Seeing as how the Straight Dope has confronted some very interesting questions in the past having to do with the more salacious aspects of humanity, I feel sure that you can answer this one which has suddenly occurred to me.
As a straight male, I like breasts (the female kind). However, for the life of me I can’t figure out why? Is it genetic? One of those “signs” that someone looks like a good choice to have healthy children? I don’t see how looking at a woman’s chest would make you subconsciously decide she would be the ideal candidate to bear your offspring. and if that IS the case, why do diffirent men (and women) have diffirent preferences in this regard as to prospective partners and their cup size thereof?
I apoligie if I objectify women with this question, as that is certinally not the intent.
I don’t buy the Freudian interpretations of returning to a nurturing mother. I suspect that Desmond Morris is on the right track when he suggests that breasts probably evolved as a “buttock substitute”. Our primate ancestors mated from behind, and the female rump when the female is in heat is protruding and often brightly colored. Humans are effectively perpetually “in heat”, and the buttocks are rounded, but we do a lot of mating face to face, and so the breasts evolved to a rounded state as an echo. Morris actually claims that men are turned on by round, soft parts in general, and points to shoulders and knees as well.
I’d add that I suspect that there is also a relationship to the cock’s comb. This apparently useless appendage on a rooster’s head is actually a sensitive indicator of a rooster’s health - it’s full and well-colored only when a rooster is in good health, and has been eating well. Likewise, a healthy and well-fed female will have rounded breasts, buttocks, and thighs. I suspect that prehistoric “venus” figurines represent extreme cases. Sort of the Playboy centerfold of the day, with improbably well-fed women having abundant belly, breasts, and buttocks.
There is an opposing view. Some folks are almost militantly against the above interpretation. Some argue that Manatees and Dugongs have large breasts, and suggest that larger breasts are better for holding on in the water, and indicate that we are “aquatic apes” (a controversy I don’t want to raise again on this Board). All I can say about that is that these people do not have much experience in hanging onto wet, slippery breasts.
As Morris points out, large breasts are not required for an abundant milk supply, and large breasts can actually interfere with infant nursing.
My wife thinks it’s all cultural, but I note references to approval of large breasts across cultural boundaries. It shows up in mythology around the world.
Ultimately, I think that it’s hard-wired in. You like breasts because you’re programmed to. Exactly why isn’t obvious, although I’ve noted my prejudices above.
I don’t think it’s cultural - those feelings are too lower brain “stemish” to be cultural. I buy both the freudian interpretation as well as desmond morris’s. I think they are complementary and not mutually exclusive.
IIRC, it was not because we mate face to face. Breast evolved with Homo Erectus (and isn’t that an opening for a bad pun), as the vagina was less exposed and hidden between the thighs.
Human females are the only animal (also IIRC) that have breast, before giving birth, thereby giving proof to the simple fact that:
Women have breasts to please men
and isn’t that something to use when some woman slurs you for staring at her chest?
Aside from any evolutionary/cultural/scientific reasons, isn’t it just possible that men like breasts because they are pretty to look at, soft to the touch, and trigger such a response in the “owner” when stimulated?
Also, I think a lot of the fascination comes from the fact that we cover them up. Forbidden fruit, and all that.
Do men from more primative cultures in which women walk around topless also have a “breast fixation”?
But your initial statement suggests the question "Why do men like soft breasts and consider them pretty? It seems to me that the programming to like breasts came after the breasts developed, for whatever reason.
Do men in societies where breasts are exposed have a “breast fixation”? I think so. There’s a lot of African art where the conical breasts are exaggerated and prominently placed that comes from regions where National Geographic seems to have done its pictorials.
It occurs to me that I don’t really know the answer to the OP. I know that I like breasts, and I have some ideas about why. But I have no idea why Sam Hell likes breats.
I’m going to have to second the “buttock substitute” theory. It’s one of those things I thought up on my own, then found out I wasn’t the first to do so. You don’t even want to know my theory about lip gloss and pouting…
speaking from a purely visual standpoint i think it is because they are round. if you look at a lot of art photography of women they tend to emphasize curves. i believe men are visually stimulated by round objects.
this presentation comes from years in the graphic design bidness.
Couldn’t it just be that they are a sex-linked feature? Women have breasts, men don’t. (Well, most men … ) Hence, having large/firm/whatever breasts is seen as less masculine, therefore more feminine, and more desireable.
Then again, that raises the question of why men like female butts … Ah, the heck with it.
(I like women’s minds, myself. That may be because men don’t generally have any. )
But WHY are men attracted to soft round things? Although this may cut across cultures, I think it is also the case that women in some nations (a word I use in contrast to countries) have fuller rounder breasts than women in others. I think we can agree that there is no functional reason for the preference, but it is real and, as already pointed out, cuts across cultures and eras. Not all men share it, BTW, not all straight men, but I think most do. And one of the first things a woman does who is breaking in to a mainly male environment is to wear a suit that pretty much conceals her breasts.
Yes but SCSimmons point just suggests the question: why do human females have breasts?
Most animals don’t until they bear young and human breasts are not even a good shape for feeding, as Desmond Morris points out. So it’s not a case of breasts for other reasons, which then become a sex-linked feature upon which men focus.
I reckon Belladonna asks the really interesting question. Are we fixated because they are usually covered up, and the answer to that clearly lies in the answer to the question of whether in cultures where they are routinely uncovered, do they still have a sexual connotatation? I don’t think that you can necessarily answer that by pointing to statues, as you attempt, CalMeacham. They may be exaggerated for other reasons. Statues also exaggerate heads, hands etc. Doesn’t tell you whether the maker of the statue thought breasts were sexual, he/she may have just used them as an indicator of femaleness, or motherhood.
Surely there is someone in the teeming millions who grew up in Papua New Guinea or somewhere and can tell us if the local men still think of breasts as sexy despite seeing them all the time?
Anyway, the “butt substitute” theory is nonsense. Here’s why:
Breasts only “cleave” when they’re being supported by something. Men’s attraction to breasts evolved long before the Wonder Bra was invented.
Only large breasts produce significant cleavage. Medium and smaller breasts, which are far more common, cannot easily be made to look like butt cracks.
From a personal perspective: while cleavage looks nice, it’s not a selling point. Overall shape and size are more important – not to mention nipples, which don’t even factor into Morris’s “butt theory”.
Morris assumes that missionary sex is the “proper” method and holds some kind of evolutionary advantage over other positions. The missionary position is a Western cultural standard, but it’s not the only way to have sex, and I doubt it’s any kind of evolutionary adaptation.
It’s very difficult to stare at the breasts while in the missionary position.
There’s a better explanation, namely the “cock’s comb” theory mentioned by CalMeacham: Breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic, like long hair. Men are attracted to shapely breasts because women who have them are more likely to be young, healthy, and well-fed, and thus have a better chance of reproducing successfully and having healthy, happy babies.
But then why don’t women like them the same way men do? And why are they “pretty”? Why is fat pretty when it’s on the chest but not when it’s on the thighs? And if round is good, then is a perfectly spherical woman ideal? :eek:
Also, (stereotyping/overgeneralizing) gay men don’t go for “soft” and “round”, but they do go for “young” and “healthy-looking” the same way straight men do.
I think there’s probably a mix of built-in and learned aspects to it. Perhaps we have a “lower brain stemish” attraction to youth and beauty, but part of what constitutes beauty is learned? (Eg, the exact line between “voluptuous” and “fat” seems to have shifted with time, and suntans have gone from being a mark of peasanthood to a “healthy glow”.)
I grew up in South Africa where a lot of rural, native women would spend their days topless without any kind of shame or embarrasment. Anyway, at the age of 11 I came to the UK for a year while my dad studied for his MSc, and I can remember that I was doing a project on South Africa and sticking pictures into the workbook when two classmates started snickering and pointing at a picture of some women doing a tribal dance. It took me several seconds to work out that they were laughing because the women were topless and you could “see thier boobies”. I can remember being very puzzled as to why this was “rude” or “naughty” - to me it was considered “normal”.
Of course, with hindsight, I realise that this was more a reflection of the racisim of the society that I grew up in than anything else, African breasts were not sexual objects, just as African women were not to be sexualy desired (Inter-racial sex was actually made illegal by the Immorallity Act, of all things).
White (Caucasian) breasts on the other hand are still an object (a pair of objects???) of fascination…
And here, I think, we have a winner. Morris does point out that youthful looking characteristics and features are generally desireable in women, and that much effort goes into cosmetics and costumes intended to manipulate the female appearance to support a ‘youthful, healthy’ look.
Mind you, the breast facination is far from universal. Foot-binding in Asia was essentially the cause/result of a cultural foot-fetish, fer instance.
I think Jenner is on the right track, but I’ve always liked the Jerry Seinfeld explanation: Elaine is surprised to discover Jerry’s fondness for breasts–she always thought he was a leg man, to which he replies, “I have legs!”
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