Kira Rambles

Three hundred years after pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read boarded ships with their shirts open to intimidate their enemies, we’re still scared of boobs. 

Today, I watched a documentary about the 18th century pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read and renewed my CPR certification, during which I couldn’t help but notice that, three centuries after Bonny and Read fought with their shirts open and breasts exposed to intimidate men in battle, we’re still scared of boobs.

Watching the documentary, I had no problem picturing the shirts in question; I worked as a costumed historical interpreter for a season at a living history museum in Upstate New York, portraying an 18th century male sailor. Although the shirts the museum’s tailors issued me were massively oversized, so mine were especially revealing, most 18th century shirts have a slit down the sternum to make up for the lack of stretchiness in natural fibers. The slit allows the wearer to get the shirt over their shoulders. One can close that slit with a brooch-like device, do what I did and wear a waistcoat over it, or simply go full Fabio, neck and pecks on display. Or breasts.

In the 18th century, clothing was the primary indicator of both gender and class. It was so taboo to wear clothing that clashed with one’s class and/or sex assigned at birth that it would have been shocking and confusing to sailors onboard ships the pirates boarded to see what they perceived as female bodies in men’s shirts.

Today, breasts are still shocking and confusing for people training to give CPR.

I am a certified EMT and a wilderness first responder. I’ve taken countless CPR classes over the years, of different levels, from courses designed for complete beginners to courses for medical professionals preparing to give CPR in hospital settings. In all of them, I’ve practiced giving CPR on dummies. Not one of the dummies has had breasts.

Even though the face of the classic CPR dummy was cast from a female corpse fished out of the Seine river in the 1880s, the dummies people train on in CPR classes almost never have breasts. There are now cloth covers for mannequins with breasts sewn in, and there are DIY tutorials online that teach CPR instructors how to make their own covers from bras, but given that you’re supposed to remove undergarments when actually performing CPR, this way of adding breasts to the dummies hardly trains people to perform realistic CPR on people with boobs.

The effect of this medical androcentrism is fatal; female-presenting people are 27% less likely to receive bystander CPR in public because breasts are still shocking and confusing. Just like in the 18th century. I love history, but it’s time to leave fear of female anatomy in the past.

So if you take a CPR course, ask if the instructor has a dummy with breasts—and actually be willing to practice on it. If they don’t have one, reach out to the instructor and/or company that offered the class and offer feedback. Ask for one. It might save someone’s life.