The mystery of breasts: Inspiring, vulnerable

(CBS News) In virtually every language in every corner of the world, the first sound a baby makes that can be called a word is MAMMA. In ancient Latin MAMMA became the word for breast - our first source of nurture, comfort and love - and for all humankind a source imagery and medical challenge across the centuries. Our Cover Story is reported now by Tracy Smith:

There are few images in the Christian world more universal and more sacred than these: the Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci, doing what any mother would do: feed her newborn child at her breast.

Since the earliest forms of human expression, the breast (in Latin, Mamma) has been front and center.

Beth Rosenberg, who teaches art history at New York's School of Visual Arts, said breasts have been on artists' minds since the Venus of Willendorf - a statue dating to about 25,000 B.C.

"We see breasts throughout art history because they're about the world, they're about life," Rosenberg said.

More specifically, they're uniquely designed to feed babies.

"Human infants are different from a lot of other mammals in that we don't have this kind of protuberant snout," said science journalist Florence Williams. "And if we had really flat mammary glands and a fat infant trying to suckle that, you know, it would be like kissing a mirror. Doesn't work very well."

Williams, who wrote the book on breasts, says that researchers are still scratching their heads over them.

"It turns out that it's actually a really contentious debate about why breasts evolved," Williams said. "Because breasts, as apart from mammary glands, are very unique in the animal kingdom. They're sort of protuberant from puberty on. And it turns out that's really unusual. Other primates only have breasts while they're breastfeeding."

And since human breasts typically arrive long before they have anything to do, Williams says there is disagreement over whether they evolved for food . . . or sex.

"There's been many decades of scholarship arguing that breasts evolved as sexual signals," she said. "And then the feminist scholars came along in the 1970s and '80s and said, 'Well, wait a minute, maybe they're something to do with how breasts actually work that might help women survive or help infants survive - and maybe the interest in breasts on the part of men came later."

It's a lot more than interest; Dolly Parton was famous for attribute sother than her acting ability . . . .as was Raquel Welch. And who could forget Halle Berry in a bathing suit?

Few people understand this more than Mary Kathryn Langhamer, a veteran bra-fitter at Houston's Top Drawer Lingerie. "Most women really don't like their breasts. There's always something wrong. They're too big or they're too little. They always want the opposite of what they have."

It's no secret that women have been trying to improve on nature for generations. "There were bras that you could put all sorts of things in - wire, tissue, metal. There were even bras that you could blow up with a straw to make your breasts look bigger," said Williams."

In recent years, bigger has often been seen as better. But permanent breast enlargement was a medical puzzle, until a eureka! moment 50 years ago in a Texas blood bank.

"There was a doctor in Houston, Texas, who was holding one of these new silicone blood bags," said Williams. "Blood used to be contained in glass. And he was holding a warm bag of blood and he said, 'My, that feels good. It feels like a breast.'"

Enter Timmie Jean Lindsey, a divorced mother of six who went to her doctor to have tattoos removed from her chest.

When her doctors pitched her the idea of experimental implants, she said yes - but only if they'd also give her an ear tuck.

They agreed, and in 1962, Timmie Jean became silicone breast implant recipient number one.

Across the road from a Houston tank farm, Timmie Jean's house still stands. Timmie Jean is still standing, too. And half a century later, the original silicone implants are still inside her.

She says it wasn't hard for the doctors to sell her on the idea: "I think I was just so comfortable with the doctors. And I might even had a crush on one or two of 'em"!"

When the bandages came off, Timmie Jean was a cup size larger, but it was nothing she wanted to flaunt. "I was too timid, I think," she told Smith. But she did like the whistles and cat calls. "Oh, yeah, I really liked it. But I didn't want it to go anywhere. I just wasn't used to all that attention."

But she adds that she is happy with how they look. "Most of the time now, I go braless."

Fifty years on, the implants have hardened, and one has a tear. But Lindsey says she's still a satisfied customer, and has not had any health problems from the implants.

Not all implant patients have done as well.

The FDA says that as many as one in five silicone implant recipients needs to have them replaced within 10 years.

And even if we don't invite trouble, our breasts go looking for it. "The breasts are the most visible part of what women define as being female, and they are the most vulnerable organ to cancer in a woman's body," said Dr. Marisa Weiss.

Dr. Weiss - a breast cancer specialist at Philadelphia's Lankenau Medical Center - says breast cancer cases have doubled since the 1940s.

"Yes, we're getting better at finding it, but there's more to it than that," she said. "Breasts soak up toxins, and there are a lot more toxins out there now - hormones in beef and dairy products, preservatives and fragrances that can have hormonal effects. These are things that never used to be out in the environment, and now they're out there everywhere."

She described breasts as "sponges."

And, Dr. Weiss says, women with immature breasts - that is, women who haven;t carried a baby to term - are more vulnerable to those toxins.

"When breast gland tissue is immature, it is very suggestible," Dr. Weiss said. "It's ready to fool around with any host of things that might look like, smell like, taste like hormones, that could potentially stimulate extra breast cell growth - which could be unhealthy growth, including the start of a cancer."

Of course, having a child (or three) is no guarantee against cancer, either. Two years ago, Marisa Weiss found something on her own mammogram.

"As soon as I saw the films myself I knew that it was a cancer there," she said.

"Was there a thought that went through your head when you saw that malignancy, when you knew?" asked Smith.

"Grandchildren," Dr. Weiss replied. "I have three kids, and I want to see those grandchildren."

Dr. Weiss is back at work now, cancer-free, and a stronger voice than ever for breast cancer prevention.

"We have to pay attention to this," she said. "We have about 1.3 million cases today worldwide. We expect that to double by the year of 2040. The breasts are telling us that we've got a problem out there, and we have to listen. We can't ignore it. There's too much at stake."

For all our ogling, for all of our fascination through the centuries, the breast is still in many ways a mystery. But that, too, is changing.

For her part, Timmie Jean Lindsey, the Texas great-grandmother, says she'll donate her silicone implants to science . . . someday.

"Don't want no autopsy, but they can take them," she told Smith. "But like I tell ya', I plan to live to be 100. I don't know what I'll be looking like, but I'm going to make it. I'm gonna try!"

For more info:

• School of Visual Arts, New York
• "Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History" by Florence Williams (W.W. Norton)
• florencewilliams.com
• Lankenau Medical Center, Philadelphia
• breastcancer.org
• topdrawerlingerie.com
• Hotel Zaza, Houston