The New Way to Wear Your Breasts

Do your boobs hang low? That's looks good with a deep V. Do they waddle too and fro? No problem, just wear a half-shirt and let your underboob make the statement.

These days it's less important to make your breasts look like everyone else's, and more important just to show them. Let's call the trend du jour "peek-a-boob".

In the post-nip-slip era, everyone from porn stars to squeaky clean celebrities are letting it all hang out. Sorry, bra, but we like our boobs so much we want to show them--as is.

Gone are the pushed-up and padded milkmaid cleavages created by Wonderbras. Now the view isn't up top but under, inner and outer. Got that?

On Beyonce's latest GQ cover, the brilliantly self-branded pop star, turns cleavage upside down with a cropped t-shirt cut a little too short for her bra-less chest. Ever since the cover was leaked online earlier this week, everyone--really everyone--is transfixed. Crushable, the women's pop-culture site, wrote a rant of pure envy calling her chest "tantalizing," while GQ's own editors pronounced her hottest woman of the 21st century. Doubtful the cover shot's fashion statement was an afterthought in their decision.

The underboob is still on the fringes of acceptable, mainstream culture. Being as it's only a few steps up from wearing pasties, it's the kind of look you can only pull off if you're a) on the cover of a men's magazine or b) Rihanna.

But underboob is just a spin-off of the sideboob, a bra-lass style modeled by everyone from Miley Cyrus to your average Urban Outfitters employee. Like the underboob, the sideboob eschews frontal cleavage and relies on tape, rather underwire as an emergency contact.

Not to further confuse the issue, there are two types of sideboob: outside boob and inside boob.
Outside boob has its roots in 2010 when American Apparel outlets began stocking their racks with oversize muscle shirts for girls. With those loose-fitting man tanks the show was through the side door, not the front. The look was pure punk, 'accidentally' sexy, and not kind to stomach rolls. Good girls like Anne Hathaway have used side-view exposure on the red carpet, to give their clean image a little edge.

Inside boob is a whole different story: there's nothing innocent about it. Ask Jennifer Lopez, the godmother of the look, thanks to her green Versace Grammy dress. Despite being born of the same low V-neck as outside boob, inside boob has a wider window on the front of the chest. Basically you're half-topless, like a bisected apple. Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson and Kim Kardashian all swear by this look on red carpets. It's bold, it's a bitch to maintain, and it's usually accompanied by some sparkly self-tanner.

You don't wear this dress unless you have a major motion picture to promote or an axe to grind. (See Taylor Swift's Ralph Lauren "break-up revenge" dress at the People's Choice Awards). The deep-V cleavage, which usually ends like an Elvis jumpsuit--just above the bellybutton--is designed to flatter a 'flatter' look: business at the front, party on the inner side.

Theory: this new loose-y goosey chest is a product of the post "nip slip" era. Yes, something actually worthwhile may have come from that sleazy trademark of early internet photo-sharing. In the mid-2000's everyone famous had mistakenly revealed a portion of their breast, at some point or another. And thanks to the web and obsessively snapping paparazzi, we all saw it. After the accidental mishap became a red carpet trend, revealing part of your boob without a bra became not the most embarrassing thing on the planet. That's when celebrities starting owning their "nip-slip" potential instead of fearing it.

So is that it for plain old Loni Anderson cleavage? Never. If you got it, flaunt it like a regular Mad Men cast-member. But if you don't 'got it,' you don't have to fake it anymore. The "peak-a-boob" look is your seductive fashion alternative. After decades of lifting, plumping and squeezing our breasts into steep cliffs, maybe women are catching on to something men always knew: boobs are hot from any angle.

Related:
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Nip slip red carpet culture