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]

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?