Why Do Breasts Mezmerize?
April 23, 2010 in Blogs, Psychology Today by Psychology Today
In recognition of “Boobquake” being celebrated around the world Monday as liberated women shake their breasts (figuratively) in the face of the Iranian cleric who recently blamed earthquakes on female sexuality , a few words on the mysterious allure of the human female breast. Considering its almost total lack of muscle tissue, the female breast wields amazing power. Curvaceous women have leveraged this power to manipulate even the most accomplished, disciplined men for as long as anyone’s been around to notice. Empires have fallen, wills have been revised, millions of magazines and calendars sold, Super Bowl audiences scandalized . . . all in response to the mysterious force emanating from what are, after all, small bags of fat. One of the oldest human images known, the so-called Venus of Willendorf, created about 25,000 years ago, features a bosom of Dolly Parton-esque dimensions. Two hundred fifty centuries later, the power of the exaggerated breast shows little sign of getting old. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, 347,254 breast augmentation procedures were performed in the United States in 2007, making it the nation’s most commonly performed surgical procedure. What gives the female breast such transcendent influence over heterosexual male consciousness?
