Ep. 3: Busting the Bust Myth

So here we are at the Victorian Albert Museum in really what might be considered the heart of Western civilization. Well the exhibit starts around uh seventeen fifty and what we have is a woman or rather a mannequin in her underwear. Hey, this is Florence Williams. I'm in London at the VA scrutinizing an exhibit called Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear. These kind of made the breasts look like a shelf almost.

Did and and and uh later it's called a a mono breast, you know, it's just up a straight. I and a bunch of other tourists are ogling women's skivvies. Collected by curators from decades and even centuries ago. Bikinis, to Jane Austen shifts, to whalebone corsets. What I'm noticing is that these corsets or stays really emphasize the female form. You do get the flesh writhing. I think it's a very unnatural form.

Welcome to Breaths Unbound. Today we look at ourselves looking, especially looking at big ones, because that's how we like them, at least in the West.

Jack, are you um are you straight or are you gonna I'm straight. Jack Coleman is 28 and he works for a Washington, D.C. nonprofit. He's manned up to take part in an experiment with Virin Swamy, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He joined us by Skype. So Virin, why don't you explain what Jack is gonna be doing with us today? Okay, so Jack should be able to see a series of fourteen images.

And the first thing he needs to do is very simply just to choose the figure that he thinks is the most physically attractive of those fourteen. Okay. This is all I get here. We call it the SWAMI test. He's been compiling years of data on how we humans look at breasts to find out if we judge ourselves accurately and if male and female expectations about breast beauty hold up. So to show us how his experiments work, he emailed us his boob graphic.

So there there are fourteen computer generated images that range or vary in breast size from very small to very large. Well all the images show the same woman. She's wearing a skimpy bikini and she's turned slightly sideways. And oh yeah, she has no head. Yes. The reason she's headless is so that her facial features don't impact on your judgment. It's also not something I'm familiar with, just looking at women with no head. I'm so relieved. Here are some guideposts for you.

In image number one, as you can guess, she's pretty flat-chested. Think Kira Knightley. When you get to image four or five, you're into my range. A solid B cup. By number 14, we're talking total bowling balls. We're gonna go with eleven. Eleven. That's at least a double D. Think cantalopaths. Which one do you think most women would say is the most physically attractive women of your age? For themselves?

Okay, well here's background on me. I used to date a girl who was bulimic and so am I guessing or am I saying what I think that she actually thinks or what society would force her to think? I I think it's more a question of what women of your general age would think is the attr most attractive or the m the ideal breath size to have. Okay. Man, guys. If we're just talking about boobs It's kind of Let's call it A. Yes. Mmm, an eight is probably a C. Grapefruits, Barbie-like.

Obviously in real life it's very, very rare that a man goes about saying, I like that woman because of her breast size. Uh I don't necessarily know that's Or at least in this i kind of array where you have fourteen women lined up next to each other.

There's another part to our experiment. Virin Swami had asked Jack to arrive hungry, not to have eaten breakfast. I'll tell you why in a minute. So after his test, we send him away to eat his omelet. Now we'll call in another volunteer, my friend Kasha. She's twenty five and a science writer. Right Kasha, your first thing to do is to look at the images and select the image that you think most closely represents your own body. Uh probably one.

One. And which figure do you would you consider the ideal, the one that you would like to be? What I think most women would like to be. What you would like to be, not most women. But what if I like number one? That's fine. Okay. That's one. Yes, yes. I like myself the way I am. Brilliant. Okay, so Kalsha, which figure do you think men your age would find most attractive? Probably number eleven. That was the same as Jack. The double D cantaloupes. Yeah. Interesting.

Now Jack comes back. He's eating the last of his breakfast. Is there a reason I'm eating this particular food? Jack's kinda sweaty. He had no idea what he was getting into this morning. delicious. Are you sated? Jack is ready for phase two of the experiment. So Jack you should see the same series of images again in front of view and your task again is very simple. You need to choose the figure that you consider the most physically attractive. Okay. You're really thinking about this.

I am thinking about this, but I mean there's also I mean like I don't wanna s say something off-color, but I mean like I'm kind of more of an ass guy. To be honest with you, just I like I mean Just go with your gut or whatever you're feeling. Okay. I see you've added one. Alright, I'll go with my gut. There's my gut. 13 is my gut. So 13 is maybe Dolly Parton size, or if it helps you to see it better, Kim Kardashian. Okay, Virin, how did our volunteers do today?

Because it's quite interesting. It's the opposite of what we expected. I know, Jack was confounding. So Jack's initial preference when he was hungry was figure eleven, and after having his breakfast he chose figure thirteen, which is an increase in breast size when he was hungry rather than what we would expect in a decrease in the breast size. Yeah, so that was counter to what we would have expected.

In his work, Swami has found that men's preferred boob size can shift with circumstances like hunger. So the Hunger Peace was uh was an experiment we uh a couple of studies that we ran um really in response to a question that has emerged in evolutionary psychology, which is why have breasts evolved in human beings? So particularly in cultures that lack resources, women and men who are able to put on body fat might be perceived as more attractive because they have access to resources.

So we had a group of men, British white men, who were hungry and a second group who were satiated, and we compared their breast size preferences and again we found that the hungry group showed a slightly larger preference for a slightly larger breast size compared to the satiated group. Okay, just so we get this straight, men who are insecure about their next meal seem to go for the well-fed, well-endowed ladies.

Swami found in another study that men with more oppressive beliefs about women, like men who are not supportive of women's rights, Also tended to prefer bigger bazungas. But what's really interesting to me is that your breast preference actually changed, you know, from fifteen minutes. Yeah, it's true. And and so Virin, that's kind of one of your points too, right? That we tend to think that, you know, men's preference is sort of um absolute over time, but you haven't seen that.

In general, the majority of men, or at least nearing a majority of men, prefer a slightly larger than average breast size. But then the the what we also find is that preferences are quite variable. So a a sizable minority will prefer kind of larger end of the breast size. There's also a sizeable minority of men who prefer the smaller end. So there is a kind of a wide variation. But it seems like actually men may prefer breasts that aren't that huge. Hooray.

So Jack is kind of unusual in his taste. And it turns out my friend Kasha is a bit of a rogue subject as well. She's way too well adjusted. So Kasha actually did very well in terms of her own body image. She has no breast size dissatisfaction. Is that unusual?

In terms of the data that we have, it's incredibly unusual. Uh about fifty percent of women want larger breasts, about twenty to thirty percent want smaller breasts and the remainder, so about twenty, thirty percent of the kind of final group, want no change. Wait a minute, so you're telling me that eighty percent of women are unhappy with their breast size? Based on the on the studies that we've done with the images that you've seen in front of you, yeah.

So Kasha, how did you get to be so um self-secure? Um, I have a really good personality, so I don't need to look at my body. I think the the bigger problem is that we inhabit a culture that continuously objectifies women and says

women are only as good as how their bodies look like and that message is repeated throughout Western culture, at least certainly in industrial Western societies. We're repeatedly told that is what is attractive and if you don't conform to that ideal then you're not attractive. And yet that's not really backed up by the data.

It's not backed up by what men are showing in terms of their preferences, no. So in general women tend to overestimate what they think men prefer. So they think men prefer a much larger breast size than they actually do. Wow, so maybe this whole Western obsession with big breasts is just a myth. I think the myth is really the idea that there is a singular ideal that is attractive.

So that right there is interesting to me, Virin, right? Because I think, you know, Hollywood, pornography, I mean there's so much emphasis on breast, breast, breast, breast, breast, breasts of a certain size, but there are a lot of guys out there who aren't even breast guys. Danke, Herr Abschlögen. And you see this in different cultures too.

There are cultural differences, there are ethnic differences, there are all kinds of differences, both within and across cultures. But it's usually kind of ascribed to westernized industrial preferences, this preference for larger breasts in women. Oh man, so Beer and Swamy has just exploded the myth that all Western men like big breasts.

Why did we think this was true in the first place? We have a tradition of sexualizing breasts. Andrea Press is a media study scholar at the University of Virginia. She's blonde and curvy and a little bit glamorous herself. Maybe that's what happens when you study film, Starlet. You see cycles of fashion for women's bodies in Hollywood film. You see silhouettes changing, ideals changing. Well remember, movies weren't always spilling over with large breaths.

Actress's breasts were normal and average looking in the silent film era, not the nuclear weapon heads on a chest that they would become. Um an obsession begins with big breasts, which is relatively new in American culture. And she says it happened around the time of World War two. Well scholars term this period memory madness. And I date it really to Howard Hughes filming The Outlaw in nineteen forty-seven with Jane Russell. Billy, you mustn't just. Then why don't you quit wrestling with me?

And he has some very notorious publicity posters that zoom in on her low cut blouse and she's very young and she's looking straight at the camera in a very suggestive way. And this is quite scandalous and followed soon after by the success of Marilyn Monroe. Here comes the girl who put M. In the movies. I mean like how much of our obsession with Big Brass is really because of Hollywood?

in my opinion, as a media scholar, I'd say a lot. And maybe because Marilyn was so powerful and so enduring, maybe that's part of the reason we continue to be so obsessed. With breasts as highly sexualized body parts. May I kiss your hand? Always say a kiss on the hand feels very good, but a diamond tiara lasts forever. Marilyn Monroe's image is everywhere. If you ask a class of eighteen year olds as I did last Weird. How many of you recognize the image of Marilyn Monroe? It's a hundred percent.

Can I ask you a question? Well, I don't know. I suppose so. Are you sure you want me? Yeah, you're the one I want, okay. So you have in a way you have I I think two, you know, boys growing up in this era. Learning the standards of beauty. You have girls growing up wanting to embody them. When did Playboy begin? When did Issue of Playboy.

So Hollywood and then Hollywood influenced porn sent the breast mythology around the Western world. But according to Andrea, something else launched mamory madness in the first place. Veterans, returning from war are There wouldn't be enough jobs for the men. And so Culture responded, Hollywood responded. Well, the mammary madness of the fifties was the public clamoring for more focus on the breast. So Andrea, what did this mean for our silhouette?

You had a really Real massive rethinking of the role of women from this powerful factory worker earning big bucks. someone who was helping to repopulate America. women were infantilized, made more childlike in popular culture. And what the feminine meant in the context of the fifties was a wife, a mother, and a sex object. I can't figure you out. You you you're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other. Any way you want me to be. Why? Why is it so important? Because I belong with you.

Okay, so this conversation with Andrea Press was really interesting to me. I got to thinking that if a social agenda could make breasts grow big, maybe another one could make breasts small, or at least normal. I started to look around for other ways people were celebrating breasts apart from the hyper-sexualized zone that we've been in for so long. That's when I found Jane McAdam Freud. I visited her studio in Northwest London. Jane is a sculptor known for sensual earthy shapes and textures.

Like a mold of supermodel Kate Moss's left breast. A trendy restaurant recently commissioned the shape for a champagne glass. I just got an email saying um we're looking for a sculpt and we thought you might be interested, so I went to her house, took the moles off the breast. Yeah. Um which is here. But it wasn't a totally strange idea. There were milk bowls made of Marie Antoinette's breasts and a rumored goblet molded from Helen of Troy's. It's a beautiful cast.

It's unblemished. I mean it's perfect. It's about the size of a very large latte mug, I would say around, and then but it's a you know, it's a not a big cup. It's maybe like an A cup or a A plus cup. They're not like that generally, but she was lying down. It's picked up the texture and the quality of her skin beautifully. Bye. Yes, there's tiny bumps. Yeah, tiny bumps, the paws, but you can see the quality of the skin. She's got really quite thick skin, which is a nice that's a compliment.

Somehow it seems right that Jane McAden Freud's hair is loosely held in a messy bun, and she's wearing a leopard print blouse. After all, the She comes from a remarkable lineage that probed our animal instincts. her father was the painter Lucien Freud, and her great grandfather, yep, Sigmund, who clearly influences her work. And didn't he say I think he said the the first object of our desire is the breast.

Well uh we're the first thing we see, isn't it? That first sensation was that uh God, which to us was our means of survival, a type of omnipotent uh force that would lead us to survive, and it was A breast, not the mother's face, the breast. He absolutely knew that the first experience would have a massive impact. I know I'm coming from a psychological perspective, it's almost imprinted in my DNA. I can't help it or I've read too many books on psychology.

Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Yeah. It's not probably not so cold anymore. How fitting that we close our investigation into the big boob myth by drinking out of an exquisite goblet made from an A cup of Long live the A-cup. Long live any damn cup size. We've had a lovely afternoon in your beautiful studio. Thank you so much. And you're drinking in your Kate Moss glass. Cheers. Cheers.

Breasts made the human race, as Jane McAdam Freud reminds us. They deserve our worship in all their glories and imperfections and even skin pimples. Because breasts were never supposed to be just about sex. despite the best efforts of the late 20th century. And this booby crystal holding our warm champagne is a symbol of the covenant we make with breasts. From the moment we are born, we love them for what they give us in pleasure and in sustenance, and in their common shared human beauty.

I'm Florence Williams for both. I'm more curious about what kind of what kind of person wants to drink out of Kate Moss's breast malt. every man, every red-blooded Um who thinks he's got a bit of sex appeal. I do like that men like breasts, I love that. Trying to grow mine.

This episode of Breasts Unbound was hosted, reported, and developed by Florence Williams. It was produced by Mary Beth Kirschner. Technical direction came from Robin Wise. Sound design was by Derek John with production help from Danielle Roth. The executive producer is Martha Little. Eric Newsum is Senior Vice President of Original Content at Audible. This is Audible.