Around here phrase "Pencil test" has very specific meaning, nothing to do with breasts, and even more demeaning.

It is a relic from Apartheid in South Africa. Despite the fact that there is no abolute black or white, despite that we are all just shades of pink and brown, the powers-that-were felt the need to draw a line between those that were pink enough to be white and those that were too brown. The test was this - if a pencil, inserted into the hair, would fall out again, you have straight enough hair to be white.

Yes, I know it's stupid. Racist, too. Apartheid was racist by definition. Don't blame me for that.

While doing an internship, that's right I volunteered to work without pay, at our rural community clinic, I heard another version, different on the whole, of an infamous pencil test. This probably falls into the class of voodoo medicine and should not be performed on those fearing the occult.

You simply attach a pencil to a string, and attempt to hold it perfectly still above the belly of a pregnant cow..woman (Ofcourse all men know that women only become more beautiful when pregnant and I would never say otherwise!) You then predetermine that a linear pattern means it is a baby boy in the making, and a circular pattern makes a prediction of a baby girl. Miraculously, the pencil will nearly always move in one of those directions. The doctor who shared this with me swears that he has a 90% accuracy rate when using this method.

He went further to explain that the pencil most likely moves due to the dark waters of the subconcious mind. The effect is much like that of a Ouija board. His accuracy rate is, however, somewhat astounding and unexplainable.

The pencil test wonko refers to is used to determine whether a young girl "needs" a bra. If the breast holds the pencil in place, brassiere support is called for. It has nothing to do with so-called "perfection", which is purely subjective.

British comedian Victoria Wood refers to the pencil test in one of her stand-up routines "They said that if you could hold a pencil under your boob, you needed a bra. Me, I could hold a whole branch of W.H. Smiths" I could empathise with that.

For non-Brits, W.H. Smith is a chain of stationers, newsagents and booksellers.

The first time I saw the pencil test was on a special on TVO, which is a Canadian channel.
Several women, of all ages, were sitting around topless and talking about breasts.

That day I tried the test.

From what I was told on the special, I passed the test, and the pencil fell... thus I had perky/young breasts.
From what is posted here, I failed the test and do not need a bra. I beg to differ.
Many girls and women with smaller chests do not have breasts that sag enough to hold a pencil.
Does this mean they do not need bras?
No. Their breasts ache just as much if they jog or jump around without one, and may not have the desired shape the bra helps to give.

Ladies (and Gents for that matter), the test is hard to resist, but don't worry too much about what happens to the pencil. Breasts are wonderful, beautiful, natural, and life giving.

Love your breasts!
Pencil Test is also an animated short from Apple Computer in 1988.
In 1988, Apple was eager to show off the graphics power of its Macintosh II line of computers. Using a program called Super3D, a group of talented artists produced Pencil Test an animated short created entirely on the Macintosh. Keep in mind that QuickTime did not exist in 1988; the movie was output frame by frame to an imagesetter, and then recorded to film.
The plot is this : There's a classic Macintosh running MacPaint. The pencil tool jumps off of the pallet and onto the real world desktop (becoming colorized in the process). The pencil then has some adventures on the desktop, and then more trying to get back onto the screen.

It can be seen at http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/pencil-test.html

In Finnish army they have a different kind of pencil test. The hair of soldier shouldn't be longer than the width of pencil. It was the greatest joy of arrogant conscript sergeants to test the length of hair with the help of pencil.

Just few years ago this really applied and probably it still applies at garrisons headed by petty-hitlers.

However it never applies for women and I remembered that there was one case when a male conscript asked for the equality between sexes.
This doesn't surprise anyone but he lost his case.

In animation world, the "pencil test" has a less interesting but crucial meaning. Basically, it means that you shoot the pencilled frames (on film or video tape) and see how well your animation works - this before you start the hard, challenging and thankless job of inking and coloring the frames.

In digital world, the nearest equivalent is previewing the animation before the final steps. In 3D animation, similar effect can be done by rendering only wireframes or Gouraud-shaded version of the animation before you throw in textures, lighting, shadows and all that...

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