Can I just say, right here, right now, that I too, “heart” boobies, and that I feel nothing but solidarity for our oppressed young sisters in Easton, Pennsylvania, who have shamefully been suspended from school for wearing plastic bracelets which boldly and cheerfully proclaim “I (heart) boobies”?

Middle school students Kayla Martinez, 12, and Brianna Hawk, 13, were suspended from school and banned from dances for wearing the popular bracelets designed to do nothing more than promote breast cancer awareness among young people (and uncontrollable titters from boys age 9-13).

So what did Kayla and Brianna and their friends at the ACLU do?  File a lawsuit, of course.  The suit demands that the school district ends the ban, allows the girls to attend those dances, and expunges their disciplinary record.

And why not?  These poor girls might not get into Harvard because of this bogus black mark on their records.

One of them even wore her bracelet inside out, so as to avoid controversy (and the relentless titters of boys age 9-13).  The back side shows only a cancer awareness website.  (btw, I checked it out – don’t waste your time – not as hot as you’d think).

But even this inside-outing of the bracelet, even this tiny concession, is unacceptably un-American!  Free speech runs in our veins, and, as the ACLU pointed out, the bracelets, while perhaps silly and irreverent, are not lewd or indecent, and therefore are a form of protected speech, whether they do or do not provoke uncontrolled tittering in boys age 9-13.

As Kayla’s mother, Amy Martinez, succinctly put it, “I don’t believe that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity or nudity in the school code apply to the word ‘boobies’ or ‘breast.”  Now tits, jugs, cans, knockers, sweater puppies, blouse bunnies, hooters, chesticles or bazongas – that would be another story, but ‘boobies,’ really?   ‘Boobies” is fun and goofy.  And turning a goofy immature word for a secondary sexual characteristic into a slogan for breast cancer is something I believe Ms. Louise Veronica Ciccone herself would call empowering.

According to the suit, “Seeing a bracelet with ‘I Love Boobies!’ on it is a conversation starter that leads to discussion and awareness of issues affecting young people.”  And if the discussion runs out of gas, well, there’s always tittering and suggestive hand gestures to help increase funding for breast cancer research.

I have to confess that my own tittering came to an abrupt end when I found out that the two students being suspended were female.  When I read the headline, I just assumed it was boys, and I thought I would be treated to a story about two snarky 12 year olds who figured out how to bring up something which occupied 95% of their thoughts in an unassailable, PC way.

Now the best I can hope for is a South Park episode on the subject.

I also have to say I would’ve preferred for boys to have worn the bracelets if only for the purpose of a juicier lawsuit.  With the two girls you get bogged down by sincerity and honorable intentions.  But the first amendment wasn’t written to protect the saintly and the uncontroversial, it was written to protect the unpopular, the unpleasant, and the tittering.

Well, I hope the girls win their suit.  The rest of the West thinks we’re too prudish as it is (I’ve been to French beaches and seen naked boobies in a non-sexual context first hand, and lemme tell you, while the thrill of it for a former all boys Catholic school grad never goes away, it does become routine and normal – by “normal,” I of course mean walking around the beach with a perpetual erection while tittering).

Plus, and here’s the thing: if they lose, the terrorists win.