Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts

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.

Author: Sarah Thornton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 05/07/2024
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780393881028

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2024
Library Journal 04/01/2024 pg. 107
BookPage 05/01/2024
Publishers Weekly 06/03/2024

About the Author
Thornton, Sarah: - 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.