are the stores insured for the inevitable top heavy mannequin falling on top of a customer or hapless employee? how often do they fall over? have they done studies?

What I find funny about this article (it's very good, by the way) is the way the photos are shown. GIANT BREASTS! But coyly off to the side or cropped off.

That is why the fascination exists and why mannequins are in danger of toppling over if it weren't for their feet being bolted to the floor.

What is hidden, tantalizes. Or becomes very very inflated to become even more of a fetish beacon.

Ah, boobs. Gotta love 'em.

Wow, fretting over some over-busty mannequins, a threat to womanhood everywhere!!

This would be, shall we say, a "defensive" article from a woman who is not secure in her own form of body, eh?

With some two thirds of the article explaining what a minor insignificant fad these Boob-equins are going to be, making the point rather moot.

As for me, allow my typical male piggish attitudes to be expressed: the cheap price means I can have a couple of these for myself and do some tit-fucking any time I like without bothering anybody, eh? (This should get some good nasty responses going...)

The real issue you explore here in my estimation is an unhealthy lack of understanding what freedom of expression in a free society is all about... not only that some mannequins should be different than those you prefer, but also cheaper, thus available to the masses instead of only to the "Gucci's" or whomever can afford the "good" stuff.

Here's to free enterprise!

Pmbster

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=venus+of+willendorf&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Get over it. Not news.

There are, however, a few rather important news stories which I'd certain rather read about on salon.com than a freaking trend in mannequins, you know what I mean..?

I'd like to read about our beady-eyed inbred asshole President being IMPEACHED. By individual citizens following the Jefferson's Manual approach, if need be.

There hasn't been a political story worth reading on salon.com since Israel's US-funded slaughter of Christian civilians in south Lebanon. And Mel Gibson knocked that story off the front page, didn't it..?

Come on, guys... I'm paying for this. Mannequins..? Ask me if I give a fuck. Honestly.

"...are the stores insured for the inevitable top heavy mannequin falling on top of a customer or hapless employee? how often do they fall over? have they done studies?"

Maybe the old maxim of giant boobs giving black eyes could then be true.

Sorry. I just couldn't resist. I find the whole thing very amusing.

And about buying some cheap stand-ins for tit-loving, all I can hope is that you enjoy friction burns. Not that they could be squashed together anyway! Maybe you could use them to mold taco shells on though.

Good lord! From the tone of this article, you'd think all us gals with (NATURAL and ALL organic) D+ cups are freaks of some kind.

I say "yeah!" to full busted figure mannequins - now I can see what something will look like on me before I actually try it on. Instead of trying to imagine how something will stretch or drape on me verses the STICK it's hanging on in the window.

Oh, yeah - and---- stories like these are primarily why I stopped subscribing to salon.

LAME!!!!!!

I used to come here for breaking political news, now I rely on crooksandliars, dailykos and rawstory.

No longer a subscriber.... rarely a visitor....

Sometimes change is bad.

I can hardly describe how depressed I was to read the following sentences, nearly adjacent to each other and only half a page into this article:

"[Mannequins] are supposed to be slim and lithe, aspirational, the plastic version of twiggy fashion models."

"I hate the idea that a surgically achieved, über-chesty look is an ideal for anyone -- beyond participants at an exotic dancer convention."

Personally, I hate the idea that a twiggy fashion model is considered "aspirational" and "ideal" in a piece that apparently aspires to be about body image.

Hey, Wendy Paris, I've a DDDD cup that's been looking at flat chested mannequins for over 30 years. Guess what? People come in lots of different shapes. Guess what else? Feeling threatened by mannequins is lame.

Perhaps the author's next thought provoking piece will complain that fertility icons from prehistoric times have impossibly large breasts. Oh wait, no chance, because there aren't any in mall shop windows. Lucky break.

Tip to the author's husband: anyone forcing you to contemplate the artificial breasts of mannequins in malls, that person qualifies under "Disorders Mandating Immediate Divorce" as well as "People Who Shouldn't Have Children, With Sympathy For Future Generations" and probably "When To Run Screaming, As Fast As You Can."

It's funny that for all the effort Salon makes to be PC, it's rather hostile to women by serially publishing some of the most patronizingly vapid attempts at purportedly addressing women's issues.

"These were classic mannequin bodies, long and lean. The clothes they wore looked spectacular. I no longer felt flat-chested. I felt critically underdressed."

Products being marketed by making the consumer feel inadequate? Say it isn't so! This has only been the modus operandi of the advertising industry, since, well, its inception.

Please tell me that this was a CNN-like gaffe and somehow Self is running an article on the political and economic implications of Bush veto'ing a raise in the minimum raise.

This piece could have been funny and made its social commentary in a sly, backhanded way. No, just another Salon ramble with faux feminist outrage as the clothesline that strings the rant together. What's next, mannequins with big bootys? Why not have more plastic dummies that look like actual women?

Word up, Wendy. Twiggy herself was on Craig Ferguson last night lamenting how awful she looked in the 60s and apologizing for having been such a poor influence in girls and women.

Me? When I don't like what's in the front window I don't shop there. Simple solution.

I'm waiting for fat mannequins, amputee mannequins, and male mannequins with a 'package.' Look what stuffing a squash down the front of your pants did for the dummy in the White House when he donned his flight suit.

;-)