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Melming Williams
Chelsea Charms and me
I'm walking along the King's Road with a galpal of mine, who, like me, is a recent mother, but also a wildly successful Primrose Hill restaurateur and a barrister to boot. �Where does she find the time??�, thinks me, who got a migraine thinking about the mere logistics when one of the other mums at the Finchley Baby-Swim group asked me if I fancied joining her Yummy-Mummies Yoga Club.

My friend asks me if I�ve heard of Chelsea Charms. �Is that the new Conran shop?� I innocuously/innocently ask. My friend takes pity on poor, gloriously isolated from popular culture me (Me who enquired at a dinner party, just last week, �Does Amy Winehouse takes drugs, then?� Me who thinks that Tom Cruise is still a good Catholic boy.), and explains that Chelsea Charms is, in fact, not a new purveyor of exquisite talking pieces for the vibrant Chiswick household, but rather the owner of the world�s pair of largest (cosmetically-enhanced) breasts. �Gosh,� I squeak, when Calliope reveals that, at last measure, Charms vitals clocked in at a staggering 153XXX-23-34.

Yes, that was 153XXX.

These dimensions are completely alien to one such as myself, who kept waiting and waiting for puberty to really kick in in the chest section. I finally wearily admitted defeat when, at the High Michaelmas Ball in my second year at Oxford, my rather Pimms�d boyfriend of the time spent an hour telling me about the �wonderful� advancements in breast augmentation procedures. �Not that you need it�� Yeah right! Dumped!

I�m not sure I�d even like big breasts. When I was pregnant with Malachy, and then breastfeeding (and, by-the-by, are any other new mums concerned about what fluoride in our tap-water could be doing to breast milk, and - in turn - to baby's health?? Email me), I reached the heady heights of a (leaky) D cup, but I felt like a grotesque. It turns out I was used to going unnoticed in crowds with my little crab-apples, and now I was schlepping round biffing people in the eye with a pair of granny smiths!

On the other hand, I have a Ugandan friend whose beautiful ochre breasts billow and flow under unbelievably beautiful busuti and gomci dresses and, every time I see her, cause me to rue the day I was born a porcelain-white stick.

But then, maybe Chelsea Charms�s breasts empower her. In a world STILL ultimately predicated on men�s tastes and desires, perhaps the only way for a woman to get power is to present a fa�ade of complicity, but to really be manipulating those who seek to manipulate her, and all of us women. I really don�t know the answer.

I do know I'm now the proud owner of a divine Conran end table, though. C'est la vie!