Freshman Julie Dexheimer is no exhibitionist. But Saturday, standing topless in a roomful of strangers, her hands pinned high above her head, she had her first brush with indecent exposure.
“I definitely had second thoughts,” she said. “It was weird at first—taking off my shirt and everything. And then they started poking me, which was interesting. But everyone was cool about it.”
Dexheimer’s escapades in the half-nude, however, were more knitting circle than strip club. She was one of the many undergraduates, graduate students and community members who participated in the Women’s Center’s Breast Casting Workshop.
The workshop, scheduled to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Dating Violence Awareness Week, encouraged women or those who identify themselves as female to come to the Women’s Center to get lukewarm plaster of Paris applied to their upper torsos. The product, a plaster bust, was theirs to keep.
Seven Women’s Center volunteers, who received two hours of practical training earlier Saturday, applied the plaster strips to lubricated upper bodies, while a chick rock soundtrack played in the background. After four layers of plaster, the finished product dried and peeled off of Vaselined skin to reveal a perfect replica of the castee’s breasts. While the molds hardened under a set of fans, participants learned about breast self-exams, watched an HBO special about breasts and enjoyed refreshments.
“It’s really important, I think, for college-age women to have positive body image experiences,” said Crystal-Fair Melbourne, a Women’s Center intern and a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The scope of beauty can be so limited, especially on campuses.”
Melbourne explained that the idea for a breast casting event originated at UNC as a way to promote breast health, awareness of dating violence and a pride in uniquely female anatomy.
“As women, we need to take back our breasts,” said sophomore Shadee Malaklou, Women’s Center promotion team member and a columnist for The Chronicle. “We’ve started seeing them as a man’s tool, and they’re clearly not.”
In addition to the casting workshop itself, the center has planned a Nov. 12 decorating session where women can return with casts in tow to apply feathers, paint, beads, pipe cleaners or collaged cutouts to the busts. The program’s ultimate goal, Melbourne said, is to promote the concept of breasts as works of art.
Although this year marked the first breast casting at Duke, Shannon Johnson, Women’s Center program coordinator, said she hopes to make it a recurring event.
Costs, however, represent a significant hurdle. “Plaster is without a doubt the major expense,” Johnson said, noting that a variety of co-sponsors in the future could help ease the burden.
Both women said the event’s success at UNC is due in part to hospital subsidization and donation of the plaster strips. “It would be immensely helpful if we could do the same in the near future,” Johnson said. Melbourne noted that the Women’s Center at UNC donates a greater margin of profit to local breast cancer awareness groups than will be possible from Saturday’s program due to supply costs.
As for the molds themselves, participants had various ideas for the sculptures’ practical use. “Of course, there certainly is the question of what I’m going to do with this,” freshman Margo Hoyler said. “I doubt it will become a family heirloom or anything.”
Dexheimer, on the other hand, already knows where to put her rock-solid rack. “I already asked my roommate,” she said. “I’m hanging it right up on the wall.”
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