 |
| The University of Arkansas |
It's October -- Breast Cancer Awareness Month! My campus here at the University of Fayetteville is draped in pink and white chiffon, professors are wearing pink ties, and pink ribbons are being handed out to raise awareness on breast cancer. As you can see, I have changed my profile picture and the blog template to pink ribbons, and I am going to take my part by dedicating this post to talk about about women's breasts get so much attention? Why can't men stop staring at them?
Let's get one thing out of the way: most men (and women) love breasts. They love staring at them, caressing them, touching them, and everything in between. But why is that? Well, that's where science comes in. According to a new book entitled "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction" by Larry Young PhD and Brian Alexander, there are quite a handful of theories to that.
In order to explain those theories, we have to trace back to evolution. There are some evolutionary biologists that have suggested the link between breasts, health, and the ability to care for offspring. We can still see this example in certain regions of the world. Bigger breasts signaled more stored fat; therefore, the woman would be considered as healthy. And healthy women would have better chance of producing and nursing offspring. Bare in mind that that was a very crucial point in human survival hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Another theory points out that humans seem to have this attraction to breasts because humans have sex facing each other, whereas other primates have sex with the male penetrating from behind. That might be why some female primates display elaborate rear-ends. Since our basic intercourse position is missionary, the equivalence to the female primates' rear-ends in our case and point here would be the female breasts. Young and Alexander expressed doubt in that theory, though.
The third hypothesis is linked to oxytocin -- the love hormone. If you don't know what that is, you can click this link right
here to my previous post that I have written on that. Anyway, the neurological hypothesis begins from the moment of birth. After giving birth, the mother has to nurse her baby. That act triggers the hormone oxytocin, and that hormone, in turn, stimulates the muscle in the mother's breasts to eject milk for her baby. In addition to that, oxytocin also creates the powerful bond between a mother and her child, which is very important because that bond is what keeps the mother attached to her baby. Unlike other animals, human infants remain helpless until at least after puberty. Without that attachment from the mother, human infants have a very low chance of survival.
Oxytocin, combined with dopamine, helps imprint the newborn's face, smell, and sounds in the mother's reward circuitry -- making the nursing experience pleasurable for the mother. Hence, she keeps on doing it, and the baby is nurtured. As men grow older, they still have that attachment to breasts embedded in them. But it goes up another notch because women's breasts are an extremely sensitive spot when it comes to sexual arousal. When Roy Levin, of the University of Sheffield, and Cindy Meston, of the
University of Texas, polled 301 people -- including 153 women -- they
found that stimulating the breasts or nipples enhanced sexual arousal in about 82% of the women. Men associate stimulating women's breasts and sexual arousal in their reward circuitry. Plus, stimulating women's breasts during sexual intercourse creates a bond between the two lovers -- enabling monogamous relationship to form.
To be honest, I am very conflicted about this topic because although those theories are portraying women as nothing more than child-bearers and sex objects, and there's nothing less degrading than being reduced to that. However, bear in mind that from an evolutionary standpoint, the purpose in life for all living things is to procreate -- to leave our gene in the world. We know that at least for humans, that is not so true anymore. We have evolved to become a complex and intellectual species. There are seven billion of us out there; I'm sure procreate is not our main goal anymore.
Regardless of that, despite how long we've come, there are still traits and instincts we have collected throughout evolution that are engrained deep inside of us. Those traits might not be there on our conscious mind, but we do make decisions based on them unconsciously.
I understand the concept of natural selection, but I am never quite fond of it. It seems rather unfair to me that nature favors a particular group, though I accept that it's the way things are. But as complex creatures, I think we are at least conscious enough to have some control over how we live our lives and who we're attracted to. We are not governed by our animalistic instincts, and every single one of us is different. We all have our own idea of beauty. The instincts may be there, but how much influence they make on an individual varies. Not everyone is obsessed with the breasts just like not everyone is attracted to the opposite sex. At the end of the day, theories are merely theories; they are not facts, and definitely not a one-size-fits-all for all seven billion of us.
Stay tuned and keep checking in because I'll be writing another post about breasts; more specifically, how to take care of them, and of course, breast cancer.
Love, Catherine
It's a nice article. Everyone should read. Thanks for sharing. For more amazing information you may get from this link Boobs Size
ReplyDelete