Sarah] Thornton in a newfound state of wonder about the magic of mammaries."" -- Julie Zigoris - San Francisco Standard ""Thornton has a history of being prescient.… There is so much new and illuminating information about breasts in Tits Up, which explores the worlds of five different breast experts…that it would be folly to list it here.… Thornton honors her subject throughout Tits Up through her meticulous research and critical contemplation."" -- Mieke Marple - ZYZZYVA ""Required reading that expertly convers the ways in which social constructions, sexualization, and economic viability influence people’s views of bodies, their own and others."" -- Library Journal, starred review ""Thornton’s research and interviews are exhaustive, entertaining and enlightening.… Tits Up is a revelatory look at many different facets of this oh-so-vital body part.… One thing for sure, you’ll never think of boobs in the same way again."" -- BookPage ""With intelligence and humor, Thornton examines how breasts can help women create new visions of themselves."" -- Kirkus Reviews ""Thornton’s engaging study of breast culture posits more questions than answers and mercifully leaves room for the reader to decide what she thinks, but there is one argument that rings clear throughout: It is we who are responsible for elevating the status of our own breasts, and with them, all women."" -- Denise Sullivan - San Francisco Chronicle, Datebook ""Tits Up: The book changing how we think about breasts. The narrative weaves through various perspectives and professions, looking at how different cultures and industries perceive breasts."" -- Hein Kaiser, Citizen (South Africa) ""If breasts could talk, here’s what they’d say. Tits Up is a call for autonomy and liberation."" -- Dorothy Woodend - Tyee ""With a sociologist’s eye, a reporter’s nose, and a double-D brain, Sarah Thornton explores the contradictions, power, and fundamental formidability of breasts. What a treat to follow her into worlds largely unknown as she upends culture-bound thinking and exposes breasts for what they are (or should be): a part of a woman, to be shown or not shown, used or not used, as she and she alone deems fit. Exquisitely written and consistently illuminating."" -- Mary Roach, New York Times best-selling author ""Tits Up is Sarah Thornton at her best: irreverent, witty, deeply researched, and enlightening. I learned a lot."" -- Judy Chicago, artist ""Sarah Thornton offers a revealing look at our most misunderstood organ. Her message is both powerful and overdue: it’s time for us to shape the narrative of our own bodies."" -- Florence Williams, author of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

[A] colorful new volume...The book's trajectory is an uplifting one, with its five chapters exploring different hard-to-access Bay Area arenas rife with breast-related decisions and transactions...All of these immersive experiences left Thornton in a newfound state of wonder about the magic of mammaries.--Julie Zigoris ""San Francisco Standard"" Ms Thornton succeeds in offering an appreciation of the oft-derided, oft-maligned organ. Though the terminology for them tends towards the silly and frivolous--think of ""bazookas"", ""jugs"", ""norks"" or ""funbags""--this book suggests they are anything but. Owners and admirers will not look at breasts in the same way again.-- ""The Economist"" Required reading that expertly convers the ways in which social constructions, sexualization, and economic viability influence people's views of bodies, their own and others'.-- ""Library Journal (starred review)"" Sarah Thornton offers a revealing look at our most misunderstood organ. Her message is both powerful and overdue: it's time for us to shape the narrative of our own bodies.--Florence Williams, author of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History With a sociologist's eye, a reporter's nose, and a Double D brain, Sarah Thornton explores the contradictions, power, and fundamental formidability of breasts. What a treat to follow her into worlds largely unknown as she upends culture-bound thinking and exposes breasts for what they are (or should be): a part of a woman, to be shown or not shown, used or not used, as she and she alone deems fit. Exquisitely written and consistently illuminating.--Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author With intelligence and humor, Thornton examines how breasts can help women create new visions of themselves.-- ""Kirkus"" Tits Up is Sarah Thornton at her best: irreverent, witty, deeply researched, and enlightening. I learned a lot.--Judy Chicago, artist [Thornton's] impassioned polemic makes a convincing case that the derogatory way Western culture views tits...helps perpetuate the patriarchy...Tits Up asks readers to reimagine the bosom, no matter its size and shape, as a site of empowerment and even divinity...[D]eceptively trenchant.--Lucinda Rosenfeld ""New York Times Book Review"" Liberated breasts can do and be so many things. Thornton is less interested in how they appear than in how they can be put to work...[Tits Up's] interest lies with the many interviewees in possession of behind-the-scenes knowledge, some of whom provide the book's strongest views on breasts.--Lauren Michele Jackson ""The New Yorker"" Thornton honors her subject throughout Tits Up through her meticulous research and critical contemplation...Tits Up might read like an ethnographic dissertation about breasts with the thesis that words matter. And they do. But just underneath that is a softer, more subtle message that art heals--as do encounters with the spectacular array of souls out there in the wide and varied world.--Mieke Marple ""ZYZZYVA"" Thornton's research and interviews are exhaustive, entertaining and enlightening...Tits Up is a revelatory look at many different facets of this oh-so-vital body part...One thing is for sure, you'll never think of boobs the same way again.-- ""BookPage""

Author Information

Sarah Thornton is a sociologist and author of four critically acclaimed books, including the international bestseller Seven Days in the Art World. A scholar-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley, for three years while writing Tits Up, she lives in San Francisco, California.

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