Notes Toward a Theory of Titty Pics
The Chichi Chat: Porn vs Power (Why everyone should show me their boobs.)
A few weeks after Trump was elected, I posted on Instagram, “If anyone wants to send me titty pics to help with my post-election depression, that would be cool.”
This was 80% a joke. One that, I was told, my gender afforded me the privilege of making publicly—a double standard.
Oh, but that’s what makes it fun, OK guys?
Actually, to be serious, it’s not a double standard at all. And the idea that my gender afforded me the privilege of making that joke publicly is a joke in itself. But I’ll get back to that.
Within a few hours of the post, I had a bunch of amazing boobs in my phone and actually did feel considerably less depressed.
This led me to think that, certainly, I had many friends who would also be made to feel less depressed by boobs and that I would gladly send them my boobs to make them feel better. If this many friends responded so quickly, surely everyone could just send each other their boobs and world peace would ensue.
So I texted a few people explaining the idea and started a WhatsApp group called “(*) pics & 🧩scores 4 post election depression.”12 I told everyone they could invite anyone. It grew very quickly.
What It’s Like in the Chichi Chat3
The Chichi Chat now has 255 members, about 200 of whom I don’t know. The group includes people in Canada, the US, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Kenya, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, Denmark, Norway, Georgia, and Turkey. I love the span of time zones because it means I often wake up to titty pics, which, let me tell you, is about 8000% better than waking up to apocalyptic headlines.
The group rules are: “Anyone can add anyone with past/present/implied/or future chichis. There are no safety protocol so pics w your face at your own risk. Lurking IS allowed. Viva las chichis.”
(The last line used to be “arriba las chichis” but a 75-year-old friend pointed out to me that it was “a bit uppist, don’t you think?” and suggested the more inclusive viva. Later in the evening, she remarked “Our hopes—we can keep those up at least.”)
Titty pic genres have ranged from pornographic to entirely wholesome and have so far included: sneaky under-the-shirt at the office, alone in the office, elevator mirror, on a horse, in the woods, at the beach, on a mountain, stuck in traffic, playing pool, playing violin, eating breakfast, cooking dinner, a couple’s 4 boobs, a throuple’s 6 boobs, at the sauna, in the pool, in the shower, in the bath, heart-broken in bed, at the hospital, pre-transition, pre-job interview hives, post surgery, post coital, post masturbation, pregnancy feeling awful, pregnancy feeling hot, nursing babies, nursing stuffed animals, and a snail on a nipple.
We’ve also had a healthy number of slo-mo videos of boobs and booties bouncing as well as a booty side-category including an incredible series of a booty on/in a cake.4 There have also been many felt-cute semi-naked mirror selfies, a few full frontal nudes, and, in one of my favorite contributions, an up-the-skirt shot showing the edges of a menstrual pad.
(Mostly I send videos of my baby nursing and of me spraying milk everywhere as I am still obsessed with being able to do this and extremely proud of my trajectory.)
A culture has developed in which people respond to the photos with emojis like 🥵🧨🤏🔥🫠🫴🌶️🤌😻🚒😮, though they often get creative. For example, someone a few days ago responded to a very freckled pair of boobs with a ladybug.5
Sometimes, I complain about phantom Connections categories that totally worked. Sometimes, someone sends something like “chichis that just got into grad school,” to many “felicidades!” A handful of heartbreaks have solicited outpourings of their-losses and hang-in-there’s. Recently, someone shared that they’d lost the one embryo they’d been able to create through a long-documented IVF journey, to which the group responded with abundant warmth and condolences.
A few times, the group has broken out into discussions, which have included: rituals around grief (this spawned a spinoff group), best-practices and strategies for taking booty shots, using primrose to curb premenstrual boob swelling, how growing up in a naked or not-naked house impacted your body image, why Agatha of Sicily’s boobs are on a plate, ways we’re teaching our kids to love their bodies, and areola eczema.
My friend Shamsa Mangalji sent an ode she’d written thanking her boobs for the work they’re putting in breastfeeding her baby titled “Gra(titty)tude.”
Recently, group member Morgan Slate suggested starting a spinoff group for (*) personal ads, which is now under way. Her post proposing it read: “Approx three times a week, I think to myself ‘I feel like my next wife is in this group; and would...like to find out.”
I find the posts delightful. Here is a sampling:
“And the Black tits? Where is my diaspora that has overcome the trappings of a post-colonial nationality? It’s BHM. Its BHM in the US and the country Is being run behind the scenes by a billionaire who got rich in apartheid South Africa and education for our children is being slashed…..we need Black tit pics more than ever.” —Sabina TM Mahoney
“Mid-moving out of my ex's place tiddies, anxiety relapse but makin food 3x a day n hangin in there. Paso a paso; fuerza!! Vientos!! Ánimo guerreras, que la lucha es larga 💪🏼” —Dora Prieto
“mmmk im having an annoying/anxious/ unproductive day WHO WANTS TO THROW SUM TIDDY IN THE CHAT 4 FOCUS???” —Eloise True
“BUONGIORNO CHICHI VILLAGE!!!!!! reporting live from my therapy office between clients. i am new here. it has been a supreme delight getting acquainted with all of your perfect tatas and varying puzzle scores. one fun fact about my gazungas is that they are approximately one cup size different. where my uneven bitches at??????” —Anonymous
“Housesitting & getting coconut oil everywhere” —Kyra Payne to which Annie Malcolm replied, “This is what I mean when I say seeking house sitter.”
The chichi chat is a glimpse of what the world could be like without the heteronormative patriarchy: both lovingly supportive and innocently horny.
The Time I Insisted It Was Porn (It’s Not Porn)
About a month after creating the chat, I walked into a fancy friend’s fancy birthday party where I didn’t know many people and was introduced as “the creator of the boobs group.” Everyone commended me, enthusiastically. I felt genuinely bashful and proud. “Thank you, thank you, yes, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” I half-joked.
That night, I chatted with a bougie lesbian couple from Barcelona in beautiful outfits who insisted that the group was a piece of contemporary art about removing our bodies from the male gaze.
My first reaction was to laugh at the pretentiousness. My inner troll had been poked and with the straightest face I could muster, I replied, “It’s not art. It’s porn. Why does it need to have a higher purpose other than just, ‘we want to look at boobs because it makes us horny?’ Maybe there’s some internalized homophobia wrapped up in this, no? Can’t we just want to see boobs?” I felt pleased with myself, smugly relayed the anecdote to friends in the following days, and then started to wonder if I was wrong.
Seeing a Lot of Different Boobs Is Healing
In the section about the rise of labiaplasty in my book Pussypedia, I wrote about how you can look around in the world and see that most bodies don’t look like model bodies but you can’t look around and see other people’s vulvas to know that most don’t look like the ones in porn. This, I think, ends up making people feel ashamed of their vulvas. Something similar happens with boobs. You can see size, but you can’t see shape, texture, or nipple.2 Most of the bare boobs available for viewing in the world are “perfect” boobs.
The breadth of boobs, nipples, colors, shapes, hair, and bodies in the chat has been astounding. It’s been incredible to see them all communally celebrated. It’s been healing for me, and from what I’ve heard from many other members, it has been for them too. I almost hate that it’s this straight forward, but freeing our bodies from the patriarchal prescriptions of “beauty” just feels really, really good. The bougie Barcelona girls were right and I can’t deny it. This totally is about taking our bodies away from the male gaze.
Sexual Stigma, Shame, and Suppression
The patriarchy does not only police our bodies; it also polices our desire, and our entire erotic lives. Audre Lorde wrote in my favorite essay of all time, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power:”
“In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.”
That is why my joke was not a double standard. Male desire is celebrated and rewarded and a hallmark of health and normality. My desire—even if it were for men but still more when it is for boobs—is belittled, a hallmark not of health but of hysteria! Of desperation. Of impurity and moral failing.
As my friend Jessie Lewis pointed out, boys in grade school get erections in class all the time and it’s totally normal but when girls come into our sexuality and start masturbating, most of us think we are doing something wrong, hide it, and keep it a secret. While men may have to hide their public erections more as they grow up and while women may not have to hide their masturbation, the underlying dynamic doesn’t change much.
The resulting shame leads to all sorts of sexual dynamics that disempower us. For example:
Not insisting on people with penises using condoms
Not asking for the things that will actually give us pleasure
Saying no to sex we actually do want and yes to sex we don’t
It expands outside of sex too. Shame precludes pleasure and leads us to devalue our wants and needs in every fucking sphere of our lives because shame causes us to downgrade ourselves in the hierarchy of people who we believe deserve anything. We get so used to ignoring our own desires that we become unable to recognize what they are in the first place.
Being publicly pervy like I was with my Instagram “joke” is far from a privilege we generally have in the world. It’s a social risk and, for me, a form of protest against all of this. So is the chat.
Definitely A Horny Space: Perviness as Protest
The chat is not just about body positivity. It is also, as my friend Nicole Stanton put it, “definitely a horny space.” While I can’t speak for all 255 people, I think it’s safe to say most of us are often looking at each other with a sexual gaze. And it feels…nice. As my friend Naima Green said, “sometimes it feels so erotic and charged and sometimes it just feels so normal.”
What’s happening is a lot of exhibitionism, a lot of voyeurism, and a collective refusal to be shamed for the shape of our bodies or for having sexual desire. We are removing the policing of our own gaze so much that we’re offering each other our own bodies for the express purpose of gazing at. We are telling each other “Not only is it ok—you can do it to me!”
In the alternate non-patriarchal universe of the chat, solidarity and support and horniness and leering are not mutually exclusive vibes. Looking at someone with desire is not, it turns out, an inherently violent act.
Nor is showing your body sexually necessarily profane. In sending the pictures, we are asserting our own horniness freely and having it met with collective acknowledgement and celebration. Jessie described it perfectly:
“Obviously I’m very horny for the other people and it’s amazing to see how hot they are, but it’s also been amazing to get to show my horniness in a group instead of with someone I’m fucking, to express it without the fear of needing validation from someone who I want to be attracted to me. It’s such a different feeling. I’m not looking for validation, although I do get a lot, but it’s very special to be able to be a horny being, to be a sexual being, and to show that to people I’m not being sexual with but who feel the same thing and celebrate it.”
A Girl Crush is a Homophobic Crush
The group is not only normalizing desire but it is normalizing sapphic/queer desire. It is part of a larger cultural trend that I have no data for but insist is happening in which queerness is rapidly normalizing for women and femmes.6
As one of my favorite people/brains, Tarah Knaresboro says, “a ‘girl crush’ is just a homophobic crush.” For me, she is right. When I admire a woman, when I am enthralled by a woman, there is lust involved. I do not always literally wish to have sex with her. But there is an undeniable erotic pull at work for which we only have this stupid, patronizing phrase that contains in its meaning “but don’t worry, I’m not gay!” More and more people are starting to acknowledge that they are real crushes and to be OK with that, and it’s one of the only ways the world is getting better.
What excites me about the way queerness is normalizing in and outside of the group isn’t just that we are ushering in a world with less homophobia. We’re also pushing against, experimenting with, and breaking the neat and rigid boundaries we are taught to draw around types of relationships and relating.
Friendships between women and femmes are often erotically charged—especially in their beginnings—and I’d like it if we could all stop gaslighting ourselves about that. Can you be horny for your friends? I propose yes. Is a “girl crush” necessarily gay? No. But it’s not not-gay either. The point is: who cares?
It’s Not Porn; It’s Power
Despite my trolling of the Barcelona girls, it’s not porn. Not in the sense that my hero defined it, anyway. Lorde makes a distinction between the erotic and what she calls its opposite—the pornographic, which she defines as sensation without true feeling.
She doesn’t mean feeling as in having feelings for someone. As she phrases it: “The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” She means letting the seismic activity of your being guide your surface—knowing your deepest needs and desires and letting them decide your actions.
This goes on in the chat all the time. As chat member Annie Malcolm said:
“Once a bunch of people with tits or who used to have tits or who just belong there, start chattering, pain arises, and beauty…I love spaces where I can get a lot of attention not because I am making something but because I am being honest about my own shit slog, comedy, sex, vulnerability, longing, and intimacies.”
I suppose some people at this point are rolling their eyes, thinking this essay has run right off the bullshit cliff. What the fuck does “letting the seismic activity of your being guide your surface” even mean or have to do with the “erotic” as the concept is generally known in the world?
Maybe you can see it more clearly in the negative: When we internalize shame to the point of ignoring our own needs and desires, sex sucks and life sucks. It is one of the main reasons being a woman/femme in the patriarchy sucks, right up there with the 83 cents on the dollar and 20+% chance of being raped.
The affirmative version is this: when “we begin to live from within outward,” as The Great Audre Lorde wrote,
“in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society.”
Yes, I realize I have just written a two-thousand-word theoretical justification for asking people to send me titty pics. But I believe that in the chat, we are doing nothing less than reconnecting with ourselves and helping each other recover the erotic as a source of power, one titty pic at a time. And I am very proud of that. Viva las chichis.
Recently my friend Catherine Lacey suggested we change the group name to “Tit Tok” or “Chat GPTit” and when I said no, said I was being a “dictitor.”
I added in the part where we also send Wordl and Connections scores both because I am an insufferable person and always want to send people my Connections scores but am also sensible enough to know nobody fucking cares and because I wanted people who didn’t want to send their boobs to have a way to participate.
Chichis is a commonly used word for boobies in Mexico.
It might have been the cake that was on/in the booty but that’s an ontological wormhole for another day.
Once, a friend sent a picture of her nursing her baby to which my sister and I both immediately replied, “wow, beautiful nipple color gradient!” Apparently something in our DNA or shared upbringing made us both equally inclined to appreciate a nipple color gradient.
A lot faster, I think, than masculinity is evolving. Men, grow up or plan your own obsolescence. VCs, invest in strap-on companies.
Howdy from Tokyo! Did you know -- Chichi in Japanese means... tits! If y'all don't mind I'd like to set up a punk rock outfit named Chichi Band on this side of the Pacific! Arigato in advance (※) (※) !
is it too late to get added to this chat or…