May 8, 2024

"I would say that augmentation reached a peak in 2007 — there is a sense that the really big boobs look old-fashioned."

"Augmentation also skews more working class nowadays — actually, I would say conspicuous boob jobs skew working class. In one study, a segment of British working class women, for example, see fake tits as a form of consumption that gives them status and signals that they are independent women in command of the male gaze. And then similarly, a contingent of Brazilian women who began their lives in poverty want people to know they have implants as a form of financial accomplishment...."

Said Sarah Thornton, quoted in "Why Are We Obsessed With Breasts? After her own mastectomy, sociologist Sarah Thornton sought to answer the question" (NYT).

Thornton's book is called "Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts."

Her mastectomy — which was done as a precaution against a hereditary form of breast cancer — included breast implants — large ones that she later had replaced with smaller ones.

60 comments:

Enigma said...

Boobs are a direct primal signal of fertility and sustenance...per Mythbusters:

In the service industry, women with larger breasts tend to receive higher tips.
CONFIRMED

Kari volunteered to work in a coffee shop, disguising her appearance with a wig and makeup and using three different bust sizes: “small” (taped down to achieve a reduction of two cup sizes), “medium” (no alteration), and “large” (DDD size). Grant and Tory watched her through hidden cameras and gave her a tip jar rigged to separate tips given by men from those given by women.

They focused on the tips Kari collected from the first 80 male customers on each shift. During the “small” and “medium” shifts, she collected $72 in tips, while the “large” shift yielded $98, with both men and women tipping almost 40% more. The team classified the myth as confirmed.


https://mythresults.com/laws-of-attraction

Kirk Parker said...

Large boobs the size of small boobs ( The comments just write themselves, don't they?)

Dave Begley said...

Why are we obsessed with breasts?

Because we are men with reptilian brains. That's why!

Achilles said...

Is this article a reaction to the apparently slovenly appearance Daniels had in court yesterday?

Original Mike said...

"Why Are We Obsessed With Breasts?

Who's 'we'? Big boobs make me think of cows.

Kirk Parker said...

Original Mike,

So you're obsessed by a different aspect than mere size? (Indeed, beyond a certain volume and aspect, udders do come to mind...)

Two-eyed Jack said...

Dave Begley says "Because we are men with reptilian brains. That's why!"

Erm.. so, like, male snakes look for female snakes with big ... what's?

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

YouTube: Boobs are the first act. Sadly men and women are now choosing to walk out on the second act.

“One of the nice things God does, is he doesn’t let people who don’t have kids know what they are missing” - Warren Beatty

Kate said...

Because we were all babies once. Milk-engorged breasts are the difference between life and death.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

FWIW my preference is for small boobs the size of big boobs.

Narr said...

I for one am not obsessed with breastses.

I like them and respect them, and sometimes enjoy them, but I'm not obsessed with them.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Not only did Kirk beat me to the bustline punchline, I see RFK Jr. wormed himself into the pun.

(Back to work now. Happy hump day!)

RCOCEAN II said...

Tits should be the right size for your body. Some women need breast reduction. A few who are flat as an ironing board could benefit from increased size.

Ice Nine said...

>""I would say that augmentation reached a peak in 2007 — there is a sense that the really big boobs look old-fashioned.""<

(Reasonably) big boobs look great and are always in fashion. Fake ("augmented") boobs are what look bad in so far as they generally unflatteringly stand out as some skewed rigid, freakishly-gapped, "attached" contrivance bearing only passing resemblance to the real, beautiful thing.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Enigma-
That "experiment" is valid only to the extent that Kari spoke and behaved exactly the same way during all 3 iterations of boob size. Despite her best efforts, that would be impossible; she's in on the joke. Differences might be subtle, might be unconscious, but almost certainly they exist.

Even if accepted at face value, so what? People readily pay more for rooms with a nicer view.

Lilly, a dog said...

I blame the 1980s for the rise of fake boobs. Fake boobs are the work of the devil. They look ridiculous on a naked body. Small breasts are wonderful on a woman, or medium sized breasts, or large breasts. As long as they're natural, I love them all.

Tom T. said...

Ann, I figured you were going to ask "who's 'we'?" Straight men know why they think about women's breasts. I took the headline, though, to be asking why *women* are obsessed.

William said...

This is a subject which I pay attention to. This is slightly off topic but I'd like to alert the readers to a troubling trend which I've noticed. There has recently been a boob drought in movies. When the movie flashes an R and warns that there is nudity ahead, more often than not we are treated to the hero's buttocks than the heroine's boobs. Even in horror movies, long a reliable source of hot girls with terrific bods, the male gaze is averted. Sometimes the girls don't even wear tight t-shirts....Remember the joy of "Porky's". Mankind's long yearning to see girls undress in the locker room was at long last realized. It was very bliss to be young in that era. But now this. Civilization always struggles to find the right balance between Decadence and Repression. I fear we are losing our sense of balance.

RigelDog said...

Straight men (and for all I know, non-straight women) just love women's breasts, period. I wish I had known this back in my single days, when I was a little self-conscious about my barely-a-B sized set---looking back, I should have realized that they were real, and they were magnificent.

Smilin' Jack said...

"Why Are We Obsessed With Breasts? After her own mastectomy, sociologist Sarah Thornton sought to answer the question"

No one without a Y chromosome is qualified to answer that question.

Humperdink said...

Clay Travis was banned from CNN for commenting on his enjoyment of boobs. It was one of the funniest segments ever.

Jupiter said...

Big ones the size of little ones?

Hey, they're all good.

Marcus Bressler said...

I prefer women with smaller breasts than over-sized ones. YMMV. I (somewhat, based on my experience) have come to the conclusion that women with large breasts seem to think that should be most of their contribution to the sex act, while those with smaller breasts seemed to act as if they needed to be more sexually ambitious and adventurous to make up for the little-bitty ones.

Marcus Bressler said...

Per my last comment:
More experimentation is needed to buttress my findings.

CJinPA said...

Women are obsessed with breasts, to the extent they are, because men are.

iowan2 said...

I have determined I'm a leg and ass man. Not that I'm cold on breasts. My one encounter with fake tits, while fun and enjoyable, actually make me horny for the natural, regardless of size.

Much like Women dress for other women, breast size is much more discussed among women than men.

My wife points out far more busty women than I notice. She misses lot of legs and butts, but not me.

PM said...

The '50s had big diesel boobs.
The '60s no-bra boobs.
The '70s had boobs in every movie.
The '80s silicone cones.
The the '90s put Jennifer Lopez' big ass in Vanity Fair.
And that's where we remain.

iowan2 said...

William, @9:59

THANK YOU!

I cant add a thing. You covered the problem perfectly.

iowan2 said...

People readily pay more for rooms with a nicer view.

The view is always overcome if the actual availability of recreation are present.

NKP said...

Tips for tits? The original "TDS". Can't deny it.

That said, Big Bolt-Ons are cartoonish while "naturals" can delight regardless of size. Problem is; gravity. The bigger they are, the farther they fall.

In spite of being a multiple tour Vietnam Vet and mountain hiker who tends to ignore his limitations, about the scariest thing I've ever seen appeared in my facemask while snorkeling at Haunama Bay one morning. Not unusual to be startled by strange things appearing 'out of nowhere', there.

I turned my head and almost collided with two (or maybe three) feet of some kind of dangly 'creature' waving in the water. No idea what it was but I did not want it creeping across my skin. Can't say I was totally relieved when I realized it was a single human breast that had freed itself from a woman's bathing costume.

Howard said...

My brother has a theory that guys obsessed with large breasts were not weaned properly. A popular catchphrase when I was a teenager was more than a mouthful was just a waste.

Iman said...

Two-eyed Jack said...

“Erm.. so, like, male snakes look for female snakes with big ... what's?”

Male snakes are big on tight cloacas… and loose shoes.

n.n said...

Breasts complement women's soft curves in the feminine gender model of human reciprocity.
Evolution knows best.

Mason G said...

"When the movie flashes an R and warns that there is nudity ahead, more often than not we are treated to the hero's buttocks than the heroine's boobs."

I watched "The Martian" the other night and noticed the "nudity" warning at the beginning. The only nudity I recall was a shot of Matt Damon from the back where he was undressed. To be fair, I do not know if the version of the movie shown had been edited in any way from the original version.

Rusty said...

Dave Begley said...
"Why are we obsessed with breasts?

Because we are men with reptilian brains. That's why!"

Well. Duh!

Jamie said...

Scene from the movie Singles: Bridget Fonda, whose grunge rocker boyfriend Matt Dillon appears obsessively to stare at and flirt with large-breasted women, goes to a plastic surgeon for breast implants. The surgeon shows her a woman's silhouette on a screen and hits the + button a few times, causing the silhouette's breasts to grow to a normal size from Bridget's natural little ones.

Bridget hits the + button a bunch more times so that the silhouette grows some pretty epic hooters. The doctor makes a "hmm" face and hits the - button to shrink them down again; Bridget +'s them up again.

Doctor, after a moment: "Do you jog?"

Bridget: "Sometimes..."

I love that scene. The doctor is played by Bill Pullman, on whom I crushed mightily in his heyday.

effinayright said...

So, guys, next time some babe catches you staring at her semi-exposed tits and says "Hey! My eyes are up here", you can say:

"YOU'RE the ones letting them hang out!!"

(If you want to see how obsessed women are about displaying their sexual goodies---especially to make other women envious---go over to https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html and scroll down the right hand side.

It's T and A, all the way down. It's like that, every...single....day.

Enigma said...

West Tx Intermediate Crude:

Enigma-
That "experiment" is valid only to the extent that Kari spoke and behaved exactly the same way during all 3 iterations of boob size. Despite her best efforts, that would be impossible; she's in on the joke. Differences might be subtle, might be unconscious, but almost certainly they exist.

Even if accepted at face value, so what? People readily pay more for rooms with a nicer view.


What is your point? This is a typical research experiment conducted for a pop TV audience. This type of project has been executed millions of times and in a million different variations. Humans are a social species, a vision-oriented species, and sex is a social act. This is precisely how one must conduct research on social/sexual interaction. There are plenty of methods in place to control known biases, and to collect converging evidence about boobs. But, she had big boobs...big, big, big boobs...forgetting...the...point...

In the word of The Smiths:

From the ice-age to the dole-age
There is but one concern
I have just discovered

Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girl's mothers are bigger than other girl's mothers


https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/51268/

Jake said...

They should have had better pictures. :(

Aggie said...

Stormy Daniels has disclosed that her augmentation has started to show signs of skewing too, and is decidedly 'working class'

JaimeRoberto said...

I like big boobs, I cannot lie.
But fake ones I must deny.

Sheridan said...

Big boobs are like that scene in the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring" where the Nine Companions were on the river passing through the Gates of Argonath. Statues above, river passage below. Think boobs above and a different kind of passage below. Of course one's libido could be easily crushed by watching Saturday morning tv reruns of old timey westerns. The info-commercials appear to always include super-enhanced boobs of 75 year old women selling hyper-priced Omega 3 pills that you can buy at Costco for one third the cost. Talk about a deflater!!

traditionalguy said...

Puberty hits the young men the same time the little girls grow breasts. Young love, first love gets forever implanted into boys minds. That’s the implants that count for the next 70 years.

The costumes sold women by surgeons are imitations. It’s the love that matters.

Skeptical Voter said...

Having turned 80--and remembering my long ago days on a Southern California college campus--where most of the coeds would wear a size four or smaller dress, I was like very other red blooded male college student. Girls chests came in various sizes--from flat to D cups.

But in those pre silicon days (Carol Doda had not yet descended from the ceiling of the Condor Club in North Beach San Francisco) you knew whether what you were looking at was, in the words of the Memorex recording tape slogan "Is it real, or is it Memorex?"---was what it was.

A few years later I stood on the terrace at Boalt Hall Law School watching as Carol Doda (formerly an impoverished fruit picker in Santa Rosa) rode down Bancroft Avenue sitting on the deck of convertible which had a banner reading "Better Living Through Chemistry".

Doda's breast implants were the one Dow Chemical product that the students down in Sproul Plaza supported in those days. Let's just say that Carol was an "early adopter".

boatbuilder said...

When you look at it one way, it's not really all that much of a leap from getting your teeth straightened.

Kevin said...

augmentation reached a peak

I don’t think we can let that go by without note.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Enigma-
My point is twofold.
1. As described, this might strike some people as a well designed, scientific study that proves unequivocally that boob size correlates positively with tip size. I suspect that most attorneys, other than patent attorneys, are in that category. Your point is valid; it's as good a study as can be done under real world conditions. Despite that, it proves nothing, due to the inevitable bias that Kari introduces by being aware of the details of the study.
2. The vast majority of social science "experiments" are bunk. You correctly call this "pop science." For most who engage in activity such as this, it's something to do, but of little value to the rest of society.
The only thing proven by this exercise is what the Smiths said. Some are bigger than others.

n.n said...

booby (n.)

"stupid person," 1590s, from Spanish bobo "stupid person," also used of various ungainly seabirds, probably from Latin balbus "stammering," from an imitative root (see barbarian).

The specific sense "dunce in a school class" is by 1825. Hence also booby prize "object of little value given to the loser of a game," attested by 1884:
- etymonline.com

Breasts also serve as visual hints to an individual's sex. As do clothes, including womem in dresses. All in Nature and humanity's bid for evolutionary fitness.

Bunkypotatohead said...

"They focused on the tips Kari collected from the first 80 male customers on each shift. During the “small” and “medium” shifts, she collected $72 in tips,..."

How could she have 80 customers and only $72 in tips? Either Kari is a really lousy waitress or all her customers were black.

effinayright said...

iowan2 said...
I have determined I'm a leg and ass man.
***********

Myself, I decided long ago that I was a mucous membrane man........

effinayright said...

I suspect when Stormy Daniels lifts up her big gazongas, roaches come scurrying out from underneath.

Josephbleau said...

Women vote with their dollars, persons are not valuable, bodies are valuable.

I was always attracted to girl people, not boobs.

Josephbleau said...

Women vote with their dollars, persons are not valuable, bodies are valuable.

I was always attracted to girl people, not boobs.

JK Brown said...

It's all a plot by Big Bra to fetter more breasts. They also have activists working against freeing the female nipple lest small cup women gain power as they age

Blair said...

Are big books really a thing of the past?

Soon, they will only be a mammary...

Enigma said...

@West TX Intermediate Crude: 2. The vast majority of social science "experiments" are bunk. You correctly call this "pop science." For most who engage in activity such as this, it's something to do, but of little value to the rest of society.

Social science is indeed soft and subject to validity "crises" every generation that discredit half of their flagship work. The "professionals" bicker among themselves, select topics to advance a political agenda, and reduce most every finding into Marxism with a fresh coat of paint. Still, they do what can be done with scientific methods given hundreds and thousands of messy parallel factors. The quality of academic SS research would improve 10x if they brought back merit and got rid of ideology (E.g., They shove their pre-1970s race and sex work on intelligence deep, deep, deep in the closet today, etc.). Sigh.

Long ago the SS crowd was shocked to discover that any theory could be "proven" with most any set of 5 or 6 variables and a paint-by-numbers factor analysis. Still, narrow social cognition project such as this are fairly reliable and better than nothing if it's not politicized or used for some utopian government mandate. The glass 1/2 full, or at least the glass has a few drops of water in it...


@Bunkypotatohead: How could she have 80 customers and only $72 in tips? Either Kari is a really lousy waitress or all her customers were black.

First, this show was from 2014 and pre Bidenflation, so double or triple the expected tips in 2024. Second, it was coffee counter tipping. This involves dumping leftover change in a clear jar on the countertop. I suspect the 40% increase came from people dropping $1 bills plus small change instead of small change alone. I'm not sure if they set up a card machine to accept tips either.

Iman said...

“A popular catchphrase when I was a teenager was more than a mouthful was just a waste.”

Were you cupping the balls too, Howard?

mikee said...

All the objections to the experimental methods employed and its potential for biases, can be resolved by having an AI generated hostess ring up your order on a monitor, with exactly the same demeanor and body language and serving process for all customers, but varied breast size.

A benefit of this use of AI is that a corrolary study could be performed using male AI images to study variations of physique including pecs, abs, lats, and bulges on topless male modeled servers.

I, for one, look forward to the day when such studies are performed using AI not just to generate male or female servers to study, but also AI created customers. The circle will be complete, and we can get back to just complaining that Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, it sells milkshakes. That'll bring all the boys to the yard.

MacMacConnell said...

Stormy D. has bolt ons.

JAORE said...

My spouse was more than apply endowed. At a certain point the size of her breasts created health issues. A reduction followed.

Great job, Doc!

At 70+ they still look fabulous. (I may be a bit prejudiced).

FWIW the cantaloupe under stretched skin look is appalling to me.