I forgot about that. I measured mine when they were soft, so they’ll be a bit smaller hard.
But you’re complaining about a scale that becomes totally familiar to a user. A Celsius user will know the difference between 19 and 15 as well as someone who uses Farenheit will know the difference between 59° and 66°. However, the difference between 17 and 18 is tiny - can you tell the difference between 62° and 64°? Do you need that extra degree in between the two?
In a vain attempt to bring this back to the OP, perhaps the fine gradiations of the Farenheit scale is useful to determine when the aforementioned nipples will become full beams?
Acting on the feelings of pure scientific curiosity that this thread has inspired in me, I whipped out my trusty ruler and asked my wife if I could measure her nipples. She agreed. I wasn’t sure if having them be “erect” would throw off the measurements or if that was how they’re supposed to be measured, but it seemed like it would be easier that way, so I suggested using an ice cube to achieve the desired effect. She disagreed. I guess she’s just not willing to make the kind of selfless sacrifices for science that I am!
Anyway, I measured her nipples and areolas (they were identical on both breasts, it turned out) and got some highly scientific results. Her nipples themselves were 1.7cm in diameter, protruding by about 1.2cm, and the areolas were 4.45cm in diameter. And, relative to her breast size, the nipples and areolas seem pretty normal, not too big or too small. (Well, obviously they seem huge compared to mine, but they’re pretty normal for a female.)
Just for the scientific sake of scientific comparison, and not because I got any sort of carnal thrill out of it[sup]1[/sup], I measured my own nipples as well. The actual nippular part was 8mm in diameter, while the surrounding pigmented area (is it still called an areola on a male?) is 2.5cm in diameter. I feel so pathetic compared to my wife. But that’s what we have to do for science. Yes, science.
This whole discussion reminds me of an unimaginable horror I experienced in my youth. Back in high school, I was on the cross country running team, which consisted of maybe twenty people. Since it gets extremely hot around here, people would frequently rip their shirts off while running (only the boys, alas).
That was all fine and dandy, except for one thing … there was a certain team member (we’ll call him Jeff[sup]2[/sup]) who had the biggest nipples I’ve ever seen on a guy. Not his areolitudinosity – they were normal. But the actual nipples were huge. They were at least 2cm wide, and they protruded about 2cm as well.
(For those who are keeping track, that means that, yes, his nipples were bigger than my wife’s.)
Talk about horrifying. They were like a car accident – you didn’t want to look, but you couldn’t pull your gaze away.
And it wasn’t like they were stretched out by subcutaneous fat or anything – Jeff was heavily muscled, with extremely low body fat. He was also extremely irritable and would yell at people a lot. Since then, I have often wondered if he was on steroids – if that might explain his temper and his ultra-highly-muscled super-low-fat exceptionally-large-nippled body. Since this was years back, though, I guess now we’ll never know. But at least now I don’t have to face the unimaginable horror of my youth.
Except that I still see him running shirtless sometimes while I’m driving to work in the morning. <curl up into a ball in the corner shivering>
[sup]1[/sup]I swear!
[sup]2[/sup]Names may have been changed to protect the unnaturally big-nippled.
The medium tube is an inch thick? I’ve never seen a girl with nipples that wide (not including the areola).
Don’t you mean on your mammory?
To my personally it doesn’t matter. What matters is the sensitivity. If I’m with a young woman and she either can’t stand some petting (too sensitive) or gets absolutely nothing out of it (not sensitive enough) it throws the whole rhythm off.
OK hi it’s me again. So i am wondering when you guys are talking about areolas you aren’t talking about the nipple, you say you like them large, so are you referring to the nipple as large or the areola? For most girls, that i know of that large areolas and small nipples.
I say again, it doesn’t matter to me that much. In fact if I had to express a preference I’d go for smaller as that tends to correspond with higher sensitivity. That said, your using the term “you” is a little out of place. In fact I doubt that there’s any universal tendancies in preference for any of the characteristics that have been brought up (breaking breast size into the two important parts):
cup size
band size
aureole diameter
aureole constrast
nipple length
nipple diameter
There’s just so much variation here that I’d find it impossible to have a strong opinion about more than one or two variables. I don’t have a Platonic mastidea (“breast-Form”) floating about in my head against which I compare particular instantiations of breasts.
That’s why I wound up with nipple/aureola tissue damage when pumping with ordinary ‘shields’. The opening for the Flexi-Shield is MUCH narrower, and the silicone gives a bit with each cycle of suction. Acts as a cushion. Mind you, the damage only occurred on one side. I cannot imagine why the make the tubes that wide though, unless it’s that some women do have very wide nipples (not aureolae) which would be damaged by too narrow a tube.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who could talk about breasts the way (every woman I know) views her breasts: as plain old ordinary body parts. I mean, they’re blobby soft sticky-outy things. I don’t know about the other ladies on this board, but I bet most of them think no more about their breasts than they do about their knees - in other words, unless they hurt, they don’t think about them at all.
I think about mine as functional objects. But I’m nursing my 4th nursling. They only become sexy during sex, and not always then.
As a side note, I am on a mailing list of men who are restoring their foreskins using tissue-expansion methods (usually weight or tension) and it has amazed me that they can talk about their male bits like…ordinary body parts, with no sexual overtones, undertones, or any other tones. Sure, there’s some “scientific” discussion of length, width, “shower” vs “grower”, degree of tightness of skin before they started restoring, length of the fauxskin after they finish, and so on, but it’s all…well, it’s non-sexual. None of them, I swear this, seem to give a damn about being anything other than what they are (except to repair what they wish had not been removed). That’s been a remarkable thing for me to read. I hadn’t known it was possible. I bet it would boggle a lot of men to listen to mature adult women talk among themselves about their breasts when sex, or mate-attraction, is not a factor in the discussion. Which this this discussion isn’t, quite.
Do you men find it interesting? I mean, that women will casually discuss their breasts without any sexual ‘tones’?
Personally for me, they are a pain in the butt, i can’t play flute without rearranging my breasts. what is this world coming to!
As a male flute player, I have a hard time imagining this. Interference w/ your left elbow?
And by the way, welcome to the SDMB, callslugger!
Any studies done on the standard deviation of areola size?
Yes the left elbow, wow are you good at the flute?
Yes, of course. Women never give a second thought to their breasts. I remember last week I had to stop myself from checking out all the knee cleavage at the club.
Regarding the metric hijack: Fahrenheit is a more precise than Centigrade, which is useful. Pounds are more precise then kilograms, which is useful. Miles is less than kilometers, which is useful. Feet is an incredibly useful measure, whereas decimeters are almost unheard of. How tall are you in metric? 6’0" and 5’0" are nice benchmarks. How tall is 6’0" in metric?
Back on topic: I am feeling incredibly ignorant, but I don’t understand what aerola is/are, and how are they different from nipples. Something’s just not clicking in my head. Could somebody please post some pictures to help fight my ignorance?
Less precise, obviously.
Occasionally… I could go on, but I hate to hijack a thread just to [switch metaphor] blow my own trumpet [/switch metaphor]. Why don’t you start a MPSIMS thread, and we can all chime in?
I assume the “Snoopy nose” thing (a name I’m sure boosted your friend’s self esteem…) was an image issue and not a medical one? I’ve seen ads in Japanese magazines for color-changing precedures. Apparently pink nipples are becoming more popular there. The idea of that and the aureola-reduction precedure both frighten me.
I don’t know about the other gals on here, but I don’t see that many nipples that aren’t mine and aren’t attached to half-plastic celebrities. Makes it hard to tell what’s really normal.
I like the aureola (what a word for such a nice thing!) when it’s sort of wrinkled up. That would happen below 10 degerees Centigrade - don’t know in Fahrenheit…