NO! DON’T! STOP! NO, DON’T STOP!

I have at last found sexuality well placed. Thank friggin’ god. I was in need of it. Granted, it was highly inappropriate but it was highly inappropriate in ways I am accustomed to. Well, not accustomed to so much as “would have expected.” In other words, it was not a 6 year old lewdly grabbing at my breasts.

For my 8th graders, I decided to teach them a brief passage from Romeo and Juliet. I figure, in the States, they’d be learning the whole thing, the Balcony Scene (“What light through yonder window breaks?”) isn’t blatantly sexual and I happen to have a copy of the Claire Danes/Leonardo Dicaprio version here with me. I figure, in 45 minutes, I can explain the basics on 2 minutes of text. The only issue with this is the fact that my Zone 1 DVD only plays on my 12 inch PowerBook G4 and the high-tech overhead projectors they’ve got here are built for their Compaq PCs. In other words, to show my students the snippet of the film, I’ve got to go around show sections of the class at a time while hold my computer up.

I had been doing so throughout my four classes of grade 8. When I got to the third class, there is a moment where Juliet/Claire is leaning over by the pool discussing “Any other rose” and as she squats down by the water waxing poetic on how “any other part belonging to a man would retain that certain perfection” she shifts and shows a bit of cleavage from the top of her corseted, empire waist Angel costume.

Now, here’s the thing. In China, the clothes are the tightest thing I’ve ever seen. The women wear clothes so tight that it leaves NOTHING to the imagination. (They also don’t believe in thong underwear, so VPL is the order of the day.) Their jeans (which they wear everywhere) are skin tight to the point of occasionally needing to lie down in order to zip them up with a wrench circa 1970 USA. Their tops are so tight I’ve actually been able to tell when women are wearing their bra inside out because I can see where the fabric instruction tag is, to say nothing of the eyelets that fasten the overly-tight bras shut. And, all this tighter-than-skin cloth wearing technique has led to a surplus of women with no body fat having love handles and crazy back fat.

Generally speaking, the clothes I am comfortable in are not only not tight, they are not fitted and are “loose” by American standards. I have lost a fair amount of weight and so my previously super-tight clothes (which I packed in anticipate of said weight loss) are now fitted and I now have the body to wear fitted clothing. However, I have almost always, as an adult woman, liked my rack. It’s pretty decent and so I am comfortable showing off the cousins… a LITTLE. No vulgarity, no navel skimming necklines, just a little glimpse of the curve of the breast. I’ve always found them cute and perky. The Chinese, however, lose their minds at a little glimpse of skin. Tighter-than-skin tight fabric is okay but the moment even the smallest peak of flesh is available, the men are unable to maintain eye contact. I have had full conversations with men unable to tear their eyes from my chest when I wasn’t even showing cleavage, merely the part of the sternum above the cleavage and below the collarbone.

The argument of the Chinese (I have been told by the Chinese) is that my skin is the most desirable shade of honkey and, unlike the negligible body fat women, I actually have a rack. I’ve been told (in secret) something about my breasts be “white like dumplings” or good enough to eat which, not surprisingly, put me off dumplings. How my upper ribcage dumpli-fies me escapes my understanding.

Nonetheless, I am the scandalous teacher who wears daring tops the teenage boys seem to be fond of and I was holding the PowerBook in front of me, screen propped against the top of my chest. As Juliet/Claire leans over to wax poetic as she reveals minimal cleavage, one of the boys leans over to try to look down her shirt. The other boys laugh along and so he repeats the gesture, except he over-extends his gaze to appear as though he is looking down my shirt.

Granted, I had to pretend to be mad (and resist the urge to laugh along) and slap him upside the head but it was nice to be objectified again after my crushing day of being a grandmother’s senior.