There’s a lot going on with boobs lately. Springtime means women are priming themselves for under-boob tats right now; boobs popped out en masse for Mardi Gras to get some flashy beads; science confirmed that it’s hard to run with big boobs, causing plenty of women to opt out of exercising; the FDA will finally review numerous, years-long complaints of pain and safety issues with breast implants. But none of this has remotely hampered one timeless, eternal debate about something I think we can all agree is far more important than any of that nonsense when it comes to knockers.
What, exactly, makes for a great pair of tits?
I recently overheard a 30-something dude recount a terrible Tinder date. He casually mentioned that aside from the otherwise horrific nightmare that ensued, the woman had a “great pair of tits.” Color me brazen, but I had to stop him and ask what, exactly, he meant by that. What kind of tits, I asked, does he consider the “great” kind?
“Great tits!” he responded, somewhat incredulously, as if I was just supposed to know.
I, a woman with tits, feel confused. There is no universal shorthand for what great tits are. Great tits can be small, medium, big, ginormous or take up your entire body. Boobs are as individual to the owner as they are to the liker. There are fandoms for every shape and size of tit, from AA cups to ZZZ and far beyond, according to the very NSFW Boobpedia.com.
Also, I’m sad to inform the tit aficionados out there that whatever tits look like in clothing — or under a bra, or in certain light, or in a certain shirt, dress, turtleneck or what-have-you — might not necessarily be what her actual tits are really like, because that’s how clothing, lighting and bras work. They can obscure the tits’ true quality. They lift, separate, enhance, flatten, contour and sometimes monstrously thwart their true essence. Sometimes it’s on purpose; sometimes it’s an accident or compromise.
After I said all this, the tit dude, along with another dude partaking in this conversation, looked at me in unison like I had a giant tit for a head.
So I can only conclude that dudes may not actually know what great tits are. Do all dudes assume that whatever his version of great tits are just so happen to be Everyone’s Favorite Tits? America’s Tits?
Could that be possible? Is there global tit consensus? Every man sure as hell thinks he knows, but that’s usually just his opinion. What’s more, people can’t even agree on how to spell “titty,” so it’s hard to believe we could collectively choose a verified tit champ.
Cultural perception tells us that all boobs are good, of course — any type, any size, any situation, any weather. Rain or shine, hurricane or cyclone, tits are so intrinsically good that you can’t even ask why they’re good, because that’s how good they are all by themselves, no questions asked.
But what that has really meant, at least my entire life, is that great tits are big tits. Other tits are fine. Other tits will get the job done, certainly. But it’s big tits that take the tit cake and anything less is, in fact, tit ludicrousness. Moreover, they oughta be round and perky and best if pointing forward.
In my day, for instance, Pamela Anderson’s tits were often held up as the ideal tit formation.
Still, some men have been devoted enough to all tits to put in the titwork of noticing other types of boobs actually do exist and may have some kind of merit. A genius at Total Frat Move says that after hours of painstaking research, he was able to distill all the tits of the world into “five distinct categories.” (There are actually nine types of boobs, one for every type of pie.)
Of course, type one is Pillow Tits, which are obviously big tits. TFM writes:
Not a single man in the history of this Earth has complained about a heavenly pair of Pillow Tits. Named for their incomparable softness (built for comfort, not for speed), Pillow Tits are only two things: natural and large. Your ideal pair of Pillow Tits will sit proudly on the chest of a slam like sacks full of happiness and sunshine.
Well, tell that to this woman, who is insecure about her 32 DDs because her boyfriend likes small tits. And this woman, who says her boyfriend likes small boobs, and she doesn’t have small boobs. And this woman, who has “huge breasts,” while her boyfriend has the temerity to prefer small ones. Or the big-tit porn stars struggling to adapt to a newly ass-centric industry.
Because this is obviously so counter to the Big Tit Energy our culture daydreams about, some people have tried to get to the bottom of why a man could love small boobs when it’s a big boob type of world. The answer: “There is no objectively ideal size.” Just like with dicks, not every woman is out there on the prowl for a Coke can. Some women want the dick they can take home to father.
Still, we press on, trying to understand tit preferences with the zeal and attention typically reserved for the Mueller report, and lately, we’ve begun to come around to the outrageous idea — hear me out — that tit preference is individual and there is no one tit size to fit every hand or mouth.
That said, even the science trying to dispel this crazy big-tit obsession begins from the presumed fact of big tits being the best tits. “Despite the common belief that men prefer a larger-chested lady,” one such look at a recent study begins, “it appears it’s not that simple.”
While evolutionary psychology tells us that bigger tits signal greater fertility, it appears that perkiness is the more preferred metric for boob goodness, at least when men from 267 countries were asked. Bigger tits are great and all, but over time, they often lose that zero-gravity effect, and you can no longer pretend the tits you settled down with belong to a teenager. Still, lots of people find those tits sexy as hell — just look at the subreddit r/thehangingboobs (NSFW).
Still, the heart wants what it wants, and the data suggest that “great tits” refers to proportion over size. That is, bigger is not better, per se. The Daily Mail reports that plastic surgeons often model their breast work after something called a Beckoning Boob. You know, the sort of boob that could wake you up from a nap, or make you forget it’s Tax Day. A beckoning boob alerts you when it’s in your zip code. It texts you before it walks by. It waves hello when it’s cycling past. It stands at attention for the express purpose of enabling you — perhaps even demanding you to — salute it. That’s because it points up at a 20-degree angle, or the same angle you’d use to sharpen your knife.
What that means, technically, is that it’s a boob with a 45:55 ratio. In other words, if you’re looking at the nipple line, 45 percent of the breast tissue is above it, and 55 percent is under it. The titty Golden Ratio.
For example, witness big-titty icon Venus de Milo.
It’s like how some people think Kate Moss is more ideally beautiful; some prefer Elizabeth Taylor. Both camps actually prefer a certain facial symmetry, and both women have it.
So, it’s not size, but shape that makes a tit great? Maybe this explains all the variations and sects of titty culture, hundreds of factors pledging allegiance to a different size. Sure, we all like a different type of tit. But are we as a society really thirsting after a tit with a super-specific 45:55 distribution of fullness? Again, there is so much variation in the worldwide tit fandom, it makes the whole great-tit thing feel pretty silly.
I asked the tit dude to elaborate on his actual preference, and he finally relented and described the tits in question: He said they were big, like D-cups, perky and full to the touch. (It’s unclear how he ended up with his hands on them, considering how poorly he said the date ended.)
They were “timeless, ageless breasts,” he said. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the Venus de Milo, but in fairness, perhaps the tit distribution he got a literal hold of for a fleeting moment fit the bill. Still, he wasn’t some kind of tit fascist. He was still willing to throw all tits a bone. He was a tit man of the people, a modern-day Renaissance tit man.
“Tits are like pizza,” he concluded. “Even when they’re mediocre, they’re good.”
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
