Tony Hendra makes the provocative argument in his recent jeremiad against silicone valleys:

In a sermon several years ago—one he quoted again in October at Larry King's behest—evangelist Joel Osteen urged the ewes of his flock to shop at Victoria's Secret. The reason for this apparent lapse from the Christian right's typical white-lipped terror of sex? Flirty underwear helps wives better please their scripturally mandated lords and masters.

Once you get past the pseudo-feminist claptrap, women who boost their boobs don't seem a whole lot different from Joel's ewes. Heidi, et al., are the real boobs, obediently conforming to some caricature of beauty fantasized by traveling-salesman types. Face it, O lovely woman: That shiny new bosom was fashioned by, and for, men. And you will wear it in public as long as men approve. You could say über-boobs are Western Civ's equivalent of. . . a burka.