Boobs

Breasts are celebrated and scrutinised, fetishised and censored, worshipped and weaponised. As the saying goes: 'Behind every great woman is a pair of boobs trying desperately to stay out of the conversation.'

For most of her life, unconcernedly flat-chested author and academic Dr Lisa Portolan had never really thought about her breasts, or boobs in general. But then she met Amanda Goff - aka former escort Samantha X - fellow author, journalist and owner of a huge pair of breasts. A friendship formed, then a working relationship ... and as the two women embarked on business dealings together, the monolithic power of mammary glands became glaringly apparent. All too often, men would ogle Amanda's chest in meetings, text her romantic/perverse messages, and try to get into her pants. The same men would focus their attention on Lisa's face, send her professional emails, and otherwise ignore her. Lisa was left pondering whether she should have her breasts augmented in order to become more visible, while Amanda wondered whether she should have hers reduced. But they both found themselves asking the same question: why all the fuss about boobs?

Lisa and Amanda don't pretend to have all the answers - they're not even sure how they feel about them most of the time. But that's precisely the point. Boobs is a smart, irreverent, wide-ranging and often hilarious conversation about the human and social-historical journey of breasts, richly illustrated with personal anecdotes and perspectives from coauthors at opposite ends of the bust spectrum. With its eclectic mix of chest-related topics - from our fixation with symmetry to the judgy debates about breastfeeding - Boobs celebrates our messy, often ridiculous and always complex relationship with these culturally charged appendages.

About the Authors

Dr Lisa Portolan is the author of Ten Ways to Find Love ... and How to Keep It (Echo, 2025) and Love, Intimacy and Online Dating: How a global pandemic redefined intimacy (Routledge, 2023) and has a PhD on digital intimacy from Western Sydney University. She is a frequent commentator on love, sex and intimacy and the intersection with digital technology, and has appeared on The Project, the Today show and Insight. She is also the managing director at Horizon Communication Group and a casual academic at the University of Technology Sydney.

Amanda Goff is a journalist, best-selling author and was formerly known as Samantha X. She was a successful journalist in London, where she is from, and in Sydney, before ditching her nine-to-five to become Samantha X, Australia's most famous escort, at the age of 38. She wrote two bestselling memoirs - Hooked (Ebury, 2014) and Back on Top: Confessions of a high-class escort (Hachette, 2017) - and retired as an escort at 49. Her latest book is Misfit: The unravelling of Samantha X (Echo, 2025).