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Why Do Women Have Breasts, Anyway?

9:45 am, May 11th | by Florence Williams


The eye-tracker doesn’t lie. It would show exactly where on the body Roan was looking while making up his mind. As Barnaby had explained to me earlier, the machine would measure the travel of Roan’s pupils within one-hundredth of a degree, and would record how long his gaze lingered on each body part. “The beauty of the eye-tracking machine is that it allows you to get some measure of behavioral response. You can measure, literally, the behavior of the eye during attractiveness judgment,” Barnaby had said.

Roan began staring and ranking. The whole thing took a couple of minutes. He looked a little flushed when it was over.

He stuck around to see how he did. Barnaby called up some neat graphics and computations. A series of green rings overlay the model; they represented each time Roan’s eyes lingered for a moment. Some of the rings were on her face, a few on her hips, a whole bunch on her breasts. Barnaby explained them as he reviewed the data. “He starts at the breasts, then looks at the face, then breasts, then pubic region, midriff, face, breasts, face, breasts. Each time the eye rests longer on the breasts.” Roan spent more time gazing at the breasts than elsewhere during each “fixation.” He rated the slimmer images with large breasts as most attractive.

In other words, Roan behaved just as most men do, and just as Jayne Mansfield knew he would. She could have saved Victoria University a chunk of change.

Barnaby’s eye-tracker results may be obvious, but to a scientist, data are key. Barnaby was preparing to publish his study in a journal called Human Nature. He believed the work backs up a relatively well-accepted hypothesis that breasts evolved as signals to provide key information to potential mates. That’s why men’s eyes zoom in on breasts within, oh, about two hundred milliseconds of viewing an image. That’s milliseconds. “The overall theory is that youth and fertility are important traits when men and women in ancestral times were selecting a partner,” said Barnaby. “So it makes sense they’ll select for traits that signal mate value, youth, health, fertility.” He believes men find breasts useful. Because men liked these informative, novel, gently pendulous orbs—which originally sprang up in the accidental way all new traits do—they selected mates accordingly. The breasty women were the ones who mated most, or mated with the best males, and so the trait was passed down for all to behold. In the world according to Barnaby, that’s pretty much the end of the story.

I wondered whether Roan subconsciously sensed that cache of health and youth information in a few seconds of ogling.

“Do you tend to be a breast guy?” I asked him.

“Good question.” Roan is a South African who spends his academic time studying rhinos. “Yeah, but not majorly so. It’s not like I’m obsessed, like some guys I’ve met who tend to go on about it. But yeah, I definitely don’t have any problem with them.”

I couldn’t help feeling peeved by the real-world relevance of the eye-tracking study. A man looks at a woman’s hips and breasts for five seconds and decides whether or not to mate with her? Was that how it worked in our deep evolutionary past? Was it how it worked now? And even if it were, did it really explain why we have breasts in the first place?

“When you’re meeting a woman, you’re hopefully looking at more than just her breasts,” I said to Barnaby and Roan.

Roan blushed and laughed. “Of course! Cheers!”

“That’s an important point,” interjected Barnaby. “You’re not just going to stare at her breasts.”

“Some people do,” said Roan.

Barnaby felt a need to rescue the conversation. “This is an artificial experiment. It measures what you might call a first-pass filter, just things that are immediately apparent. Then later, when you’re meeting and talking, so many other things factor in, like personality, religious background, socioeconomic status.”

“Sense of humor?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Roan. “Of course, of course.”

NEXT: “Another study showed that waitresses with larger breasts get bigger tips.”

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  • Anonymous

    Irony; 

    Writing an article that touches the issue of the attractiveness of breasts but not putting enough pictures of breasts to attract readers/commenters. 

    Interesting article but more boobs please. 

  • GrammaticallyConservative

    Really?

  • Anonymous

    Yes….get on track….boobs rule the internet!

    I do not have a problem with the article. I just feel, that more boobs would have given this article more hits

  • GrammaticallyConservative

    iSigh!

  • Anonymous

    ????

  • http://www.youtube.com/cherubicwindigo Laura

    I’m a bi-wo and I look at breasts first, especially if they are just out there for the world to see. If dudes played up their junk (like they did when they wore codpeices) then everyone would be looking at their junk first.

  • Anonymous

    I’m with rudeboy. So sorry if this is immature, but boys will be boys – and the girls know this.

  • GrammaticallyConservative

    I don’t want to belabor the point, and of course I understand it’s natural, but I thought nature was that thing we were put on this earth to rise above.  Do you have problems listening to boobless men discuss issues?  Either way I agree, there are boobs all over the internet which is why I find it striking that 80% of the internet isn’t enough for you to read an article about women’s bodies without pictures.

    But no disrespect, I do understand.

  • Anonymous

    I have appreciated all AND had the good fortune to ‘love’ many of disimilar size and shape. All are wonderful in their own unique way (in truth, if you ladies wouldn’t ‘hide’ them from us and then only ‘permit a touch’ on occasion, they’d have less — still — appeal!)

  • Anonymous

    How many comments does this article have? 

    I can bet it with my life that many guys clicked the link to this article and then skimmed for pictures of boobs. When they say no boobs, some lost the patience to read the article. 

    One can never get enough of boobs. 

    Everybody remembers the six-boobed girl from Total Recall but few can even remember the plot. 

    Dont be naive about the power of boobs….embrace them…..sorry embrace it!

  • garotasurfista

    hmm i have tiny breasts but tons of men trying to date me all the time…..outlying data point???

  • Anonymous

     It’s because you are Brazilian!

  • Frodo Baggins

    A what?

  • Timothy Earle

    The argument for sexual selection is often really weak. This case is a prime example of people focusing on the result, entirely oblivious to the cause. I think it is a distinctly male way of thinking to treat the symptoms. 

  • Anonymous

    I’ve noticed that the preferred breast size is inversely proportional to the number of sisters the subject has.  Boys (males) without sisters tend to prefer bigger boobs than boys with sisters.

    This is not to say that some boys don’t like big boobs.  It’s just that big boobs are a greater mystery — a bigger prize — to people who haven’t been around boobs all their lives.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003105863276 Political Dookie

    This picture sums up all your need to know about female-female relations.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BFGF5RNRAJ5ZGJWR52Q4LRJ6YY Matthew

     I read the entire excerpt, I actually couldn’t tell you what the pictures were of, nor do I care. I clicked because the subject seemed interesting not in some vague hope for sexual arousal. in fact it is quite well written and stands on its own without the need for gratuitous pictures. You may also not have noticed, but there are roughly 8 billion other websites where you can find pictures of women’s breasts – if that is your thing.

  • GrammaticallyConservative

    I understand.  And she had three breasts, not six.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, women should have two of them. Size is entirely subjective. But displaying them is a choice every woman makes. If sou want attention, hang them out there. It’s just that simple. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/hermadite Alan Abel

    Breastfeeding is an incestuous relationship between a mother and baby. Just pump out the milk, mothers, and stop using your naughty nipples. Otherwise, the infant grows up with an oral addiction that leads to smoking, drinking and even homosexuality! In one instance, Monica Lewinisky’s addiction led all the way to the White House. There is presently a campaign to BAN BREASTFEEDING. Finally, how do you explain to young children, who accidently enter mom’s bedroom, why daddy is still breast feeding! Also, millions of women are getting off by breast feeding and faking orgasm with their mates.
    (www.abelraisescain.com)

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/IDZQOZOR4YJBQKSWTYYBK7Z3IE E. L.

    Just like Rodney says, “Show TYhem to Me!!!”  Any size is good, all are interesting and you find them all to be an endless pleasure to enjoy, visually or tactially.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/Q7LNZCYMGVIHMZTMNHCYGYXUOM Alex

    Males are obsessed with breasts..well the photo at the top of the article shows the reality. Women are as obsessed with breasts as any man.  Go to a singles bar and watch who the women in the bar notice first and look at longer, the men or the other women. 

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