Tit-Elation

I like — no wait, I love my breasts! They are round and perky and squishy and soft. They make a nice cushion when I hug people and they look great under my shirts and sweaters. I check my breasts every month to make sure that there aren’t any lumps and just to say hello.

Although my breasts don’t at this point in my life, I know that they will one day swell up and lactate to feed my baby — I mean, that’s what breasts are for, technically, right? But if my breasts are just for feeding babies, why do people who find my gender sexually attractive get so excited and sometimes obsess over them?

Also, why are my breasts relatively big and round? Do they really need to be that way to feed babies? All of our primate cousins do just fine with flat breasts — humans are the only mammal with round boobs that stick out!

Luckily, I’m not the only one thinking about these titillating questions, a few scientists have been pondering the function and evolution of breasts as well and have come up with some ideas.

Breasts can tell you a lot about the woman attached to them: if they are symmetrical, you can see that she has good genetic diversity and had little exposure to disease or malnutrition when she was growing up.
Many scientists also assert that human breasts are larger because this indicates good nutrition and fertility — in fact, they swell up even more during ovulation and pregnancy — the fat in breasts is important for lactation, which is in turn important for raising healthy babies to grow up and work and marry and carry on their genes.

This goes along with the idea that straight men find women more attractive when they have a low hip to waist ratio: that is, bigger hips to indicate good health and fertility, combined with a small waist to indicate fitness and non-pregnancy (which means she’s available for impregnating) = hotness.

So, having a nice round ass should be just as important and attractive as having nice round breasts.

This is exactly what zoologist Desmond Morris thought as he watched the girls walk by in short skirts and tight tops. Unlike our flat chested primate cousins, we walk around upright all the time and one of the most popular positions we use for sex is the missionary position (man on top), where a wonderful female ass can’t be seen or enjoyed.

It occurred to Morris that the human breast may have evolved to be bigger and rounder to remind straight men of a woman’s ass when she is seen face on and, more importantly, to make them think about the fun fertile hole nearby.

This makes sense because, back when we had even more in common with our primate cousins, buttocks would have been the main sexual focus — even more so than they are today.

So perhaps it is no coincidence that human breasts are rounded like our asses— round breasts could be an erotic substitute for the round bum that you might not be able to see and enjoy when you are having a meaningful face-to-face conversation.

But wait! Anthropologist Gillian Bently disagrees. She doesn’t think that my breasts are round because they are an erotic substitute, she says that my boobs are round so that I don’t suffocate my babies when I (one day) breast feed.

As we evolved, the human brain got bigger and the human skull had to change shape to accommodate, resulting in flatter faces. Bently’s idea is that human breasts co-evolved, becoming bigger and rounder to compensate for the infants’ flatter faces, so that they could suckle without having a flat mass of flesh covering their nose and mouth.
She suggests that any sexual interest in these fancy round breasts would have been secondary to the important fuction of not suffocating babies.

Scientist and science fiction writer David Brin, has a different idea about the co-evolution of my breasts.

He diagrees with Morris about my breasts not being an erotic substitute, because there are some other species of primate who mate face to face, and they don’t have big round fun-bags.

Brin doesn’t think I need my breasts to make straight men want to have sex with me, what I need is a way to make them want to stick around and help me (and our potential children) survive.

Brin says that during the evolution of my species, my breasts and even my hourglass figure took a back seat when it came to attractiveness; the most important thing was that women retained certain “child-like” traits: soft skin, big eyes, no beard, a high voice, a thin neck, etc.

Now, humans were already holding on to some child-like traits, this was important for having a flexible brain and personality (which are also attractive), but the traits that Brin says we human females picked up were important for not just attracting a guy, but for attracting the right kind — the kind who will protect us, bring us tasty snacks, and will help us take care of the babies.

But if things had kept going along this way, with fertile women looking so young, we would have had a big problem: How were the healthy straight men supposed to be able to tell who was old enough for sex?
Enter the bigger, rounder breasts; yes, boobs to the rescue.

Along with some other traits, like my hourglass figure, my round bazooms— even if they aren’t as big as some - give you a big, bright, flashing sign telling you that I am past puberty and physically ready to have sex and (one day) make babies.
Brin says that this is why I have boobs — so that I can have my youthful traits but still obviously display my adultness.

So let’s recap here; we’ve learned that it’s not so weird for straight men to sometimes get so excited about breasts — that’s how they know that a woman is, well, a woman and not a child. Boobs are also interesting because they can also show how healthy a woman is and how healthy she has been.
We’ve also heard two different ideas about why breasts are so nice and round: the erotic substitute theory and the anti-suffocation device theory. There surely isn’t just one reason why my breasts are they way they are; so it’s possible that, even though these three scientists kinda disagree, all of their theories, in concert, could have played a part in the evolution of my breasts.