Lean In... and Shake 'em, Ladies.

or, Creepy Freep-y.

Two women editors at the Detroit Free Press offer up some empowering advice to today's women; a guy editor at a non-tabloid could never get away with this:

Last month, the newspaper published a poll online that gave readers the chance to vote "good" or "bad" on the cleavage of 12 celebrities.

"When cleavage is good, it’s very, very good. When it’s bad, it’s atrocious," the paper explained.

Georgea Kovanis, the Free Press writer who is credited for the poll, also offered "Do's and Don'ts of Cleavage."
...
No matter how feminist their leanings, most women get a certain charge, a certain power from using their femininity to catch a man’s eye or, in some cases, using it as a form of Kryptonite," Kovanis said.

Speak for yourself, sister:
I guess once you get comfortable with the idea of being a sexual object -- figuring how you can use your boobs more than your brains -- you start to objectify yourself... and other women too.

Free Press Managing Editors Julie Topping and Nancy Andrews told The Huffington Post that the poll, which initially only had a line of two of text leading into the voting, went along with Kovanis' column leading into the Grammys.

"Online, we asked people to vote on which celebrities showed cleavage in the best way," they said in an email. "Unfortunately, the language of the poll lost the context of the column. We have since added more context."

The poll now includes part of Kovanis' column, which weighs in on the celebrity cleavage "trend." As red carpet style filters into the mainstream, "we’re going to be seeing even more cleavage, coping with a cleavage explosion at work..."

Women have breasts. (Men too.)
Some are big, some are small; some are real, some are artificially enhanced.

You like what you like, but let's not go setting any standard of 'norms' or offering any tips on how to maximize your inherent feminine powers.

'Lean In... and Shake 'em, Ladies' is not exactly what Sheryl Sandburg had in mind, I don't think...

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ADDED: The funniest, and most honest feature story I have read about being naturally 'blessed' with a big bosom is here. It's funny, not a mean-spirited competition where bigger is necessarily better...

The Nordstrom Lady took out her tape measure and figured me right out. In any lingerie section of any department store, they sell two varieties of bra. The first is an accessory: fun, in exciting colors to match your mood, with extra stuffing or not, with straps for different necklines and advanced technology for God-knows-what. The second has a job to do. The industrial-strength bra comes in beige, white or black. There is a solemnity about it, an awareness of what will be expected of this poor piece of cloth, a deference. These are the bras I have come to know, and these are the ones the Nordstrom Lady walked past to get to the one that would be mine. Because even the Nordstrom Lady had only one in my new size.

My size turned out to be 34F. Yes, efffff. You may draw it out slowly if you wish, an extended fricative for maximum comedic effect.

The 34F does not mess around. It might look like the curtains, but it is made of chicken wire and upholstery. You would lose a fight with this bra. It is the Rambo of bras. But for all its toughness, it still exudes a come-to-Grandma sexiness.

Still, it's mine now, and I am at peace. And not, as some people think, in pain. I am architecturally sound -- tall and broad-shouldered and hippy enough to have basic structural integrity, with triangulate distribution of weight-bearing loads. The edifice is sturdy. The center can hold. So, no, there is no need for surgery. There's only one way out of this, and that is down.

But I'd better be done; that's all I'm saying. If I wake up tomorrow looking at a whole new letter of the alphabet, somebody's gonna pay. Probably the makers of my fifth-grade health class videos, which said in no uncertain terms that puberty . . . ends.
...
But what I realized is that my reaction to puberty -- fury -- drove me further inside my head, which subsequently became a wild place, headquarters for my internal resistance movement.

I would dress strategically, which is to say, demurely, except at those times when I would not. In other words, I would always be in charge. I would not be soft. I would not bounce. I wouldn't lean an inch forward to get what I wanted. My lack of physical subtlety would be balanced by thoughts I determined to make impenetrable. I am not easy, in any sense.

Stare all you want; you'll have no idea what's going on in my head. Because if you're staring, I am probably thinking that I could smother you and make it look like an accident.

Harsh? I know. But with a rack like this, you can't be a doormat.
~Rachel Manteuffel