Humans are social animals with a strong sense of hierarchy. We assess ourselves against those around us to determine where we belong in this hierarchy. Because we are also visual animals–the majority of our brain’s devoted to sight–, it is natural that appearance should become an important part of our sense of worth.
This visual sense of worth is augmented by the high cultural premium placed on fashion, where the proper ornamentation represents an ostentatious sign of rank. Even those who opt out of mainstream fashion are rarely careless of their appearance, but have simply oriented themselves into a subcultural set where they feel more capable of competing, such as in urban, Goth, or grunge coutures.
Evolutionary psychologists have noted that many people feel highly anxious about their place in the visual hierarchy for the simple reason that our minds developed when human beings lived in small bands and each person only had to compete with a few other individuals, whereas modern humans have to compete with millions in the huge crowds of large cities, not to mention the virtual crowds present in TV, film, magazine, and street advertising. The sheer scope of the competition means that no one could place high on a visual hierarchy against all the people on the streets and on the screens and on the pages that they see every day.
We might call the stress caused by our failure to compete with the crowd Manhattan Anxiety, which combines the prototypical urban crowds of New York City with NYC’s status as the fashion, advertising, and television capital of the New World.
Women are especially prone to Manhattan Anxiety, since they face competition from the ever-nubile virtual crowds of Madison Avenue, and nowhere do they face stiffer competition than in the area of their breasts.
The large breasts of actresses like Scarlett Johansson contribute to the anxiety of women with small or shrinking breasts. Women with sagging breasts have always been troubled by the memory of how pert their breasts used to be, but now they hold themselves against the ever-young starlet, replaced year after year: Jessica Alba one year, Megan Fox the next.
Fortunately, modern medicine has found a cure for this as so many anxieties. If you are anxious about the size of your breasts, you can have a breast augmentation, or, if your breasts are not as pert as they used to be, a breast lift can restore them to their former stature.
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