Maybe it was that people refer to Tavern in the Square as “Tits” for short.

Maybe it was that I always found myself sitting at a table with an HD television screen within six inches of my face and music so loud that the only real conversation I could have with my friends was: “It’s so loud in here!” To which the other would respond, “WHAAAT?” before taking another slurp from the Purple Haze fish bowl drink centered in the table.

Most likely, it was the guys looking around like they were trying to catch a fish, meaning a tiny-skirt-wearing Boston University student, and pull her by her pink straw right from that giant plastic bowl of icy neon blue alcohol and into his Allston bedroom.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t like Tits. Whatever social outing this decision would prevent me from experiencing would be a sacrifice to the decency of humanity. I would never return.

Soon, however, detached hatred wasn’t enough to satisfy my Tits rage. No, that bar, coupled with my similar experiences at The White Horse, had lit something inside me: I needed to go back to Tits to document the Tits culture in writing.

But to write about Tits, I would need to become Tits, emulating my understanding of Tits and its “biddie” culture through both actions and dress one evening. (Biddie: See Urban Dictionary entries 1 and 2, “A girl that is attractive and available. … Damn I’m gonna meet some biddies tonight”; “footwear consists of Uggs, boots with fur on them, heels, or some combination of the three”).

For me, that meant dressing up in Ugg-like boots, a miniskirt, a low cut, somewhat off the shoulder neon yellow shirt, and just enough glitter makeup.

It didn’t start well.

“So, do you know why they call them the Denver Nuggets?” I asked the boy next to me as I twirled my hair, attempting sports talk after two vodka tonics during pre-Tits pre-game at T’s Pub on Comm. Ave. I was talking so much “I’m-from-Colorado-Therefore-I-Know-Stuff” sports talk that the boy was gone within 10 minutes.

After a brief moment of defeat and a slice of pizza, I was ready to sashay with my friend and fellow biddie-for-the-night deep into the heart of Allston. Because if there’s anything journalism has taught me, it’s you don’t take no for an answer. I too could be a biddie.

We went straight to the bar when we arrived at Tits, drank two beers and then set out to cruise for boys who were cruising for biddies.

We walked up to a trio of guys sipping drought beer off the dance floor and waited for them to make the first move. Twirling my hair and flaunting my turquoise-lined glitter eyes, I asked: “So, what brings ya ta Tits?”

Turns out they were BU law students taking a break from reading arduous casework. Not what I expected.

I found that other guys’ reasons for coming to Tits were similarly wide ranging. For some, it was the actually quite amazing fried pickles; for others, it was to watch the Celtics game, for many, they were just tagging along with friends for the first time; but they all had one thing in common: they were having a genuinely good time and didn’t just look like they were trying to get some.

Suddenly I felt very out of place.

Where were all the creepy guys looking to hit on us? Shouldn’t they be flocking in their slimy fishbowl ways? And more importantly, why has every guy I’ve spoken to thus far been genuine, nice and a really good conversationalist? The closest I got to a guy hitting on me was some dude passing by me and yelling, “I like your scarf!”

When we went out for the night with the mindset that boys would flock to us in our blatant attempt at biddie sexual appeal, use trashy pick up lines, or anything they could to reel us out of our fishbowls and into their arms, and then the only thing we got was an, “I like your scarf,” we suddenly found ourselves upset, offended even. We wanted to meet slimy guys. We wanted to be hit on. We wanted to have superficial conversations. We wanted to … wait, were we, do I dare say, too “biddie,” even for Tits?

As the music pounded our ears into an echoing whirlwind, the crowd and our drink tab were both far larger than desired. It was time to pack up what was left of our pride and attempt to confirm stereotypes via a relentless quest to pick up guys and head home. Either we out-biddied ourselves on a Friday night, or I should stop being such a nay-saying, judgmental Tits hater and sip from my fish bowl quietly at the bar by myself, where I belong.

"Hi, Elmo! Are you ready to play dress-up?" — Singer Katy Perry asks Elmo.

Katy has become the latest celebrity to film a segment for children’s show "Sesame Street," re-recording her last year’s hit "Hot ‘N Cold" with child-friendly lyrics.

This short two-minute clip was just posted on YouTube on Monday and quickly passed the million viewer mark.

But that clip will never appear in an episode.

Complaints came in about the singer’s dress and exposed cleavage. Parents fumed over her "inappropriate" cleavage-baring outfit, and the clip has been axed from the New Year’s Eve episode.

Seriously, though, the combination of "California Gurls" singer and Muppet Elmo is absolutely cute, and little Elmo running around Perry is very adorable. Most of the shots only show her head. There’s nothing overtly sexual about any of this.

Care to discuss? Leave some comments.

By Tony Hendra

Want to defend $10,000 DDs (and the women who get them) or burst the silicone bubble? Tell us your position in the comment section.

Boobs are busting out all over. In the year since the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of silicone breast implants (do breasts go under Food or Drugs?), one million shiny new ¼ber-boobs have overflowed welcoming bras like rising dough foaming over bread pans, or strained provocatively against satin blouses and wet T-shirts, pert nipples on red alert. An estimated 500,000 American women have joined the approximately 4.5 million who already had chest extensions, waving good-bye to their S-class-driving nip-and-tuckers with a joyful “Thanks for the mammaries!”

To give you an idea of just how many perky new ¼ber-boobs that is: If you laid them end to end they would stretch from Clifton, New Jersey, to Columbus, Ohio!

We’ve got ourselves an ¼ber-boob explosion!

Actually, ¼ber-boobs can, in theory, explode. Under the right circumstances, lasers can ignite the hydrogen locked up in fresh silicone and it’s boobs away! The CIA is probably picking up the intensified chatter on Al Qaeda sites: Next spring break the bastards aim to infiltrate beaches from Key West to Cancun with undercover Islamo-maniacs carrying handheld lasers. A quick zap where bikini top meets armpit and Great Satan’s milk wagons go kablooey.

Freud famously asked, “What do women want?” He never got around to asking, “Why do women want boobs that feel like Porsche hubcaps?” Before I try to answer that question, a robust caveat: When handling the whole area of boobs, men—even feminist men like myself—tend to be insensitive. We hairy retro-primates assume that the self-sacrifice women endure to enlarge themselves has male pleasure as its only goal. Bigger funbags equals bigger fun, right? Not necessarily. Before we dive headlong into the Valley of Silicone, we must establish whom ¼ber-boobs are intended for.

Consider the harrowing tale of poor little Heidi Montag, who graces the insect-brained MTV series The Hills. The nightmare, the unending torment Heidi had to endure from puberty on, is just agonizing to hear about: She was “too flat.” “Mean boys” would say, “If you nailed two nails in a board, they’d be bigger than you are [hahahahahahahaha!!!].” Can you imagine?

Her courage in escaping that nightmare is as inspiring as it is empowering. She risked death. “Right before I went in, I was like, What if I don’t wake up?” she told US Weekly. Good question. What if? Her struggle is up there with suffragettes being beaten to a bloody pulp as they marched for the vote, or the long battle against brutal male chauvinism waged by Friedan, Steinem, and their sisters. What Heidi went through to get from A to C? MTV ought to spin it off. Call it Heidi’s Hills.

She did it for herself, okay? For her own self-esteem. It had nothing to do with Spencer or the Mean Boys or that slut Lauren (who, incidentally, hasn’t yet gone under the knife and boosted her acne bumps into something worth ogling).

Ogling? Oops. Down, retro-primate, down.

But I wonder. Why would a diaphanous sylph like The Heids saddle her upper half with a couple of humonga-gazongas when she looked just fine in the before shot? Especially since anyone with retinas can deduce that her neo-knockers are mostly liquid sand. How does knowing that others know that boost your self-esteem?

Are they really intended to inspire and empower other women? Hmmm. From what little I know of intimate female discourse, the owners of ¼ber-boobs are assumed to be—how to put this delicately?—morons. The thinking seems to be that even God-given 38Ds were fashioned at the expense of cerebro-cortical mass; wit and tit are inversely proportional.

Is it just possible that ¼ber-boobs are . . . for the lads? Other rumored recipients tend to bear out this wild hypothesis. Take the speculation, based on a flattering photograph that circulated on the Internet, that Ann Coulter had gotten implants. It would make sense, right? If she’s to maintain her role as the reigning Fox News fox, the ultimate eye candy of the loony right, she has to take her job seriously. A cold-blooded Cretaceous reptile must at least look like she can suckle her young.

Or take Posh Beckham, whose ¼ber-boobs, in shape and consistency, closely resemble two halves of a fully inflated soccer ball. Obviously those babies are for Becks, who must like the familiar feel.

Which raises the question: How do they feel? Marriage has limited my ability to conduct large-scale tests, but I do recall that awful moment when you plunge happily into soft pink abundance and come across something like one of those tiny helmets Hell’s Angels wear on their bald spots. Detumescence, thy name is silicone.

As for saline liquid, it’s alarmingly . . . liquid. It sloshes about. Few men—or women—are turned on by #252;ber-boobs that change shape as often as a minor Harry Potter character. Salty ¼ber-boobs do have one thing going for them, though: When you hold them up to your ear, you can hear the sea.

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 ¼ber-boobs are Western Civ’s equivalent of. . . a burka.