Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer - Sex For Dummies

One woman in nine will develop breast cancer in the United States. Because of this risk, every woman must examine her breasts once a month, starting by the time she’s 20. Figure 3-5 shows one technique of checking your breasts for signs of cancer.

Illustration by Kathryn Born

FIGURE 3-5:Regularly examining your breasts for signs of cancer is an important part of staying healthy.

You should be consistent about the time of the month you conduct this exam because your breasts change as you go through your menstrual cycle. The most accurate time to check is just after your period. By examining your breasts at the same point in your cycle, you can make a more accurate comparison.

When checking your breasts, you are looking for anomalies — things that feel strange — basically a lump of some sort. If you find something, don’t panic. Most lumps are not at all dangerous, but you should consult with your physician as soon as possible. And if what you find is an early sign of cancer, be thankful that you did locate it early because, in most cases, it’s treatable.

You should also have regular breast exams by a health professional, who may detect something that you would miss, and go for a mammogram whenever your physician instructs you to do so. The older you are, the more important these exams become, and the more regular they should be. After a woman turns 40 she should definitely go once a year (though some say that waiting until you’re 50 to begin getting tested annually is okay), and that rule applies to even younger women if they are in a high risk group. You may be in a high risk group if

You have a family history of breast cancer.

You have never been pregnant.

You had your first child after age 30.

You began menstruating before the age of 12.

You’re obese.

You eat a high-fat diet.

You’ve already had cancer in one breast.

Check with your doctor to determine the best regimen for you.

Whatever the size of your breasts, they can provide pleasure to both you and your partner. Although small breasts may not get much recognition when you cover them with clothes, after you uncover them in front of a partner, he or she probably won’t care about your cup size. So never feel ashamed of your breasts, but flaunt them at the appropriate moment so they get their due.

These days it seems that more and more women, and more and more young women, are getting their breasts enhanced. I was once standing next to a very famous pair of enhanced breasts, and when the woman turned, I was hit by those breasts. Let me tell you, it was a painful experience. Men don’t report enjoying the feel of them either, and any man who is attracted to a woman because of their appearance may decide that he prefers natural breasts after he gets up close and personal with the enhanced variety.

Are enhanced breasts worth the discomfort and the risks? Not in my opinion. If every woman who got breast implants instead donated the thousands of dollars that they cost to breast cancer research, we might make quite a bit more progress toward reducing the morbidity of this disease. It’s time we got our priorities straight when it comes to breasts. Of course women who have implants after a mastectomy are not enhancing their breasts but rather replacing what they lost.

Chapter 4

IN THIS CHAPTER

How dating has changed

Overcoming loneliness

Avoiding dating traps

When I mentioned to people that I was writing the 4th edition of Sex For Dummies, some asked, “Has sex really changed that much that you need a 4th edition?” If the book only covered how to do “it” I would understand their skepticism, but this book covers so much more, and if there’s one area that changed a great deal since the 3 rdedition it’s dating. In fact, it’s changed so much that we decided to give dating an entire chapter.

While there have obviously been tremendous changes to dating, at its most essential, dating hasn’t changed at all. It remains the introductory phase of a potential long-term relationship. To my way of thinking, hooking up (getting together just to have sex) isn’t dating. A future together is not part of the long-term objective of hooking up. Nor is getting together with a group of friends to go to the movies. The way I look at a date is that there are two people spending time with each other, both hoping it will be the first of many such get-togethers, maybe even the start of a lifelong relationship. I’m not saying that everyone you date is someone you think will be your future spouse, but if a date, after the first exploratory one, doesn’t have that potential, it shouldn’t be considered a date.

Dating is a relatively recent invention. For most of mankind’s history, parents decided who their children would marry, and many couples might have had only one or two introductory meetings, if that, before they tied the knot. The concept that an individual could choose whom they wanted to see socially didn’t exist. (And it still is that way in some societies today.) That’s not to say that surreptitious meetings never took place. (Who can forget those star-crossed secret lovers, Romeo and Juliet?) But such secret rendezvous didn’t have any of the trappings of a date as we know it. Since the couple couldn’t be seen in public, their flirting had to remain under wraps.

Once young people were handed the freedom to choose whom to spend time with, dating began as a societal norm. And for a long time the rules of dating remained fairly static. But then along came the Internet and smartphones, and dating morphed into what to some people has become more of a sport than a social activity.

Based on what you see and hear in the media, dating among younger teens has almost disappeared. It seems that rather than go out as couples, they prefer to go out in groups. There might exist couples within a group, but having two teens meeting at the ice cream parlor to stare into each other’s eyes as they sip a vanilla malt through two straws seems to be a thing of the past. I’m not so sure the media has it right because obviously people still date. In fact, when I was writing From You to Two, my book on dating, I spoke with individuals who told me they go on as many five or six “dates” a week, sometimes having more than one date on a given night. And I’m not even talking about speed dating (a concept that I find hard to grasp, as I would be someone who would hog the entire five minutes while my poor speed dates would never get a word in edgewise).

But many of these dates are more of an elimination process than anything else. In the “old” days, dates had a more serious quality to them, but today they’ve become so casual that people have little or no investment in them. These kind of dates resemble more the test drive of an automobile than a date. Except the differences between people are far more varied than that between cars, and since there’s no salesman actively trying to make a match, more often than not, these dates go nowhere. (Not that matchmakers don’t still exist.)