Gym tells woman her breasts 'too large' for tank top

[anon67050589]

@manybellsdown

He also points out that in the majority of the animal kingdom, it’s females who select their mates, not the other way around.)

This has long been a major what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-our-culture issue for me: the bizarre notion that women have to do all the primping to try to convince a man to want her is ass-backwards and has a tendency to result in unhappiness for all.

[anon27822705]

At least there’s no human mating season. Could you imagine the mayhem???

[Melizmatic]

This seems like a good place to set this down:

[manybellsdown]

Seriously, if there’s one argument to refute “but it’s just nature” it’s that one. Nature says females select their mates. Not-natural human society made women dependent on men and thus required them to be appealing to men. 99% of male birds are brightly colored and have various displays to attract a female … who will be a dull, blend-into-the-woodwork-so-I-don’t-get-eaten brown. If we held to “just nature”, men would be in hot pink suits with elaborate hairstyles. They’d be the ones dropping $100 at Sephora so they could have violet eyelids and Urban Decay “Bad Blood” lips.[quote=“lamaranagram, post:180, topic:78345, full:true”]
At least there’s no human mating season. Could you imagine the mayhem???
[/quote]

That leads into a whole other scientific discussion, which is basically “why the hell do human women have periods??” And so far the answer is “…we’re not really sure?”

[anon61221983]

@manybellsdown

If we held to “just nature”, men would be in hot pink suits with elaborate hairstyles. They’d be the ones dropping $100 at Sephora so they could have violet eyelids and Urban Decay “Bad Blood” lips.

[kaibeezytentroy]

@Melizmatic

Each person has agency over his or her own body and the sum of its parts

No argument there. We are in agreement. I stated this above, couple of times.

But what @anon61221983 actually said, with a bit more context, was: “Boobs are not here for your enjoyment and pleasure. They are a part of a woman’s body that primarily exists to feed babies, not cater to men’s fantasies.” She didn’t say “my”, she generalized. (She also left out women’s fantasies, so maybe that’s still up for debate.) But where’s the science, or any other basis for that all-of-humanity-wide broad brush? What a thing is or is not for everyone (or at least men)… she gets to say, and everyone says OK? Nah. This isn’t about breasts, this is about one person presuming to be the arbiter of what’s OK for everyone else, which isn’t OK. At all.

[anon61221983]

[chenille]

@manybellsdown

Which I think is frankly nonsense; if you can understand these evo psych papers you’re googling you should be perfectly capable of comprehending that post.

Well, if this is going to keep on, then I think that despite being asked to shut up for this conversation I should interject on this. Of the two citations our day-of-google expert has given, let’s take a moment to look at what the second one actually says.

I mean, yes, LDoBe is very right that they had an extremely small and non-representative sample of humans to draw conclusions about evolution from. But at least they recognize the result – small breasts being key for attractiveness – is opposite other studies and so don’t take it at face value. Instead they argue:

Overall, the evidence suggests that are no stable preferences for female breast size. This variability need not be viewed as inexplicable. For example, because breast size is a sexually dimorphic characteristic, it may be the case that breasts per se are considered attractive in women but not in men. Such a hypothesis would predict a preference for a differently sized female chest in comparison with men, and not a preference for a specific breast size or shape. In other words, there need not be a preference for a specific breast size, only that it signals a sex difference from males.

So while the study itself isn't great, I think they make a reasonable argument that maybe breast size and shape *aren't* all about serving as a reliable indicator of reproduction whatever. Maybe their only relation to attraction was just in marking a silhouette as female.

In other words, it concludes just the opposite of what kaibeezytentroy presented it as evidence for. That should say something about how much he actually understood the results of his search, and put his insistence that the rest of us haven’t provided any papers or knowledge into perspective.

[manybellsdown]

Oh I was wondering why you didn’t reply earlier. Sorry to keep @-ing you if you were trying to stay out of it!

[kaibeezytentroy]

Edited to add quote:

@manybellsdown

99% of male birds are brightly colored

99%?

A 3-second google turned up a 2015 Nature article, The effects of life history and sexual selection on male and female plumage colouration, saying, among other things, “females of many species are also highly ornamented”, and containing this nice chart, Plumage scores and plumage dichromatism in relation to key predictors in passerine birds, which appears to show that yes, most male birds are the more ornamented, but it’s nowhere near 99%.

Does someone read it differently? Have better info? Think Nature is EvoPsych-grade pish? See the problem with just winging stuff out there citation-free?

[Phrenological]

@manybellsdown

They’d be the ones dropping $100 at Sephora so they could have violet eyelids and Urban Decay “Bad Blood” lips.

YOU DONT KNOW ME!

[subextraordinaire]

@kaibeezytentroy

But where’s the science, or any other basis for that all-of-humanity-wide broad brush?

Let’s flip that and ask where is your science? So far, you’ve given us dubious studies that haven’t convinced us that our breasts are more than a feeding mechanism. I can apply for a grant and design a study that hypothesizes that there are “ass men” and “boob men” and “leg men” and “feet men”, but it still doesn’t mean that women’s legs and feet are primarily for attracting males rather than walking, standing, or running away from predators.

[anon27822705]

I’m an angry dude who wants to down rank this thread. Where’s the button for that?

[Melizmatic]

@kaibeezytentroy

this isn’t about breasts, this is about one person presuming to be the arbiter of what’s OK for everyone else, which isn’t OK. At all.

That’s not how I read it, but it is an interesting peek into your own perceptions.

Mindy merely stated her opinion; I didn’t see her presuming to speak arbitrarily on behalf of all breasts in the entirety of the world - that’s how you chose to interpret her opinion.

Now, if one were pressed I’m sure that one could find a female (or any number of them) who would argue the exact opposite; that women are made for men, and that they should submit to their husbands’ wills, in which case that could include the belief that the breast is indeed meant for male titilation. (Pun intended.)

Hell, for all we know your significant other may feel that way about her boobs in relation to you; and that’s fine, because she’s allowed to have her own beliefs.

But, again to my point: if the mere statement of opinion is what “rubbed you the wrong way” perhaps you should examine the reason why.

[Phrenological]

So what color are your tits’ plumage?