Busty Babes and Soy Boys
...."I wish, I wish all women had bigger breasts!" exclaimed Billy, and one finger on the monkey's paw curled....
Big bangers. Heavy hangers. We’ve all seen ‘em.
While scrolling through TikTok recently I wondered to myself: is it just my algorithmically-curated feed or do young women in 2022 have larger breasts than ever before?
Evidence from bra sales supports the theory - the average cup size sold by British retailers has been steadily rising, with the most popular size at M&S now a whopping 36DD1. Bra size data is of course partly confounded by rising levels of obesity and improvements in bra fitting, but retailers and manufacturers suspect there’s a real increase too.
For example:
"There's been a huge growth in the small back, larger cup lady, particularly among young girls," says Julia Mercer, head of fit and technology at M&S's underwear department. "The younger girls just seem to have bigger breasts now."2
and from Kelly Dunmore, chief lingerie stylist at Rigby & Peller:
Women are changing, too – Dunmore says that younger girls are much fuller-breasted than they were 20 years ago; she sees 13- to 15-year-olds wearing a G-cup (“There’s no scientific evidence for this, but I’m sure it’s down to hormones, the prevalence of the pill”).3
The simplest explanations are the side effects of oral contraceptive pills (taken by 70% of British women at some point) and the ever earlier onset of puberty in girls. A century ago girls wouldn’t begin menstruating until their late teens, but largely thanks to better nutrition this has now fallen to 11-12 in Western countries. A longer puberty allows more time to develop secondary sexual characteristics.
If it were only women that were affected, these two explanations would suffice. But men are changing too.
Two things are striking about this video - everyone looks older than kids look today, and everyone looks more masculine.
If you don’t believe your lying eyes, scientists have repeatedly found an age-independent decline in testosterone levels over the last few decades even after controlling for rates of smoking and obesity4, and that average sperm counts have halved since the 1980’s5. One theory is that these changes are driven by environmental “endocrine disruptors” - compounds that cause hormonal changes in humans. Potential sources include food and drink, trace pharmaceuticals in the water supply, or microplastic pollution.
Shanna Swan found a link between maternal exposure to phthalates (a group of flexible plastics) and a shorter “ano-genital distance” in boys, a finding sustained in a meta-analysis6. These compounds are theorised (and proven in animal studies) to mimic the estrogen hormone, exerting a feminising effect on the development of genitals of male foetuses. Shorter AGD in boys is associated with lower fertility and genital development disorders. Dr Stuart Ritchie (who wrote the book7 on quality scientific research) was nevertheless unconvinced by her book’s insistence that it was this group of plastics in particular that are responsible for falling sperm counts. He concludes that she “hypes up the influence of toxic plastics far beyond the data”8.
Regardless of the exact chemical culprits, we are clearly seeing a gradual feminisation of both males and females over time, consistent with environmental endocrine-disruptors. Aside from making boobs bigger and gooches smaller this gradual feminisation of the population has social consequences. Birth rates are plummeting across the developed world (exacerbated by expensive housing), and young people are having less sex than ever.
Social explanations for this sex-aversion range from video game addiction in young men to tinder-fuelled “hypergamy” in young women. Dating apps have benefited a small group of attractive men who have more sex than ever, the theory goes, freezing out average men from the sexual marketplace. But surely biology also plays a role, as our poor old low testosterone, low sex-drive soy boys simply lack the animalistic vigour to approach the busty babes in class. A year of compulsory mask wearing can’t have helped matters.
What is to be done?
We do not have to sit back and send milk emojis while Rome burns. There are a couple of things we could do to arrest this slow forced-feminisation and reverse some of its social consequences.
More high quality research into the impact of various potential endocrine disrupting compounds on animals and humans, especially phthalates. Once these compounds are identified convene an international conference to ban them from food and drink supply chains and replace them with safe alternatives, just as we did with CFC-leaking fridges through the Kyoto protocol.
Alter the age cohorts of secondary schools. Girls should enter year 7 at 11-12 years old but boys should have an extra year of messing around somewhere before starting year 7 at 12-13 years old. This would shift the social dynamic away from older sister/younger brother and could even reverse our pitifully low teen pregnancy rate.
Pairing boys and girls in secondary school by physical and intellectual maturity rather than age would also go some way to reverse the relative academic underperformance of schoolboys.
All the breast, ab workout guy
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/bigger-boobs-rise-average-uk-12854249
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/16/womens-breasts-are-getting-bigger
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/26/bras-womens-breasts-getting-bigger-larger-cups
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/1/196/2598434
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28981654/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330267833_The_role_of_exposure_to_phthalates_in_variations_of_anogenital_distance_A_systematic_review_and_meta-analysis
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Fictions-Epidemic-Fraud-Negligence/dp/1847925650
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2021/03/pollution-really-causing-penises-shrink-and-sperm-counts-plummet