I’m willing to consider the cultural influence. When I was a young lad I found a stash of Playboys in an old camper shell in the garage. December '68 issue IIRC with Cynthia Meyers. It was a pivotal point in my development.
It’s no mystery to me. Whether or not breasts could be considered in any sense sex organs, they’re still quintessentially female. If you’re attracted to women, you’re going to notice the quintessentially female physical attributes, including breasts, body contours, and other things. Now, the fact that bare nipples are virtually never seen in public does intensify the attention bestowed on them on the rare occasions that they are publicly visible. But I’m sure that even if we were all nudists and saw bare breasts every day, we’d still find them appealing. They’re something that says, “The person who owns me is a woman.”
I hope you don’t mind me replying, seeing as I’m not a guy and all, but I am a lesbian! That counts a little. Surely.
Anyway, I love tits. A lot. To be truthful, though, I’m much more of an ass person… my missus has the cutest ass God ever gave a female, and it’s all I can do to not pinch/smack/grab/grope it when she walks by. When I girl-watch, it’s always the ass my eyes linger on.
[quick semi-funny story]
My supervisor was at my desk the other day asking me about overtime. I turned away to get some papers, only to turn back around and see her leaning way over my desk, her ass about a foot from my face. Cue me going into just sit and stare rapturously mode. She was wearing a pair of very tight, black velvet pants that hugged everything just right and outlined her… uh… girl bits perfectly and I had to quickly turn back around to keep from disgracing myself and doing something highly inappropriate and just plain wrong. Later, the single (as in only) guy who works with me leered in my direction and made the universal curve shape with his hands, to which I burst into laughter. My supe, of course, gave me her “Whassofunny?” look.
I played dumb.
[/QSFS]
As for my missus, boobs are her thing, and she constantly does the bury-the-face and bbbbbbbppppppppggggggghhhfffffffff thing. A nice set of breasts are enough to put her into a trance.
As for why we like certain parts… just 'cause!
We like breasts because it gives us something to look at while you’re talking.
Regards,
Shodan
Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris definitely agrees with it. He cites it several times (See, for instance, his book Our Kind.
I agree with it, too. You can find statements showing that breasts are a primary sexual attraction from cultures all over the world – even from cultures that don’t obviously promote breasts. Shakespreare has lots of quotes about them (See Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy). I’ve read quotes and myths from American Indians and elsewhere. Erotic carvings from the subcontinent of India often sport amazingly large and round breasts that would do credit to a modern comic book. The Perfumed Garden f Sheikh Nefzauoi, an Arab erotic classic, definitely speaks well of breasts. A modern Western culturally-conditioned effect this is not.
I agree with Morris et al. about the “breasts as buttocks mimic” theory, and can bolster i with evidence I’ve never seen anybody else cite – the Gelada Baboon. The female Gelada Baboon has a characteristic pattern on her chest – not human-like swollen breasts, bt an oval or heartshaped pattern of “beads” in the flesh. It exactly duplicates such a patterns on the female Gelada Baboon’s rear. So we have another example of a primate who has a chestborne signa duplicating the one circling the reroductive parts on the rear. In humans the pattern takes the frm of rounded breasts because humans have a characteristic rump, unlike any other ape. Humans are he Apes with Asses, because we need that large gluteus maximus muscle to help us stand upright (other apes are knuckle-walkers. We’re the only ones to walk upright all the time). This gives us that chraceristic rear, which also doubles as a sexual signal. (When chimpanzees – close relatives of ours who share something like 98% of our DNA – go into heat, the female’s rear gets swollen and very pink. It’s kind of grotesque to look at, but I can see the similarity to the human female rump I adore.)
I suspect that there’s als an element of a nicely rounded rum and breasts being an indicator that the female is well-fed and in good health (it’s been suggested hat a rooster’s comb, for instance, acts this way as a sexual health symbol, since it’s “erect” and brightly colored on a healthy rooster, bt shrunken and faded on a unhealthy one). But that’s secondary to the wired-in sexual symbol that says “This way” from behind and advertises “think about this” from the front. \
You know, I gotta wonder about the whole ‘cultural conditioning’ thing, too. I remember being attracted to breasts from a very young age. I can recall seeing a photograph of a topless woman back when I was only 4 or 5 and getting a hard-on pretty much instantly. There was this very powerful sexual ‘rush’ I felt at the same time, before I even knew what sex was or any of that. So I was being sexually aroused by seeing breasts even though there wasn’t any sexual context behind it. Sometimes I wish I got the same kind of ‘rush’ these days, but the accessability of seeing breasts means I guess I’m kind of ‘desensitized’ to it. However, that desentitization only goes so far-
I have a classmate who doesn’t wear a bra. She has relatively smallish breasts so I can see why she doesn’t bother with one. One day she was wearing this relatively low-cut shirt, and bent down to pick up something she dropped on the ground. I just happened to turn my head in the right direction and saw everything :eek: and got that same ‘rush’ I had felt before.
So I guess a lot of guys are just born liking boobs. I know I’m pretty sure I do. Hell, I bet if I was a woman I would still be nuts about them (I’ve had my guy parts for over two decades now and haven’t gotten bored of them!) 
Just blind pop biology speculation here – I wonder if it’s tied to the development of brain size? (The obvious counterpoint, of course: put a large enough pair of breasts in front of a guy, and the brain turns off.) But really: most mammals, as I understand it, are sexually attracted based on smell and other senses and not so much by visual cues. Is the importance of visual input a consequence of human brain development, and so the secondary sexual characteristics of human women became more visually prominent? I know that stuff like baboon butts and such are meant to attract on a visual level, but does that throw out the whole speculation?
Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. That’s all I’m sayin’.
(And in case anyone is wondering how that’s pronounced, just listen to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ song “Frenzy.”)
Compared to most other animals, our vision is pretty damn good, and our sense of smell is piss-poor. So yeah, it makes sense for our sexual attraction cues to be visual rather than olfactory. But other primates have vision that’s pretty much as good as ours, so it’s probably not tied to our brain development.
Also see CalMeacham’s commentary.
my theories:
1.what about reproductive reasons? perhaps men’s attention to breast simply results from their instinctual desire to procreate. post-birth, the breasts are what ensure the survival of the child.
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the pendulum-like movements are hypnotizing in the same way a hypnotists pendulum is, but this only explains bouncy/pendulous breast
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the movement of the breasts creates a moving sexual charge that emitts a magnetic field that affects the iron filings in men’s nose and draws face/focus in their direction.
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freudian tendencies.
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why not?
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perhaps men are looking to see if the woman has recently had a child by observing swelling. a woman with a recent child means she is sexually mature and can survive childbirth (not as common back in the day). males in other animals would then kill the child to bring the female back into heat and impregnate her. (i know this far-fetched)
I don’t particularly find breasts attractive, actually. Nor do I like butts (in fact, it completely baffles me that some people find ass attractive. It’s where you crap from! How is that attractive!?). What I do find attractive in a girl are her face and hair.
However, I must admit that I’ve never had the opportunity to put my head between a girl’s tits and go bfhfghfghghghghffrghghrh. Perhaps this is one of those things, like spinach, that doesn’t seem terribly pleasant until you try it.
But her mouth is where she pukes from! And her ears are where earwax is! And her nose is where boogers live!
Seriously, you’d be hard pressed to find a part of the body that didn’t produce something or other that’s fairly gross.
That’s a good point. Elbows don’t usually do anything sloppy or smelly, but nobody cares about them.
Yeah, elbows are pretty neutral. Unless they get all scabby and calloused and have that weird flap of skin over them.
Forearms aren’t too bad, now that I think of it.
Much better than either “Hi Opal” or “Hack her to death with a kitchen knife.” You rule.
Nipples are fairly sensitive. A number of folks really dig having theirs stimulated–my ability to effectively stimulate someone else’s ended up in my successfully contributing to the gene pool on several occasions. I have determined this to be the root of that success because I have otherwise no redeeming qualities at all.
Because nipple stimulation can cause arousal in both parties (or lactation, or labor in at least one if you’re not careful) I’d say that attraction to boobs is a hard-wired mechanism to prompt reproductive activities…OK maybe not, considering that guys generally need little prompting in this regard, but it’s all I have.
Steve Martin admitted that if he had breasts he’d never get anything done because he’d just sit at home all day and play with them.
The attraction is almost certainly not culturally based. The cultural ideal of beauty in Japan is supposedly a small-breasted, round-faced, slightly plump but shapely woman. This ideal comes from classical culture (read: it’s really damn old). The neck thing also comes from old ideals. Even then, there were authors who wrote about the shapliness of women’s breasts and butts. Modern Japanese culture fetishizes a lot of things, including breasts. They don’t go for the really huge hanging tig-o-bitties, but they are fascinated by large breasts. Most Japanese guys don’t like Western women. They find them too forward, obvious, and intimidating, but they like looking at their tits.
I unfortunately can’t remember the name of the book, but I read a compilation of research about sexual attraction and love. Even in cultures where women are customarily topless, breasts are a focus for sexual attraction. Other beauty standards might be more important, but breasts are almost universally appealing.
Breasts are a really obvious secondary sexual characteristic. It’s harder to pinpoint things like changes in skin tone, subcutaneous fat, body proportions, and waist-to-hip ratio that happen in women at puberty, even though all these things have been found to affect a woman’s relative attractiveness to men. The development of breasts is a clear indicator that a woman is at or approaching sexual maturity, more obvious than the widening of her pelvis.
When I was involved with the Renaissance Faire in California, I found out that in Elizabethan England they fetishized elbows; called them “benders.” Breasts were almost completely exposed due to the fashions of the time and many women breast-fed in public. Breasts were nice, but because they were more accessible they didn’t draw the attention that elbows did.
Now that makes sense–a saber-tooth attacks, the tribe scatters, and everybody swims across the river. Securely clinging to his mother’s breasts, baby gets safely away.
Of course, unless Mommy can do a backstroke the baby has drowned. Oh well.
What’s not to like? Slightly pouting, skin color smoothly diffusing into pale conical nipples with a pleasant perk. Rising beneath the fingertips, announcing excitement between lips, pushing playfully against tongue. Breasts are a welcome playmate in the garden of earthly delight.
I would just like to take this moment to invoke The Iliad. Zeus to Hera:
I personally don’t understand the whole boob thing myself. Ankles, on the other hand… :eek:
You do have a valid point. 
Wait a minute, did I miss something in biology class. I thought mothers producing milk was one of the two traits which identified mammals. What exactly do you mean, no other animal has them?