rantlust

Every now and then, rantlust takes some time off trivial stuff and tackles the really hard questions in life. On these hallowed pages, the seeker may find resolution to such profound mysteries as: who would win a fight between a python and an alligator; exactly how great is Chuck Norris; what is proper shitiquette, and so on. All this, however, has merely been a build-up to tackle the most important mystery of all: why are men so fascinated by tits?

For man, no issue can be more important, no mystery deeper. What are tits and why do they exist? (Also, what is the right spelling for them?) By what process do they exert such a powerful hold on the male mind? What kind of tits do men prefer?

Some skeptic readers might not be convinced that the title question really belongs in the pantheon of rantlust greats. “The blogger,” the reader soliloquizes, “hyperbolates.” To which end I ask you, fellow brothers of rantlust, to consider the time you spend thinking about pythons, alligators, Chuck Norris and shitting. Combined. Now compare this to the amount of time you spend thinking about tits. See?

Others might not be convinced that this is a question worth spending time on. Well, welcome to the world of blogging. In seriousness though, I’d point out that the question as framed is a meaningful one and not obviously and easily answered. In our modern societies, most of us rarely get to see breasts functioning as milk-providers. Carolyn Latteier in Breasts: The Women’s Perspective on an American Obsession , quotes an anthropologist saying that some cultures like the Mali don’t view the breast as sexual, and find the “American” obsession with breasts horrifying and funny. Hence it is probably useful to expend some thought on the sexual nature of breasts. Moreover, our question has several sub-questions (listed above) that alone would justify a blog post — at least to the extent that blog posts need justification.

What’s the big deal about?

Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, named mammalia as the class of animals in which the female produce milk for their young. Some mammals, like the platypus (in fact, all animals in the order monotremata), produce milk from glands that lie behind the skin — the milk oozes out of the skin, into the fur from where the young collect it. The majority of mammals have specialized organs which contain the mammary glands.

Teats is the formal, more pompous spelling for what in old english was spelled tits. Curiously, the hip, slang (unsophisticated?) spelling reverted to using tits. By convention, tits mean different things on different species. On animals with udders, they are the equivalent of what on humans are called nipples. On humans the entire breast is commonly called the tit. So a tit includes the glands that produce milk, the nipples that secrete the milk, the plumbing to get the milk from gland to nipple, muscles, connective tissue, and other miscellanea. Men and women both have tits. The difference is that at puberty, females start growing theirs (thanks to estrogen) while this growth is inhibited in males (thanks to testosterone).

As the woman grows old, reduced estrogen doesn’t stimulate the milk glands very much and they reduce in size. The connective tissue that supports the breast also decreases, contributing to sagging. Fibrous tissue in the breasts is replaced with fat, making the breasts less firm.

One interesting thing to note is that in all other primate species, the breast size varies greatly depending on whether or not the female is lactating. In most species, breasts seem to have no sexual function. There is no breast as such when the female is not lactating, just a large nipple. Not so in humans, where the breasts are permanently “swollen” and the size difference while lactating is much smaller.

But even if there is a difference between human breasts and non-human breasts, is that difference of any significance. Several pairs of closely related species have differences that don’t really amount to anything — they merely indicate that evolution could have just as easily taken one of many paths, and when the two species in question split off, they chose different routes. I don’t think that argument can be made for breasts. As pointed out earlier, a large component of the human breast is fat. For most of human history, fat has been very hard to come by. That other primates don’t need large fatty tits to produce or store milk probably indicates that tits don’t need to be large in order to function. This means that women store fat in her breasts strongly indicates some evolutionary advantage to having large, permanently swollen breasts — evolution wouldn’t have wasted such a precious and hard to come by resource merely as an accident.

There is nothing that the female body does, has or doesn’t that isn’t the object of a sexual fetish. Those not afraid of a boss or wife looking over over their shoulders can find fan-clubs, web-pages etc. devoted to things like the dimples of venus, women farting (check out the letters from James Joyce to his wife, particularly the 8th and 9th Dec ones), acrotomophilia…. The list goes on and on, and covers every action and location that even the most anal (no pun intended) biologist may not have discovered. So perhaps the attraction for tits is explained simply — it just happens that some men have a breast fetish, just like some men have a fat fetish, or a foot fetish.

Somehow, I find that explanation not quite up to the challenge. “Experts” say that breast fetish is the most common fetish among men. Fellow rantlusters will probably not find the opinion surprising at all. Sexologists, who used to define the male attraction to breasts as a fetish, eventually gave up on this classification. Just consider the number of slang terms for tits as compared to other body parts. Even if tits are “just” one (or, two) of the female body parts sexually adored/objectified, they are clearly very, very, much adored/objectified. This degree of difference alone would call for an explanation. Our quest continues.

A variety of preferences

Let us take a look at the “what” of tit-ilation — what are the characteristics that make a pair of breasts more attractive than another. I’d bet that most ladies here in the USA, will confidently assert that this one question has an easy answer — men like big tits; the bigger, the better. Perhaps that is the case, although I’d bet that a lot of men would offer subtleties in their own preference. But while the attraction for tits is a male universal (or as close to one as it gets), it’s not clear that the attraction is so easily parametrized by size. It’s possible that the current American preference is, by and large, for large breasts. But even then, we’d have to ask if this has been true through history. Is it true across the globe (discounting the influence of American culture)? Think about what kind of tits are considered attractive in your culture, and what kind is definitely considered unattractive. Ideally, we’d like a survey of recorded preferences from across the globe and through history.

Alas, here we encounter a problem. The issue being discussed here is hardly considered a worthy topic of intellectual inquiry today — a time when the spirit of scientific inquiry has penetrated many a veil of prudery. Hence, its not much of a surprise that very little of what is left to us from the ages collects data of breast preference in a methodical manner. So the writings of philosophers and scientists are not of much avail. However, artists have shown no such inhibition. So, our search will take us to the writings, paintings and carvings that illustrate the cravings of horny maestros past.

The mythology of virtually every culture is replete with references to breasts. However most such references are to the breast in its mothering role, not its sexual one. The only exception that I (with my limited knowledge of mythology) know of is that of Zeus and Hera. Zeus (before he finally married Hera) was very much attracted to her, an attraction that was not returned. One day, Hera found a bird, dying from the cold, lying on the ground. She picked it up and placed it between her boobs to warm it. The bird then revealed its true identity — that of Zeus wanting to take advantage of his position. Perhaps even the gods couldn’t resist copping a feel every now and then.

No survey of past sexual preferences can avoid the Kamasutra, which describes a Padmini (Lotus woman; the most perfect feminine form of the 4 types of women) as:

She in whom the following signs and symptoms appear is called a Padmini. … Her bosom is hard, full and high; …

The book also prescribes recipes for enlarging the breasts of a woman, and for raising and hardening pendulous breasts. Hindu temples are famous for their sculpture, which includes several female figurines with unbelievably large, firm and round tits.

Hindus weren’t alone in their breast preferences. Carolyn Latteier describes Minoan sculpture and paintings having breasts that are “generous and round, like the full breasts of a nursing mother”. The ideal Egyptian woman had a “slender body, with high, firm breasts”.

In A History of the Breast (p54), Marilyn Yalom summarizes European preferences:

The rating system for breasts established in the Middle Ages remained essentially the same throughout the Renaissance: they should be small, white, round like apples, hard, firm, and wide apart.

As a small survey: the 15th century French poet François Villon writes of an elderly woman remembering her lost youth and beauty, in a poem translated here:

The fine slender shoulder-blades:
The long arms, with tapering hands:
My small breasts: the hips well made
Full and firm, and sweetly planned,
All Love’s tournaments to withstand

The 16th century Italian philosopher, Agostino Nifo, wrote De Pulchro et Amore (On Beauty and Love) in which he describes the celebrated beauty Jeanne d’Aragon, as having medium-sized tits.

Returning to the present, no survey of sexual preferences can avoid the Playboy magazine. A compilation of playmate specs gives the average figure of: 36-23-35 (cup size not given). Miss America contestants’ bust sizes (which have closely tracked Playmates’ bust sizes) rose from 32 inches in the 1920’s to 34 in the 40’s to 36 in the 50’s and 60’s and have gradually declined since. (Latteier p5).

The American preference for busty babes is not exactly universal though. In the April 2005 issue, Playboy describes the Brazilian preference for women (p84): “Some Brazilian preferences go back a long way [...] other standards have evolved: small-breasted women, once preferred, have yielded to girls as generously endowed on top as they are below.” In “A History of the Breast”, Yalom summarizes the attraction of breast implants as:

… In France, for example, the ideal breast size seems to be smaller than in the U.S., to judge from statistics presented at the twenty-first Annual Congress of Plastic Surgeons. In Argentina, the tendency has been for large breast implants. In Brazil, upper-class families go in for breast reduction — even to the point of offering such operations as presents to their daughters for their fifteenth birthdays!

One sympathizes with the naturally endowed Brazilian women who underwent surgery to meet the beauty ideal, only to have the standard change under them.

Unfortunately, the survey above fails to cover much of humanity, reflecting on the limited knowledge of the writer. Rantlust readers, however, seem to hail from all corners of the globe and have diverse background and interests. Perhaps, the comment section can fill up the deficiencies in our knowledge in this area. Maybe you study renaissance paintings for a living, or you love ancient Chinese literature; perhaps you’re a purveyor of presently popular Peruvian porn. Its very hard to do much of anything without encountering a society’s sexual preferences, or without running into a reference to breasts. Please take a little bit of time and add a comment about what you know about the past or present preference for tits. The ideal comment will include some data on the preference, the time and place the data is valid for, and a pointer to source material. Think of this as your chance to improve humanity’s understanding of itself. Not convinced? Then consider it an excuse to pursue erotica — perhaps the wife will think differently about your “reading” playboy if you’re taking measurements and notes. It’s worth a shot. (Sorry).

Despite the limitations of the survey, what does it tell us? We find that size, though sometimes and advantage, isn’t always the ideal. However, in all cases, there is an underlying element that is universal: shape. In some cases, the desired shape is explicitly stated (though simplified by analogy to an easily described geometric figure or object). In other cases, there’s a different keyword: firmness. Of course, like in all physical standards of beauty, the importance of symmetry doesn’t need to be stated.

So we see that tits have been a focus of sexual attention and that firm tits seem to get the most attention. We’d like to understand why this is so. We’d like to understand this in relation to a more basic question: why do tits exists, i.e. why have they evolved the way they have.

Psychological and Sociological theories

According to Freud, libido development occurs thorough 5 psychosexual stages. During each stage, the “id” focuses on distinct erogenous zones of the body. In the first, oral stage, the object of fixation is the mouth. According to some psychologists, this leads to the baby being fascinated by the breast (as that is arguably the most important and pleasurable thing the baby explores with its mouth). When the baby grows up to be a man, that attraction turns to sexual attraction for breasts. The attraction for breasts is hence considered a form of “sexual immaturity” (actual term used by some psychologists).

There is a subtle variant theory that says that it isn’t the pleasurable memory of the breast, but the frustration on the loss of the breast when breast-feeding is stopped that leads to the yearning that manifests itself as sexual attraction for breasts.

Of course, male babies are not the only ones who have a need to be fed. So how come the above effects are not manifested in females — in other words, how come women don’t develop an equal attraction for breasts? The answer given is that women develop their own breasts and this somehow assuages their pyschosexual need for / sexual attraction to them.

Some have a similar, but more complicated theory. Once of Freud’s main ideas was the centrality of the penis in human sexuality. The baby boy fears that the father is threatened by his penis and wants to castrate him; the baby girl develops “penis envy” when she catches a glimpse of her father’s penis; and so on. Now, (the psychologists tell us), what men fear most is not the loss of their penis, but of their masculinity — without their penis, they fear, their self-identity would merge with that of a woman. To counter this fear, they “partialize” the woman, focusing their erotic energy on just the breasts instead of the whole woman. This theory (and others touched on here) are explained in more detail by Carolyn Latteier in the book referred to above.

According to cultural constructivists, what we find sexually desirable is determined by the cultural contingencies we happen to find ourselves in. Specifically, what we do as part of a sexual encounter or foreplay is determined by a script or ritual that we’ve gathered from our socio-cultural environment as the norm. It is the meaning of the act, as it fits in with the norm, and not the physical contact that results in pleasure. In current society, breast-play is an important part of foreplay and thus breasts become a symbol of sexual attraction.

Some (for example this group) argue that breasts are merely parental. However, since they are a very visible difference between the sexes, patriarchal society objectifies them in order to control women. For example, women aren’t allowed to go topless while men are. In the USA, women can get arrested in many places for public breast-feeding. This indicates more than mere inequality. By not letting people see the parental function of breasts, society in general forgets that function and instead focuses on breasts as sexual objects, thereby reinforcing the ban on uncovered public female breasts.

A significant problem with all of these theories is that they don’t explain why do breasts with their biological expense even exist in the first place. Why are humans different from primates in this regard? What are the reasons for the particular preferences we as a species have for them? This class of theories doesn’t address these questions. (This is not a complete critique of the theories / viewpoints presented here. I’m merely commenting on what is relevant to this post).

Biology’s take

Desmond Morris is the author of the seemingly most prevalent biological explanation. In The Naked Ape he reasons as follows. In most primates, the sexual act begins with the rear-approach of the male to the female — the female raises and presents her rear end to the male who mounts her from behind; there is little, if any, frontal interaction. The sexual characteristics in the female of such species will be in the rear. In humans, there is an extended period of face-to-face pre-copulatory activity [buying drinks, promising to do the dishes, negotiating price, etc.]. Moreover, copulation itself is in the frontal position since reinforcing the identity of the partner in a pair-bonding species is important. Now consider a proto-human species which was just starting to have sex in frontal contact positions. This species has evolved from the common ancestor of primates which had sex in rear-entry positions. Suppose such a species had developed fleshy, hemispherical buttocks (like ours, but unlike in any other primates). Now, a switch happens whereby increasingly (pre)copulatory activity is frontal. In such a species, the female would want to present the male with the sexual characteristics he was used to (her hemispherical buttocks and red labia), in the front of her body (tits and lips, respectively). Tits are thus a “self-mimicry” of the ass in the front of the body.

This theory doesn’t directly explain, but can incorporate the changes and variation in breast-preference — why small, widely-separated tits are attractive to whole societies, i.e. tits that look nothing like buttocks. The similarity between buttocks and tits merely needs to exist in the evolutionary path between us and the common human-primate ancestor. Once we have the evolutionary vestige, it is free to evolve further, and barring other constraints, free to diversify into different preferences. What is doesn’t explain, although is not necessarily contradicted by, is why are some kinds of breasts unattractive; why should tits that were attractive 20 years ago, not be so anymore (they change shape, but what of that? We’ve already argued that attraction for different shapes is consistent with the theory).

Another theory is that during ovulation, when a woman is most likely to get pregnant from a mating, hormonal changes in the female body cause the breasts to swell. For their own evolutionary advantage, men would be tuned to looking out for more swollen breasts as a positive signal and have thus evolved an attraction for them. By this measure, one might reasonably expect that size would be a very important measure of the attractiveness of breasts. Like in all things, too much of a good thing is bad — so this explanation doesn’t imply that the larger the bosom, the more attractive it is; merely that in general, larger is better.

A couple of notes. First, it doesn’t matter that the average male can’t consciously tell when breasts are swollen due to ovulation. Most important decisions are handled by the brain at a subconcious level (and whether or not you get to procreate is about as important a decison as it gets in evolution) — such decisions are too important to be left to the capriciousness of the individual and the non-reliability of conscious thought. Second, (unfortunately) you rarely get to see unclothed tits in public, much less get an opportunity to consciously or unconsciously see a subtle change in size. But that’s immaterial to the argument. Clothes, bras, corsets, etc. have appeared way too recently in human evolutionary history to have any affect on the argument — we’re operating with a brain that was formed when the species walked about unclothed.

A very similar theory postulates the same effect, but using the swelling of breast tissue when the woman is lactating. This swelling would indicate that the woman was fertile (in fact, recently gave birth) and that would be a plus for men. But this line of reasoning would apply just as strongly, and perhaps even stronger, to the other primates.

Along similar lines, another explanation has to do with the content of breast tissue. Since it contains a large amount of fat, the presence of large (but not necessarily firm) breasts would have indicated that the woman had a lot of excess fat that she could use to bear and rear children. Again, remember that fat has been a precious commodity for most of our evolutionary history. This reasoning generalizes to the attractiveness of any fat/plump woman.

This line of reasoning does explain why size would be important, but not why a firm shape wouldn’t be better. It also doesn’t explain why human breasts are different from primate breasts.

Some arguments have to do with the utility of fat in producing and storing breast milk. These too suffer from the inability to explain the inter-primate difference.

One theory says that the shape of the female breast has to do with the shape of the human face. Unlike chimps and gorillas, humans do not have a protruding mouth but have a protruding nose. This means that there is a suffocation risk of a baby drinking milk from a non-protuberant teat. So the shape of the human face forced the shape of the breast.

Since suffocation risk is a big deal for the survival of the species, evolution would certainly have placed a lot of pressure on solving this particular problem (if indeed it is a problem). Perhaps the human face wouldn’t have evolved to its present shape if this risk were real. Or perhaps the nose & mouth had to adopt its present shape for other reasons (perhaps having to do with the needs of vocalization). In which case, there ought to have evolved a more reliable mechanism to hold the shape of the breast. Perhaps, evolution would have used some firm, hard tissue (bone, cartilage, muscle) to form the shape of the breast instead of leaving it to fat and connective tissue, which looses shape within the child-bearing span of a woman’s life. Evolution also would have ruthlessly eliminated small-breastedness — many reproductively successful women have fairly small breasts, and as we have seen, some people seem to prefer them.

Some experts disagree with the very assessment of the appropriateness of the shape of the breast to breast-feeding. In his book The Naked Woman (pp143-144), Desmond Morris argues that the shape of the female breast is not ideal for feeding the human baby. He attributes this ineffiency to the fact that the breast has a dual role — parental and sexual. We’ve already discussed his explanation for the shape of the breast.

This class of theories does a better job than the previous class in explaining why humans have breasts and other primates don’t (though not all of the theories do, as has been pointed out individually). However, there are several facets of breasts and the sexual attraction to breasts that aren’t directly explained by any one of these theories ( e.g. why do breasts lack reliably hard and shape-holding tissue if shape is so important; why are large, fatty, but saggy breasts not attractive if content is what is important). Now, several of these explanations can be combined with others to form a more complex (in term of number of independent parts) but complete theory. However, in general, a good theory assumes little and explains a lot — simplicity and fecundity are desirable traits in a theory.

The tale of the tail

We are all familar with the principle of natural selection and how that explains a whole bunch of seemingly designed features and how they come about by the action of simple natural forces. However, natural selection, powerful as it is, doesn’t explain breasts. (Actually, the “shape of breast fits shape of face” theory falls somewhat into the natural selection category, but as we’ve seen, would result in a different solution.)

Darwin, being a very wise man, was undoubtedly in search for the answer to this great question before us today. In continuation of that search, he formulated what is known as sexual selection — a littler known, but equally profound theory. This theory is commonly illustrated by the example of the peacock’s tail. Virtually any pop-sci book that covers evolutionary biology will explain this concept (probably with the very same example).

Natural selection is very good at explaining adaptations: features that increase the long-term survival and reproductive chances of an organism. How did the tiger get its stripes, how did nature create eyes, etc. But the peacock’s tail is hardly an adaptation. Its bright colors make the owner stand out in a forest, easily spotted by a predator. The size of the tail makes it difficult for the peacock to maneuver easily, making it harder to get away from the predator once spotted. Natural selection would have swiftly and ruthlessly culled out peacocks with large, colorful tails. Precisely the opposite seems to have happened.

The mystery is solved by sexual selection. According to this, peahens choose to mate with the highest-quality males, where quality is measured by fitness and ability to survive. Given the constraints the tail places on the peacocks, only very fit peacocks will survive for long. The tail thus is an indicator of male fitness for the females, and a good one at that. Since this is such a good indicator, peahens lust after it: they have genes which build a brain that makes them find big colorful tails sexually attractive. Peahens that didn’t develop this lust for such tails would mate with more varied males and leave behind less fit peafowl. While females who express this preference for big and colorful tails in their mate selection will leave behind children fathered by fitter males. These children will inherit her genes (including the ones that made her choose the males she did) and the father’s genes (including the ones that built the big and colorful tail). Over a period of time such peahens would have many progeny. The landscape will thus be populated by peahens who prefer such tails, which will place pressure on the peacocks to develop them.

The essence of the argument is that the tail is a “hard-to-fake” fitness-meter of the quality of genes carried by the peacock. In peafowls, the male doesn’t help the peahen bring up the chicks. Since female investment is very high and male investment is so low, females demand a proof of quality in their mate. For males, given their low investment in chick bring-up, mating is pure privilege — a privilege they pay for by living a risky life.

Coming closer home, among the hominids, we see that the majority of successful male gorillas maintain a “harem”, for their own use alone, of all the female gorillas in their territory. Even in gorilla groups with more than one male, there is a hierarchy where the dominant male gets the majority of mating opportunities with the right females (ref). This dominance / exclusivity is maintained by size and aggression. For a non-dominant male, the best chance is to tag along with a dominant male and hope for some furtive mating opportunities. A dominant male will allow a non-dominant male to tag along if he isn’t sufficiently strong enough to drive him away, and also so that the non-dominant male won’t kill his (the dom’s) kids if he dies — a male taking over another male’s harems will kill the babies to get the females receptive to breeding and to ensure that the resources go to his genes. A male gets to be dominant by virtue of building up a large bulk and an agressive temperament. Females raise the kids on their own, without help from the males. In this case, the males pay for the privilege of fathering childern by building up larger and more powerful bodies by which they can defend larger territories and acquire more females and mating opportunities.

Cold and unfeeling, nature perfers no gender over another. Females invest a lot in bringing up kids. Starting from the egg/pregnancy to raising the kids to independence takes a lot of resources. A price a female happily pays, all for a shot at immortality for her genes. Males too pay a similar price for the ticket to eternity; only here the mechanism varies. In species that form pair bonds to bring up babies, males invest as much as the females in child rearing ( e.g. see March of the Penguins). On the opposite end of the spectrum, the peacock invests only his sperm and the time and effort to, err, deliver them. But he pays a price by decreasing his odds of individual survival. Male elephant seals, like gorillas in the example above, pay for it by building up bulk needed for vicious, deadly fights for ownership of harems; most such males will die fatherless. In other words, males ask of females to invest their (female’s) resources into bringing up the male’s genes. Females won’t invest if they aren’t getting something out of it in return — there is no free lunch in nature. They ask for a payment of resouces in return, or a territory that they can use for themselves and their kids, or proof that their investment is going towards a good set of genes.

Pre-historical humans had a social structure where they lived in groups and communities, but also formed pair-bonds — no different from our modern societies today except for size-related complexities. Compared to other animals, human childern are born relatively helpless and need a long period of parental care before they can fend for themselves. This means that women generally would have found it difficult to raise children on their own. Women would therefore do better for themselves and their children to find a mate that would share his resources exclusively with her and their baby. Consider also the fact that a woman’s chances of having a successful pregnancy, having a healthy baby, and raising a large brood of children are intimately tied to her age (younger is better).

In this scenario, human males are being asked to invest in a long term relationship for fathering children. Given this fact, and given the fact that nature is very reluctant to throw away resources on bad investments, males would develop a tendency to evaluate the chance that the resources they invest in a woman have a high rate of return (high probablility of a large brood of healthy children). Ergo, other things being equal, men will prefer young women. And, they’ll also want a woman who has good genes ( e.g. fit, undiseased, symmetrical body, etc.).

But how is a man to tell the youth of a woman and the quality of her genes? Men who found a method would do better than men who didn’t (like peahens). If females (like peacocks) were to develop a reliable youth and quality meter, that would help the species out in playing this game. Men (like peahens) would develop a biological attraction to this “meter”. Women (like peacocks) would face sexual selection pressure to develop the body part. The genders are reversed from the peafowl example, but the principle of the example is unchanged.

Breasts start growing a puberty, when a female body is getting ready to have babies. Breasts sag when they get old. The only thing that provides them shape is connective tissue. As mentioned above, this tissue doesn’t age well. This tissue deteriorates at different rates for different women. For some it just gives way faster then others — indicating a possible difference in inherent gene quality. The other factor that plays into it is the constant tug of gravity, due to our upright stance. Bigger boobs are harder to support, and given enough time, any size is hard to support.

Therefore, firm breasts are a very good signal (although not the only one) that a woman is in her prime child bearing age. Big, firm breasts are the best indicator of both gene quality and youth. However, here there is a trade off, which comes from the fact that breasts start growing at puberty, so the larger the breasts, the further the woman is past puberty. In other words, the best breasts are firm ones, according to both the average man and biology. Size is a secondary preference which can, in fact and theory, go either way.

One additional thing to point out is that all of this inherent sexual preference and physical feature development took place on an evolutionary time-scale — well before implants, bras, padding and other clothing artefacts, were invented. This must be remembered when trying to fathom why the men of today prefer, for example, big boobs when they know at a concious level that size can be had for the price of a padded bra.

And, due to their number, shape and location, breasts are a good evidence of symmetry, or lack thereof. There is a copious amount of scientific literature describing how symmetry is a good indicator of gene quality. The male brain when evaluating women would therefore definitely evaluate the boobs. So boobs are also a reliable quality meter.

While the explanation focuses on the males’ need to evaluate a female with regard to her youth and quality, this need was justified by pointing out that humans males, due to their social structure, invest differently in fatherhood from, for example, the peacock and the gorilla. While this is mostly true, a significant portion of human children are born due to cuckoldry, or a temporary sexual liason by the mother. If there is a significant portion of males who father children without investing much in return, wouldn’t these males not require such an exacting proof of youth and quality?

I think it is well known that men have different standards for who they are willing to take as a long-term partner, and who they are willing to sleep with on the side. That is probably proof enough that the fact that there are multiple male strategies does not contradict the explanation given here. Moreover, there’s an additional factor at work.

In some species, males specialize in mating strategies. In the ocellated wrasse, a Mediterranean fish, there are 4 types of males, for 4 types of strategies: large males that defend and maintain nests, small sneakers who fertilize the eggs guarded by the previous type of male, mid-sized males who help defend the large males’ nest from sneakers in return for rewards of spawning opportunity, and the largest of all males who raid the nests defended by the first category of males. Here, like in many other fish and lizard species, different strategies are chosen by physiologically distinct types of males. This type of specialization does not occur in higher species like primates. Even though most gorillas will not be able to own harems and will have to fall back on furtive encounters at best, all male gorillas are built for agression, with a body much larger than female gorillas — the species has only one male body-plan and with all males trying first for the most common and successful strategy. Similary for humans, the presence of multiple strategies does not mean that the brain isn’t going to prepare itself for the most common strategy adopted by the species. All males therefore have a brain that responds to the female advertisement of youth and quality.

This explanation covers a good few of the questions we set out with. We answer why humans have this characteristic while other primates/mammals don’t (upright stance; pair bonding for child rearing). We answer why men like tits and have the particular preferences they do — because it is a positive reading on the youth and quality meter. We answer why breasts maintain their shape only by connective tissue — otherwise it wouldn’t be a reliable youth meter. And all thanks to Darwin.

Once more, with feeling

This post might be considered by some women to be insensitive to an issue that is close to their heart; who feel that women are sexually objectified by society, and that considering breasts as sexual objects merely perpetuates this image. While it is silly to require that rational thought must avoid issues that have an emotional component to them, one must also respond to the emotional issues involved in a rational discussion.

Men sexually objectify women. The objectification of women that men do, leads to emotional distress for some women: negative body image, implants, depression, etc. Women’s studies and feminist thought are full of slogans like “women need to reclaim their bodies”, “breasts are solely for nurturing”, etc. Often in such circles, men, by sub-consciously responding to gratuitous use of sexual imagery ( e.g. in ads) and by concious consumption of sexual material (e.g. porn), are held responsible for the social pressure placed on women to meet a certain physique. The sentiment, if not the logic, behind these ideas is understandable.

But women sexually objectify men too. To take an example off the top of my head, women in general prefer men with hair. This leads some men to go for hair transplants, hormonal treatment, toupees, etc. Consider the number of successful aging male actors (or men in many other professions in the public eye) who are bald. Does baldness make one a bad actor?

I’m not laboring to make the obvious point that turnabout is fair play. I’m trying to point out that nature didn’t set out to create human beings who respect each other’s feelings and treat them as indviduals first. Nature didn’t give us bodies because the minds we have needed containers. We have the minds and bodies we do because that’s what the brutal, selfish processes of nature ended up creating. Nature in general, and the sex game in particular, works on the basis of individuals trying to get some benefit out of other individuals for their own needs.

But we humans have the unique ability (ironically, another gift of nature) to rise above our animal selves. To do this, we can’t, shouldn’t and needn’t ignore the reasons that make things they way they are.

In Carolyn Latteier’s book, at the end of the chapter summarising biological theories of the origin of breasts, she eloquently expresses the feeling (p139):

As we work through [how to find, balance, mutuality and love across genders], we are torn among theories that say, in effect, that breasts are for men or for babies or for deceiving women’s mates but never just for women. It would be nice to have a clean and simple theory, one that somehow rises above women’s history of surviving for millenia by pleasing, by manipulating, by influencing, and by nuturing.

If Ms Latteier is alone in the field of women’s studies in expressing this the thought that our theories should be “clean” and morally satisfactory, she (from my admittely limited exposure to the field) would be alone merely in expressing it and not in accepting it. If there is anything we have learnt when trying to understand nature, it is that trying to impose our values on our natural theories is unwise. If we aim to change something, understanding it as it is is the first step.

Sexual desire is the most creative artist on this planet. It has created the peacock’s tail, the deer’s antlers, the songbirds’ song, and, I propose, boobs. It is the creator of the greatest lie ever told — love. It is thus the creator of the most beautiful, moving works of literature, painting, sculpture, architecture.

Is this a part of human nature we want to curb or eliminate, even if we could? Or prehaps we want to retain sexual desire without the concomitant evaluation of other members. But even if we could eliminate all criteria that people use to judge others’ sexual attracton, so that every member of the desired sex was equally attractive, would sexual desire be the same beast? Merely modifying the criteria for sexual preference doesn’t help: When the gorgeous girl at the bar refuses to give me the time of day, I feel bad regarless of whether I failed due to lack of hair, lack of a sense of humor, or lack of an expensive watch. In the sex game, we objectify others, and are objectified in return — loosing says nothing about my individuality, personality or self-worth. Understanding this is part of growing up.

And understanding this is an important part of the solution to the real problem. The problem isn’t that male sexual attraction is largely based on female physical features, but that a woman’s value in most societies has been intimately tied up with her sexual value. As women penetrate the world of politics, business, academia, etc. their value as individuals will be increasingly more important. That will never eliminate the fact that better looking women will be more successful (see the example of bald men), but will go a long way towards easing the angst of women who fail to meet the ideals of physical beauty. Chiding men for lusting after tits won’t.