By Mike Zimmerman
Breasts. We notice them. We admire, we imagine, we long. Sometimes women reveal very little, and we muse on what we can’t see. Breasts are an elemental force to men, the strength of which women may recognise but not fully understand.
Observe: At Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, researchers found that 47% of men, upon meeting a woman, glance at her breasts first—and they also look at breasts longer than any other body part, “Breasts have an incredible power over men, and women know it,” says sexologist Logan Levkoff, PhD, the author of Third Base Ain’t What It Used to Be. “But ultimately, men and women come at breasts from very different perspectives.”
And therein lies the problem: Amid obsessing over them, we know very little about breasts as women themselves perceive them. So to find the truth, we consulted female sex experts and surveyed more than 700 women. Everything you need to know is here, and it’s stamped official because it comes from breast owners. Heed this knowledge, and you will earn more respect and honesty from women.
Truth #1 Women don’t think we’re total pigs about this
Jerry Seinfeld said it best many years ago: “Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don’t stare at it. It’s too risky!” Common sense, right? And common courtesy. In fact, 42% of the women we surveyed said that once they realise a man is staring at their breasts, they call him on it with eye contact. But another 34% said, “Let him look.” The fact is, three-quarters of the women we asked think men’s fascination with breasts is harmless. Seventy percent assume most guys are boob men. It’s almost as if they’ve come to expect our behaviour. A few even appreciate it. “I love it when men look at my breasts,” says Rachel, 23. “It makes me feel powerful, and there’s something about that.”
Of course, this is neither a ticket to leer nor an invitation to make crass comments, even in jest. “Women take comments very seriously, even if they laugh,” says Sara Churchill, founder of hiddenfeet.com, an online support group for women with large breasts. Indeed, what the women in our survey seemed to take the most exception to wasn’t so much the looking as the vulgarity sometimes associated with it. “I do feel it objectifies women,” says Carolin, 23. “I’ve heard too many ‘Dude, check out that rack’ lines to feel that breasts do not impede a woman’s ability to convey what she wants to convey about herself. She is, at least at first, reduced to a ‘nice rack.’ ”
How to deal
“Pure behavioural management,” says Debby Herbenick, PhD, a sexual-health researcher at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. “There’s really no excuse for not being courteous or maintaining eye contact with women.” Many women in our survey echoed this sentiment. “Despite their prominence, breasts are an extremely personal part of who I am,” Carolin says. “That’s why women don’t like gawking. It feels like a violation of privacy.”
This is perhaps the root of the tension. When we asked in a separate survey of 1,750 men what it was about women’s breasts that they found so arousing, the majority said it was primarily their intimate nature. Then came shape, movement, and—at a distant fourth—size (a few other stats from our survey might reassure women that men aren’t thoroughly one-dimensional about women’s multidimensional assets: 59% of men are more aroused by the tease than the reveal, and 58% consider their first kiss a more formative experience than their first exposure to breasts).
All images from Stockexchange.
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The parent trap “I’m not comfortable with guys taking me to meet their parents. Once, I dated a guy for only a week when he asked me to meet his parents. I freaked out.”
MH Woman December 2011: Leona Chin!
