Tuesday, March 11, 2008



It is sometimes very difficult to be a Canadian. Four years ago I went to Buenos Aires with Rosemary and Rebecca and I was shocked to see large displays of women in small bikinis advertising tooth paste, soup, and housing developments. After years of indoctrination in Vancouver I could not understand the relevance of the female body to toothpaste. I tried to explain my concern to my cousins who simply laughed at me and said I was a fool. I further got into trouble by telling them that I was no longer turned on by women wearing highheels. In fact I felt sorry for them because of the possible pain and how it affects their posture and back. My cousin Georgito made the comment that perhaps Canada must be a boring place to live, after all, looking at an attractive woman selling toothpaste was a pleasant endeavour.



Georgito would very much approve of the subject of today's blog. It is cleavage. It is about Jo Drake's cleavage. She has great cleavage. But Georgito would have a problem as there is no real word for cleavage in Spanish. This is simply an elegant omission of the language in accepting that in actual fact we men adore something that does not exist. The word escote in Spanish means cut. A vestido escotado is a low cut dress. Sin escote suggests that a dress or sweater is al the way up to the neck. Sometimes an escote lindo refers to an attractive show of upper breast by a low cut dress. But we don't have an exact word for cleavage. Hendidura can mean the scoop or depression of space between something higher. Hendidura could mean cleavage but it is rarely used. My on line dictionary of the Spanish language the RAE (Real Academia Española) states:

hendidura.
(De hendido).

1. f. Corte en una superficie o en un cuerpo sólido cuando no llega a dividirlo del todo.

A cut in a surface or in a solid body when it (the cut) is not entirely divided.



That seems to be a rather prosaic definition for something we all get so excited about!