must remember, preview is my friend
Lips and eyes, ass and thighs – breasts don’t matter otherwise.
(thea, actually the rates of blacks breastfeeding are lower than the white population.)
Numbers, per a receently published article in Pediatrics, at 6 months:
White 34.2% Black 21.9% Hispanic 32.8% (I hate that equating Hispanic with “race” but that was the article)
Probably related to the confounding factors of age and education status. Older moms are more likely to breastfeed and higher educational status achieved is more likely to breastfeed. In our society White women are typically becoming Moms at an older age and are more likely to have gone through college than Black mothers.
I don’t think that breastfeeding has much to do with breasts attractiveness. Few men find lactating breasts sexy.
End hijack.
I can only answer for myself here, but count me among the few then.
“longer, flatter breasts”
What a disturbing image (National Geographic not withstanding)
Okay – so firm, rounded breasts are what human females posess soon after reaching reproductive age, thus, men associate large, round, high breasts with fecundity.
But why do human females have such protuberant breasts when they reach reproductive age in the first place? No other primate species gets bulging boobies until it’s pregnant and starting to lactate. Thus, for all other primate species, large breasts are an indication of **non-**fecundity (i.e. big breasts mean either that she’s in late pregnancy right now, so you [the male] won’t be able to get her pregnant, or she’s devoting time and attention to her newborn, so even if you did get her pregnant now she’d have to split her resources between your fetus and the existing baby she’s nursing).
That human beings have turned this equation on its head deserves our attention.
Or, to put it another way:
If a male chimp or gorilla saw a female with big hooters, he’d think, “Oh, she’s pregnant or nursing, so my odds of getting her pregnant are small. Ho hum, I’m not going to be sexually aroused by her.”
Thus, any female chimps or gorillas that were born with a mutation which gave them big ta-tas even when they weren’t pregnant or nursing would be hard-pressed to attract a mate. She’d traipse up and down in front of the males going, “Hey, boys, check me out!”, and the males would only shrug and keep on picking their toenails. The poor girl would never get a prom date, and would therefore have an abysmally small chance of getting pregnant, and would thus leave no offspring behind who carried her large-breast mutation in their genes.
Something big had to change for our ancestors, psychologically, to overcome that kind of intense negative selection pressure.
When I was still working we had a project to investigate the method of transitioning from a radar waveguide to dirt. Somebody wanted to find out the propogation of radar through the soil. Don’t ask me why.
Anyway, I heard on the television news tonight that there is an experimental breast cancer treatment that involves heating the water that is in the tumor with radar energy. Now a waveguide-to-breast transition would be worth looking into. We were so dumb on the possibilities in our craft!
Because of our flatter-than-other-apes faces. Or so the author of that article thinks, anyway.
It’s initial attraction. Guys don’t want to take the time to really get to know someone. If the package looks good, men tend to ignore character and personality.
Also, if men could give themselves oral, they would without a doubt. If they had breasts, they wouldn’t glare at anyone else’s.
All this is speculation, since I’m not an anthrpologist:
If human females are the only females that have breast, before pregnance, then clearly, there must be a reason, which doesn’t have anything to do with breast feeding. I can’t se any practical use for them, beside the nursing of an infant. So, they must be there for another reason. I think it’s to signal sexuality/fertility/health.
IIRC, Desmond Morris claimed that breasts came along when we started walking on two legs. What happens then is that [ahem…] the female genitalia is out of sight, between the legs. Breast then developed as a way to attract males. And when food was scarce and we really had to fight to survive, a well rounded female, would be considered to be healthier, being able to bear offspring. A skinny woman would not give that impression.
So nice round hips, butt and breasts would be a sign of a healthy, horny fertile female. Males go crazy to mate with her.
If all this seem sexist, there is a theory now that women have picked men for penis size and over the millenia, we’ve got bigger and bigger schlongs, through evolution.
** The Gaspode**
That still leaves the question unanswered, __Why would breasts attract males?
Apparently it’s a myth that females with large beasts have more milk during pregnancy then small breasted ones.
Becuase they evolved to attract us. Why do female reindeer prefer a buck with larger antlers? There is no answer to the question. They’re there to attract.
But I don’t think big breasts do necessarily attract, in every culture. I think it’s unique - or at least predominant - in cultures with intense media emphasis on breasts.
For example - which would most guys go for?
(1) Ugly face/huge breasts
(2) Beautiful face/tiny breasts
I’m betting facial aesthetics are still a bigger determinant of mate-selection than breast size. In which case, if breasts evolved to attract men, and most of us have breasts, why the hell don’t we all look like Cindy Crawford facially as well?
Istara - are you seriously saying all breasts look the same, apart from size? Your argument doesn’t compute for me. All women have faces - endless variety. The way you’re arguing, it would be more proper to say:
(1) No face (blank)/ huge breasts
(2) Beautiful face/ no breasts.
So, Istara. I might be wrong. But why do women have breasts? Don’t say “to breast feed”, because then, they would only evolve after pregnancy.
Male dogs and fruit bats do this all the time. Especially male fruit bats. Hmmm … and I read somewhere that male fruit bats have one of the highest homosexuality rates of any species…
Of course all breasts don’t look the same. And of course breasts in different sizes are often just as beautiful (or not beautiful) as one another. It depends on who’s judging.
But to use a broad generalisation - the “phwooar!” factor, or the notice factor about breasts seems to be about how big they are. And most of the time they’re covered up, or just cleavage is showing - so we are really talking about size, not prettiness/nipples/pertness/shape when out of a false-shape-giving bra.
I just don’t believe - despite the “phwooar-love-a-pound-of-those!” factor - that men significantly select their mates on the size of their breasts. So I don’t think breasts - and bigger breasts - have evolved to attract mates.
Cavepeople - who would have definitely breastfed much more than we do now - would have known that more-prominent breasts don’t equate to more milk or higher fertility. (Obviously in times of famine breasts would be smaller and fertility less -but this would be an overall body fatness effect, not just breasts).
So I don’t believe my great grandfather Ogg chose great grannie Ugg because of her boulder-size hooters. I find the earlier-linked article about face-shape relating to breast size/shape development far more credible.