Photo by Flickr user zmxncbv.com. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Last week it seemed like more people than usual were (coincidentally) talking about vasectomies. This week I’ve noticed more than the usual number of posts about breasts. As a result I’ve got a couple of things I want to say about breasts as well. Here’s a good place to start. Dr Petra Boynton, tipping her hat to a post by Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre
As you may know, one thing that winds me up nearly as much as dodgy surveys for PR purposes it’s using fake formulae to promote products. The formulae I’ve taken most issue with have been those supposedly identifying ‘perfect’ breast and sizes or what the ideal Page 3 girl’s vital statistics should be, although there have been formula created for just about any purpose you can imagine – anything from the perfect consistency of a biscuit through to which day of the year is the most depressing.
None of the formulae ever really make any mathematical sense, but then they’re not supposed to. They are designed simply to get a product mentioned in the papers. And that message is always emphasised by the appearance of a ‘scientist’, ‘psychologist’, or ‘boffin’ (often from Cambridge University) who will give weight to the maths. They can get pretty shirty if you tell them their formulae don’t make any sense – or have been written for them by a PR company. But despite invitations from the media and other scientists to defend their work none have so far accepted challenges to the accuracy of their formula. Instead they make the claim that they are leading the way in science communication or are using these PR opportunities to raise our interest in psychology, science, or mathematics.
Read the rest of her post, and follow the links I haven’t included, here.
We’ve heard discussion of beauty ideals for thousands of years — of proportions and ratios, of ideal weights, of complexions, of hairstyles, of curves or lack thereof, and of course of ideal behaviors. (There’s been… considerable differences of opinion, varying wildly not just from country to country or century to century but sometimes from one decade to the next.)
Oddly, according to a credibly-researched presentation I heard last winter on the history of the brassier from a fellow student in the sex ed, women’s studies, and communications course I was in, there was almost no discussion of the ideal breast size until garment manufacturers settled on a standard for bra sizes right around the middle of the 20th Century.
Sure, bras had been around for a few decades (and obviously, before bras there had been corsets that did similar duty.) But standardized bras had something the earlier bras and corsets hadn’t: cup sizes.
Industrial society, with it’s recent appreciation for economies of scale, already had a bigger-is-better attitude about a lot of things, but at least in terms of breasts there hadn’t been much discussion in the early 1900s about whether, say, Mae West’s ample bosom was superior to Mary Pickford’s slight one.
But suddenly there was a single measurement. And suddenly there was the opportunity for comparison. And suddenly there could be competition. And suddenly there could be (by-definition post hoc and easy to mock) “formulas for perfect breasts.”
Submitted by 2577 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-12-16 14:40.
Cup sizes date from the 1930s (according to Joan Brumberg's *The Body Project* - a very reliable source). Other garments had been standardized in the U.S. at least a decade or two earlier, with the spread of ready-to-wear clothes.
That leads me to question whether the invention of cup sizes was all that significant. Not only did bras trail other types of clothes in becoming standardized, notions of "perfect" breasts have varied tremendously over the years - think of the contrasts between the 1950s and the 1960s. I think the rise of mass-market fashion and the mass media are probably a lot more important in facilitating the development of "formulas for perfect breasts." I can see how cup size might have played a minor role, though.
Possibly more important might be the dissemination of the bra in the first place - as a means of accentuating breasts - although, paradoxically, in the 1920s bras were used mostly to *flatten* breasts to fit the flapper look.
[It could have been a coincidence, Sungold, but that's not what my fellow student said her sources told her. Not that I *have* the sources, unfortunately. And it's certainly the case that bras enabled, say, the campus "sweater girl" effect. But I'm still pretty sure things didn't take off till cup size mad it possible to *quantify* the "tighter the sweater" quality. I'm deferring to you though since history's actually in your professional bailiwick. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 2577 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-12-18 10:18.
Ooh, you just poked me in my pedantic spot, figleaf. Not hard to do, since I've got more than one of 'em. :-)
I suppose I should've made more clear what was fact and what was interpretation. It's a definite fact that cup sizes were invented and disseminated in the 1930s. This was also true for Europe - I read up on the history of undergarments when I wrote a paper on the history of maternity clothes (which, as you might imagine, has lots to do with sex, or rather denying it). I doublechecked in Brumberg to make sure the timing wasn't vastly different in the U.S.
The cultural impact of cup sizes is the part that's up for debate. And while I think you've got a very interesting point, I think it's one factor among several - albeit one that's probably been neglected.
I'm sure glad I was born *after* the demise of the sweater girl look. I would've had to do an awful lot of bra-stuffing.
Interestingly, when I taught the Brumberg book last year (which deals with lots more than just breasts), my students argued that breasts are less important to their generation's beauty ideal. They're not irrelevant (and I realized young men might tell a different story) but these women said they worried more about bellies and butts, thanks to those infernal low-rise pants.