Real men don't have nipples

[trinityvixen]

Saw this yesterday and laughed my fucking ass off. (Story here.)

This?! This is what we've come to? We've regressed to a point of uber-gender roles and prudishness that real, manly men can't have nipples exposed even though the rest of their boobs are? I suppose this is a weird sort of equality, since we're comfortable with female boobs being on display so long as that DEAD SINFUL centerpiece stays covered up.

Ooh, maybe this is really an attack on those crazy scientists who believe in evolution. Those freaks believe that the stages of evolution are sort of recapitulated in miniature in embryos before they become more recognizably human fetuses. And, as most people know, since sex-determining hormones don't kick in till much later, this is why all human babies have nipples even though men don't develop any underlying structures to provide a use for having one. BUT IF MEN HAVE NO NIPPLES THAN THAT TOTALLY NEVER HAPPENED.

Myself, I'm laughing still because men not having nipples is exactly what freaked me about about revisiting my childhood when I watched episodes of the old He-Man series. If people couldn't figure out that the only two guys in Eternia with page-boy haircuts and identically, exotically colored tigers were one and the same, I think they could at least do a nipple count. I'm sure I remember seeing some on Bo (that delightfully sissy hero on She-Ra, aka the only man not threatening to the heroine is the gay one), so if all the men of Eternia and Etheria were to just lift their shirts, they'd nail Prince Adam for being He-Man in one go.

No nipples. IT LOOKS WEIRD BECAUSE IT IS. There's something fatty about not having nipples, too. Seriously, look at Meaty McHamSlab front and center. That's a guy with no testicles but about a thousand more steroid-ripped muscles than you'd normally find in the whole of the Orlando area, and yet? He looks kinda fat. Nipples, man, they give you definition. On such normally sex-charged posters as this (what, you don't agree that photos of slighty sweaty, greased up men have any sexual connotation?), the missing nipples would serve as corners to their pectorals. Nipples give the edge of muscle.

(And, TMI, they'd be--if they weren't airbrushed out--pretty pert and erect, too, which makes the stuff underneath look taut and not saggy fat. You can tell a lot about breasts by the nipples, see! This is partly why you don't see too many female boob statues/pictures with unerect/unaroused nipples either. The more pointed the nipple appears, the more tone to the shape underneath.)

Comments

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

even though men don't develop any underlying structures to provide a use for having one

For the record, we do indeed have the underlying structures, we just typically don't use them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, excuse me, I did misspeak. I was talking in the generality about their lack of use and conflated that with lack of having. My bad.

(aka "BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL, STRIKE THAT SENTENCE DOWN!")

[avram]

Also, you're assuming that nipples have the sole use of baby-feeding.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

Pretty much all of the other uses are happy side-effects, though, not really what nature intended.

[avram]

Nature doesn't intend things.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There is no intention, but there is an obvious function for certain evolved characteristics. In this case, I don't think he was literally saying nature picked nipples for breastfeeding only that that was what they primarily evolved for.

[avram]

Yeah, but that was a long time ago. The first mammals developed in the Triassic period, over 200 million years ago, so nipples are (at least) that old. Homo sapiens separated from the other apes about a quarter of a million years ago. That leaves hundreds of millions of years for nipples to have developed ancillary functions, like enhancement of sexual pleasure.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Still not disagreeing with you, as, since humanity evolved upright posture and some self-awareness, additional tricks of biology have evolved alongside primary function to promote sexual reproduction. Nipples also demonstrate arousal and the mechanical manipulation of them and their sensitivity around certain stages of the menstrual cycle provided clues to early man about ovulation cycles that were no longer outwardly demonstrated as had been for all of humanity's precursors.

So, yes, lots of functions of the nipple, many evolved. Sexual pleasure, however, is a dead last because that is about the last trick needed to get humans to reproduce. (It comes along when higher brain function does, and that is the last thing to separate us from apes.)

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

How long were you waiting on that one?

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

The Big Show may have lost a hundred pounds, but he's still fat.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

He's not the only one. The other guys behind him to the left side of the picture look very curvy, too.

[avram]

I first noticed this phenomenon reading X-Men comics in the '80s. Hey, Colossus has no shirt on in this scene. Shouldn't he have chrome nipples?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

No more so than the ladies should have had panty lines under their outfits, I suppose. I don't care if they are mutants who happen to be in contact with alien civilizations with advanced tech: there ain't no undergarment would give the lift they get without showing some lines under a spandex suit. Bah-lone-ee.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

How do you know they wore them? Do dancers wear underwear with their tights? (Hell, do wrestlers? Or bicyclists, for that matter?)

I will say, though, this is one reason why I like today's Hollywood superhero outfits, most of which are closer to Roman armor than dance-wear. Spandex looks goofy and, let's face it, you don't want to worry about the bulge in your shorts every time you're facing the masters of evil.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Dancers come in all shapes and sizes, true, but how many have you seen really need a support system? They're almost all b-cup or smaller, and those bust sizes can slip into dancewear and have all the support they need. Hell, a spaghetti-strap camisole is usually enough.

I haven't seen any heroine above teenage with a less than substantial cupsize. Wonder Woman is roughly twice as thick through the bust as she is at the waist (though, at least in her case, her outfit probably is inflexible armor, not pliable latex, and it's a strapless push-up supporter). Point is, those woman are either mono-boobed sacks or they've got undergarments on underneath. That's just the way it works. Seeing as they're not amorphously chested, I argue they are wearing bras et al. and we're just not seeing the wires.

Spandex is pretty goofy, and it leads to problems whereby it makes muscled people look like chubsters. (Dancers are the exception because they are so lean with their muscle. But thicker muscle still pudges-out under spandex.) Some thicker materials, like neoprene (wetsuit-like) would work better while still giving the same general effect without jumping to the thick-as X-Men movie leather.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, the big problem with superhero women is that their bust sizes are INSANE. Seriously, comic fans have to get used to women who are either (a) flatter-chested or (b) have appropriately-sized spare tires to go along with the cantaloupes around their chests. (As an amateur figure artist this sort of thing annoys me.)

I think Linda Carter had some major wiring to hold her breasts in place in the Wonder-Woman outfit. Most of the others have been pretty flat-chested, so support hasn't been an issue.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Right, so either comics play fast and loose with simple anatomy and physics (shock! comics!? do that!? nev-ah!) or they're just artistically smoothing over the panty lines. Whichever, it's equally stupid when you expect your heroine to be any sort of threat (other than causing spontaneous nosebleeds, were it manga) when their chests could smother small horses.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Um, hello? They're SUPER-POWERED? Maybe they have SUPER-BOOBIES that don't need support? Seems obvious to me.

Thankfully comics fans don't have to get used it. Look, you can't please all the people all the time. I'm sure the huge boobs alienate some potential readers, but they draw in others. I only started reading Danger Girl for the hot girls with big boobs and it turned out to actually be a really good comic (ditto for the original Tomb Raider video game). So I don't really see an...ahem..."huge" problem.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

OK, OK... "Have to" is the wrong verb to use here. Obviously no great punishment is going to be imposed on comic book publishers just because their characters have unrealistic boobies. Still ... I don't like it. And honestly, I think it'd be good for young boys if they got used to realistic female bodies.

As for "super powered" boobies ... I'll believe it when these powers are listed in the RPGs!

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

To be totally fair, the last few times I've been in a comic shop I've seen plenty of comics showcasing chicks built like that, and plenty that are more realistic. So I think the options are there, which is REALLY as it should be.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Options, I like. Honestly, the bodies of both males and females are ridiculously distorted. The female comic heroine body more so because the distortion emphasizes and praises an obviously unhealthy and impossible body type (whereas male body type is merely muscled and toned). And yet? I remember some late-90s X-Men comics where, though skinny, the women's bodies did reflect what their bodies would look like if they were in good shape and skinny. Psylocke, in particular, had HUGE shoulders and muscles with very bony hips and such. It was breathtakingly beautiful in how different it was. I really appreciated that. I also love Dan Dreiberg in The Watchmen having a paunch. Feel the variety!

[avram]

Unstable molecules lift and separate!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Pull the other one, it has got bells on.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I guess the human ideal is a bipedal frog with a wig. (And really ripped abs.) Get your amphibian beauty secrets today!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Something funny about that--there was a movie I got on Netflix where people could change genders and they showed a shower scene of a guy changing into a girl. The Hollywood beauty standard is exactly such that the change over, without any specifically great special effects, is eerie. Because the flat-tummy, hairless bodies are virtually the same.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

That's a guy with no testicles but about a thousand more steroid-ripped muscles than you'd normally find in the whole of the Orlando area

Actually it's more HGH than steroids...he suffered from gigantism (until an operation on his pituitary in his early 20s). (wiki entry)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

My pardon then, again, I know not of what I specifically speak (even if I am generally right about the rampant abuse of steroids in certain entertainment industries).