Gender, Boobs, and Vocab (In That Order)

Yesterday, as I was walking home from the BART station, I passed a trio of...people. All three had the same body type (short and fat), similar haircuts (very short, boyish), and wore the same sort of clothes (loose jeans/pants and tees). For the life of me, I couldn't tell you whether they were male or female. They were either very butch girls or sort of squashily feminine guys. There was evidence of boobs, but they could easily have just been man boobs. Two of the three were holding hands, which might have been a clue, but wasn't in this case. They could have been a gay couple of either sex or a mixed-gender couple that was extraordinarily well-matched in terms of attractiveness (i.e., totally lacking).

So I couldn't determine the sex of three random people—I'm apparently excellent at distinguishing between real and surgically enhanced breasts. I took The Real Breasts/Fake Breasts Test yesterday (totally NSFW, but I really don't think they'd care in my office) and scored an 18 out of 20. Not bad. If you need to waste about five minutes, check it out.

While I'm on the topic of all things chestal, I might mention a conversation I had recently with my grandmother, who was lamenting how coarse my aunt can sound sometimes. (I, for the record, don't think my aunt sounds coarse, but my grandmother is...particular.) It went something like this:

Grandmother: I hate it when she calls them her "bubs" or "bubbies."

Me: First of all, she doesn't call them her "bubs" or "bubbies." She calls them boobs or boobies—she's not an old Jewish grandmother.

Grandmother: Well, why can's she just call them breasts like any normal person?

I should point out that my grandmother is a retired nurse. When the dog craps on the carpet, it is not poop; it is feces. When you throw up, the expelled matter is not called puke or even vomit; it is vomitus. And, as I learned early in life, that thing that's used to take your blood pressure—you know, the one that everyone, even most medical professionals, call a cuff?—it's a sphygmomanometer.