By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2     

It is said that Brazilian men pay more attention to bums than to breasts. This is not the case here in the UK. Breasts beat out bums every time. And breasts were very much in the news this week.

The Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of a gay man who had been secretly filming other men in the changing room of a swimming pool. The judges declared that it was legal to ogle men's breasts but not women's under the terms of the 2003 sexual offenses legislation. Only women's breasts, the court determined, can be regarded as "private parts." Lord Justice Hughes ruled that "the intention of parliament was to mean a female breast and not an exposed male chest."

Curiously the obituary columns were simultaneously featuring photographs of one of the most famous male chest in movie history, that of John Phillip Law, who had died at the age of 70 in Los Angeles. Law is best remembered as the blind angel Pygar in Roger Vadim's camp 1968 masterpiece Barbarella. Dino De Luarentiis had cast Law, a handsome blond Californian of imposing physique, as the winged semi-nude protector of Jane Fonda's intergalactic and sexually insatiable heroine.

All of this in juxtaposition with the gossip columns where a great "beating of breasts" was in progress inspired by the tawdry memoirs of Cherie Blair, wife of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. Mrs. Blair is an ambitious and powerful lawyer, and much like Mrs. Hillary Clinton she subordinated herself to an ambitious and powerful husband. Now it is her turn in the limelight. Among Mrs. Blair's revelations: She jumped into bed with Tony on her first date, while simultaneously dating two other men. Her last child was conceived because she did not think it a good idea to take condoms to the Queen's Scottish Castle of Balmoral in case the servants opened her bag and were shocked. And so on.

Such "beating of breasts" is of course a Biblical incantation. In Jeremiah 9:17 it evokes mourning women hired to heighten lamentation. Very appropriate to Mrs. Clinton' current situation. But in Isaiah 32:12 "the beating of breasts" is intended to encourage the growth of fruitful vines; more appropriate for Mrs. Blair if her memoirs, like Mrs. Clinton's, become a bestseller.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper