Your Love of Big Breasts Isn’t Biologically Hardwired
By: Zulie Rane
Tags: Equality, Sexuality, Psychology, Culture, Science

I was thirteen the first time I was catcalled for having breasts. I developed early, much earlier than getting my first period. And from that moment on, despite my youthful face and obvious lack of sexual maturity, men felt obliged to comment on, stare at, and talk about my breasts.

“Straight men are just hardwired to find bigger breasts more attractive.”

This was a comment I got when I complained about men staring at my breasts with no sense of shame. It was aimed to excuse the men in question, to allow their behavior. And it wasn’t the only comment I got.

Over the years, there have been lots: dirty, smug, scathing comments about how men simply can’t resist looking at big honking bazonkers, and not only can they not resist, but biology is on their side for it.

There’s nothing I despise more than folks — usually straight cis men — using really bad human evolutionary psychology takes to defend their misogyny. You see it when men claim that women are naturally worse at science, better at nurturing, just hardwired to want kids. There’s just something so patronizing about this line of defense that sets my teeth on edge.

“I’m not sexist,” these men seem to say. “I’m not objectifying you on purpose. It’s just science.”

But the science they’re citing, in this case, is wrong. Let’s get into the various mistaken assumptions about breast size.

Bigger breasts have no reproductive value.

Let’s go basic biology for a minute. Traditionally, people are attracted to features that indicate the future of their potential offspring is strong. We like symmetrical features that signify healthy genes, smooth faces that indicate a lack of disease.

And one of the things these men seem to seize upon is the allegedly universal truth that bigger breasts mean a woman is more likely to be reproductively successful, and that’s why they’re so attracted to them.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The truth is that there is no evolutionary reason why men would prefer larger breasts. They’re not linked to higher fertility as a single trait, larger breasts don’t produce more milk for offspring, and if anything, larger breasts might signify that a woman is already pregnant which would count as a mark against her suitability as a mate.

Not only that but in terms of signaling reproductive readiness, they’re flawed at best. Many women develop breasts long before they’re fertile. Just as secondary sexual characteristics in men, like beards, aren’t universally attractive and don’t signify sexual virility or otherwise, breasts don’t either.

Breasts are not found universally attractive.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that many of the indications we take for attractiveness now are simply cultural. It’s not “hardwired” into us to find certain traits attractive, it’s drilled into us as a cultural preference.

Look at thinness, which is deemed a universally appealing trait. But the second you start to dig into any research that’s been done, you can see that women with higher BMIs tend to have more children, and children with higher birth weight, which would suggest that a higher BMI should be deemed sexually attractive. But it isn’t.

Look further afield and you’ll find one culture prefers “tubular” shaped women, instead of the traditional hourglass, whereas others prefer rounder figures because those signify a well-structured community that looks after its members.

In a 1951 study of 191 cultures, anthropologist Clellan Ford and ethologist Frank Beach reported that breasts were considered sexually important to men in 13 of those cultures. —Natalie Wolchover, via New Scientist

(I’ll leave aside the very worthy criticisms of BMI as a measurement for now.)

Nobody likes to talk about that, or about any of the other deviations of what people from different cultures find attractive because that contradicts popular perception of what people find attractive in society now. But big breasts are by no means something every culture deems sexually attractive.

Breast obsession is learned, not hardwired.

Here’s a pretty wild example: would you consider bound feet to be sexually desirable? Probably not — nowadays it’s viewed as a pretty controlling method which caused pain for the women it was inflicted upon.

Photo by Andalucía Andaluía on Unsplash

And yet, until fairly recently, footbinding was sexually appealing. This wasn’t due to some strange hardwired preference. Smaller feet didn’t signify a greater reproductive potential. It was simply a cultural preference tied up with a whole lot of weird misogyny about women being helpless.

Additionally, women can learn to fetishize breasts. There’s no reproductive benefit to women preferring to look at breasts, and yet in selected cultures, women do. That’s not a coincidence — it’s a sign that this kind of attraction is nurture, not nature.

In the cultural view, men aren’t so much biologically drawn to breasts as trained from an early age to find them erotic. — Natalie Wolchover via Live Science

The problem with the breast fetish

Well, what’s all the fuss? Why does it matter that men aren’t really hardwired to be obsessed with breasts? It’s because of the cultural significance placed on breasts.

Women are simultaneously told to cover up and display their breasts. We’re revered and shamed for them. They cement our position in society as mothers, caregivers, nurturers, while simultaneously casting us as harlots, provocateurs, shameless whores. Breasts are demonized when out of the control of men and put on the holiest of thresholds when in their possession.

“[Ms. Yalom] found very little in the record to indicate how women have felt about their breasts: whether they took pleasure in them, the extent to which they chose to display their breasts or if they had any say in the debate over wet-nursing.” — Natalie Angier, via the New York Times

In the past thirty years, there has been so much research done on the alleged importance of the female body — breasts included — and what men find attractive. And there’s been an unsurprising dearth of research that runs contrary to popular cultural expectations.

For example, look at the traditional story we’re told of women being the childbearing mothers staying at home collecting berries while the menfolk were all off hunting mammoths.

It begs the question: Why aren’t strong women seen as more attractive, given that the stronger, bigger, and broader women would have been more capable of protecting their children should. Why is it petite, dainty, helpless, big-breasted, small-waisted women who claim public adoration?

Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash

There’s no research done on this for the same reason the breast fetish isn’t questioned, for the same reason that there is next to no scrutiny on the body shapes and sizes that women prefer: because for the history of science, academia has had a vested interest in protecting the dominant worldview that breasts and the women attached to them are there for the consumption and pleasure of men.

I encourage scientists and readers alike to question their deep-held beliefs about universal attraction and the “natural” preferences and skills reported for men and women. Look at how these have changed over time, between and within cultures. Closely examine your prejudice and be brave enough to question it in the books you read, the people you speak with, and the beliefs you hold.