Weird Science ponders the sexism inherent in its favored breast size

Mark & Andrea Busse

Solving the big unknown: just what breast size do men prefer. This was something I wouldn't have predicted: "Previous studies of men’s breast size preferences have yielded equivocal findings." Thankfully, science is here to bring some clarity to this deep mystery about shallow thoughts. Or not, given that the researchers only surveyed white Londoners. At least in that group, medium breasts come out on top, as it were. Although, combined, the fans of "large" and "very large" categories added up to an even greater percentage of the survey population.

But wait, there's more! While they had the males' attention, they also surveyed attitudes towards women. "Further analyses showed that men’s preferences for larger female breasts were significantly associated with a greater tendency to be benevolently sexist, to objectify women, and to be hostile towards women." So, perhaps the confused results from previous studies were the product of having survey populations with varying degrees of sexism.

Pay for a genetic test, rewrite human evolution. Typically, the most unexpected thing you can discover via genetic testing is that you're not related to one of your parents. Someone who sent his DNA into a commercial ancestry service, however, got a rather larger surprise: his Y chromosome wasn't related to anybody else's. At least, anybody we knew about at the time.