Men did not always like large breasts

I recently read the node Why do men like women's breasts? and discovered that a misconception existed -- large breasts have not been worshipped throughout history, as some would have you believe.

Marital, the Roman poet, wrote of the perfect breast as not overflowing one hand. Ancient Roman women, in fact, wore garments designed to support and suppress the bosom. Renaissance corsets squashed the breast in addition to the rest of the body. (belgand has pointed out to me that corsets tend to create cleavage as well) Europeans and Americans through the mid-1800s still preferred smaller, perky breasts with smooth contours.

Until recently, large breasts were seen as maternal, better suited to a wet nurse than to a beautiful woman. This may as well have been due to their impracticality -- a functional bra is a relatively modern invention.

Source: An Underground Education, by Richard Zacks. Truly badass well-researched book.

Body shape is one of those things about fashion that fluctuates madly. However, it is seen as more essential to one's self than the clothing one wears, and there are a lot of buried cultural valuations placed on it. (Please also read sensitivity and fat people.) For example, i suspect that people think of me as motherly for the reason mentioned above. And i also think that i would not be so hung up on gender identity and body image if i did not have such an undeniably female body.

Large breasts did feature prominently in a lot of very early artwork and fetishes (in the traditional, not the modern sense). This is usually because the images had some ritual and symbolic significance having to do with fertility, and by extension, bounty, continuation, and wealth. There are similar images with enlarged phalli, hands, noses, stomachs - while it is true that there are places where roundness in general is seen as attractive, the intention of these figures and drawings were not to make images of attractive women and their breasts but to perform a function. You think they drew the buffalo hunt for fun? Well, maybe they did. But they also had a ritual purpose.