In our last installment I related some of my thoughts about the fairer sex and how their attitudes towards physical relations change as they get older. My conclusions were simply opinions that I've formed based on my experiences with women ranging in age from their teens through their early forties. As I've stated previously, these opinions are just that: subjective impressions based on my finite experience... I don't put them forth as fact or as any sort of statistically valid data. You are free to agree or to disagree with some or all of what I say here... it's fine with me and as it should be. If you have a question or comment that you'd like to share about this topic or any other, please feel free to post in the General Forum, or if you prefer, send me an email. I'll try to respond to any and all messages promptly.

Now, with the preamble and pleasantries attended to, let's begin our travels through the second half of our journey, wherein we shall discuss some aspects of femininity and the passing of time not oft spoken of...

PART TWO OF TWO: Their bodies, themselves

I was seventeen when I saw my first real live naked woman up close. And it was on that occasion, during the sacrifice of my virginity on the altar of raging teenage hormones, when I first beheld stretch marks.

She was a wonder of human evolution, just a couple of years older than I was and better endowed by far than any woman I've bedded since. We both worked as counselors at a camp in upstate New York and on first glance, I was smitten: her angelic, almost pixie-like face topped a strong, healthy body sporting a genuine USDA Prime pair of mouth-watering D-Cup breasts that surely inspired thousands of erections that summer. Through my dogged persistence or just plain dumb luck, I had the opportunity to become intimate with her only a short while after we first met. I can still recall it clearly: the two of us alone on a couch late one warm summer evening, her small hands unbuttoning her blouse to reveal as fine a pair of breasts as I'd been dreaming of since first seeing her. Her breasts were large... to be more specific: they were very large, especially so to my seventeen-year-old eyes. Full and impressively abundant, with a sprinkling of freckles and pert pink nipples standing at attention, her marvelous bosom lay bare to my amazed and delighted inspection. In a few moments I'd have them in my hands and mouth, but in the brief interlude preceding that rapture I noticed her stretch marks.

Though just shy of twenty at the time, her very ample endowments had resulted in a series of fine pale vertical lines on the upper parts of her breasts. Human skin, even that of a healthy teenager, has only just so much elasticity. In the relatively brief number of years that she'd been carrying around that wonderful burden, gravity had been conspiring to draw those plump puppies ever earthward. It had done so with such unrelenting effort that her skin now bore the first signs of her battle with gravity proudly, like some sort of tribal tattoo or ritual scarification. Though it's possible that her active participation in sports might have been a contributing factor (the first time that I saw her she was winning a relay race), I expect that she'd have borne those marks regardless. That quantity of flesh, when left to fend for itself against Newtonian physics, will almost always show some signs of downward pull. Though the degree and visibility of such marks can vary due to skin and muscle tone, some faint marks are usually visible in most women that are naturally very well endowed. She was somewhat self-conscious about these marks at first, but soon relaxed when I responded to her endowments with unqualified delight and enthusiasm.

Needless to say, it stands to reason that extremely ample women who frequently go braless on a regular basis will eventually go beyond the point of having stretch marks and eventually their breasts will begin to sag to some degree. Within reason, this needn't be unattractive to a natural breast enthusiast such as myself... a low-slung beauty who still retains some amount of firmness can be an extraordinary sight... the incomparable Christy Canyon comes immediately to mind as a prime example of this genre. Her soft mammaries hang freely from her rib cage to a point almost halfway down her torso in some of her more recent work. Despite this, I think that most breast fans would agree that she remains a stunning woman, consistently desirable without qualification.

Of course, when extrapolating over time, large breasts (and with enough time, even more modest globes) can lose their battles with gravity and eventually, even the entire war. A naturally well-endowed woman with a pair of permanently braless double-D Cup melons will, at some point, probably be wearing them just above the navel as a result of degrading skin and muscle tone. To my mind, this sort of proportioning does detract somewhat from the potential for visual appeal, but of course each woman is different and the scale, scope and form of her breasts is only a part of what's all-too-often referred to as the "total package." As such, the relative impact of such sag probably needs to be considered in context and on an individual basis (both for the woman in question and for the subjective tastes of the viewer). Incidentally (and as many of you are already aware) stretch marks are not just limited to the breasts... they can also make appearances elsewhere on a woman's body as a result of pregnancy or significant weight gain/loss.

As I'm sure most of you already know, excessive sagging can be reduced or removed altogether via surgical breast lifts. In some cases, time's toll has been so severe that modest implants may be called for to restore the original volume of the breast. I have yet to personally partake of such a surgically rejuvenated bosom myself, and thus cannot comment on the overall effectiveness of such procedures. I suspect that the result may be somewhat similar to that of breasts that have been implanted in order to increase their size: they're obviously modified, but to many men it probably wouldn't matter.

A PORTION OF THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF THE AUTHOR. IT WILL BE REPLACED SHORTLY.

I suppose that this doesn't bode well for my future love life. As I've gotten older, so have my girl friends: my current paramour is thirty-five. I suppose that this is true for most of us. Though she thankfully shows no signs of potential changes that might diminish the pleasure that we both obtain from sexual relations, I can't help but wonder... is this sort of process inevitable, and does it afflict all women to some degree? At present, I cannot answer these questions conclusively. As I have no plans to take any vows of celibacy, perhaps I'll eventually have the opportunity to discover these answers. Regardless of the outcome, I plan to enjoy myself as much as humanly possible as my quest for understanding progresses.