Every time I see that use of "Walid Jumblatts" I laugh. But seriously, I mean, women have surgery to reduce the weight and report (they tell me) feeling much better afterwards.
20lbs sounds wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but a lot wrong.
10 lbs/breast? I could believe that. The point of this post is to make me wistfully heft 10 lb plates next time I'm at the gym, I suspect.
re: 3
Oh, sure, no doubt some people's weight that. But 'average' D-cup breasts? No way.
20lbs sounds wrong.
yeah, for a newborn too. a common range would be 6-10lbs.
If I recall all the myriad bra-size discussions, D-cup doesn't by itself describe a size, it's proportional to band size. (That is, 32 Ds and 40 Ds aren't the same size breast on differing ribcages, they're different sizes -- D means more like "proportionally biggish", than '750 ml'.) So maybe at the larger end it might be right.
I'm a 36C, and mine can't possibly weigh more than a few pounds each. Like maybe 6 pounds altogether?
Remember that cup size changes with strap size, so a 42D is significantly bigger than a 32D. When you change strap sizes, the cup size usually goes up or down accordingly.
yeah, for a newborn too. a common range would be 6-10lbs.
That's why he said it would be like having two fat newborns attached to you, one on each side.
If I recall all the myriad bra-size discussions,
Well, you should know better than all of us, but I suppose B, BG and m. leb will supply the majority of the knowledge in this discussion.
Is it wrong that I'm sitting here thinking "Okay, mostly fatty tissue. So about as dense as butter. How many pounds of butter would I need to sculpt..."
Either my visualization is faulty, or butter is less dense than breast tissue, because that method is giving me much lower estimates than the article would suggest.
re: 6
Yeah, but I just googled a few British sites on breast reduction, and the mass removal even at the fairly extreme end wasn't in that range.
Average breast weight, apparently, is around 0.5lb per breast.
Further googling, finds that people with gigantomastia, i.e. way at the extreme end of the distribution and not just people with very heavy breasts, may be in the 10lb or more per breast range.
re: 11
That's why 20lbs sounds way out of line.
This should help: Before and after pictures of breast reduction surgery including notes of the mass removed in each case.
Ok, so there's no way that the hangy parts weigh ten pounds each. Clearly, this research has been funded by the Bra Industrial Complex.
Yeah, even in the most extreme cases on that site linked in 13 the numbers are nowhere near.
You don't have my sympathy anymore, ladies with big bazoombas.
I will say that when I was pregnant the largest bra I could find was a 32J, and it wasn't fucking big enough, and I had *such pain*. Oy.
Also, I do not own a kitchen scale, but half-assed experimentation suggests that my left tit weighs less than a 16 oz can of soup.
Yeah, and might I add that it's really hard to estimate one's own boob weight.
I will say that when I was pregnant the largest bra I could find was a 32J, and it wasn't fucking big enough, and I had *such pain*. Oy.
*fears*
Well, yeah. They're attached. How are you supposed to weigh them on a kitchen scale without either leaning on the scale or supporting their weight.
The pictures in 13 are fascinating.
19: On the other hand, pregnant and breastfeeding I changed sizes maybe a cup size -- enough to make my bras fit badly, but not enough to require different ones. So no necessary need to worry.
19: Oh my god, seriously. Ow ow ow. And not where you might think, but actually *under* the boob, along the ribs.
If I were less lazy and had an ounce of business sense, I'd totally start making *real* maternity bras for women with real boobs, and I'd reap a fucking fortune.
My best guess is that my cock weighs at least twenty pounds, so it looks like I deserve some sympathy here.
Those pictures in 13 are depressing. Some of those women, dear god; and some of the others you think, fuck if they'd just had decent-fitting bras they'd never have had to bother with surgery.
it's really hard to estimate one's own boob weight.
At UnfoggeDCon, I'll be offering free estimates...ladies. If I guess wrong, you can have any stuffed animal on the bottom shelf.
any stuffed animal on the bottom shelf
IYKWIM.
I don't think I want to know where the 'bottom shelf' is.
you could have boob butter sculpture contests at unfogged.com! Like the state fair, but dirty.
IYKWIM
That Apo has a bottom shaped like a shelf.
Any stuffed bottom on the animal shelf -- new Morrissey song title?
25: I'm fairly sure some of the smaller women are doing it for cosmetic reasons.
One woman got rid of over 2 kg from each breast though. She must feel like she's living a completely new life.
30: My bottom is shaped like an apostrophe.
Having now read the article, it's clearly wrong that your average D-cup breast weighs 20 lbs. But it's quite possible that 38 or 40 DD or the larger cup sizes (the article says they tested up to JJ, for christ's sake) weigh 20 lbs, either as a pair or in some extreme cases individually.
And it's also true that finding a decent sports bra if you have reasonable-sized boobs is irritatingly difficult.
10 lbs/breast? I could believe that.
You really find that credible, Labs? I think that perhaps your strength has caused you to underestimate what ten pounds would feel like to most other people. Twenty pounds seems like an awful lot.
But it's quite possible that 38 or 40 DD or the larger cup sizes (the article says they tested up to JJ, for christ's sake) weigh 20 lbs, either as a pair or in some extreme cases individually.
Not based on the weights in 13 it's not.
All questions about the effect of exercise on breasts by size answered here.
11--
yeah, my first thoughts too. we're talking tissue w/out bones, so only marginally more dense than water. at a pint a pound, ten pounds is five quarts, i.e. a gallon and a quarter.
scale the volume down to a gallon in order to be generous with the 'marginally more dense' (i.e. suppose the specific gravity were as high as 1.25) and we are still looking at a volume of one gallon for a weight of ten pounds.
one gallon jugs? i'm thinking not, outside of the pathology textbooks.
oh, and ttaM, don't get all imperialistic on me with your cunning 20-oz pints and all.
I'll be offering free estimates
I seem to remember a popular practical joke among the pubescent set in North Wales, based on the homophony of the verb "to weigh" and the joyous exclamation "whhhheyyyyy!"
37: I wouldn't be too sure, ogged. The second woman had four and a half pounds removed from one breast. Jeebus.
the pubescent in north wales must find joy wherever they can.
a new piece of coal, for instance. a stick with bark still on it.
a popular practical joke
Then there's this guy.
The second woman had four and a half pounds removed from one breast.
The second woman is a freak whose breasts still didn't weigh close to ten pounds each.
My bottom is shaped like an apostrophe.
If Roberta's is shaped like a comma, you guys could snap in place like yin-yang symbols.
Or if she has her period, you guys are like a semicolon!
44: Definitely super-sized breasts, but I think you're underestimating the weight of her breasts. I don't want to be a purveyor of w-lfs-nesque scientific hypotheses, but I think there breast weight is spread over a larger area the closer one moves to the chest, and so looks relatively less full and weighty. She might easily have ten pound breasts.
Okay, OGGED IS RIGHT. I WAS WRONG. TEN POUNDS IS WAY TOO MUCH, AND A TEN-POUND BOOB, WHILE IT MAY EXIST, IS PROBABLY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY RARE.
Just wanted to make sure you noticed that, Ogged.
Huh. How do people do the "humorous close tag"? Mine disappeared.
I take it your c key *and* your e key aren't working now, M/tch?
a new piece of coal
I'd like to see such a thing. Sorites paradox in action!
gosh that brings back memories. I haven't had a good stare at a piece of coal in years. I think I'll stop by the coal merchant on the way home and make an evening of it.
sorites, what?
if i hand you a synthetic diamond, fresh squeezed from graphite in the g.e. labs, you'd say it's a new piece of diamond, no?
so if i take a bunch of graphite, squeeze it a bit less at a bit lower temp in order to get anthracite, you wouldn't say that's a new piece of coal?
i'm not seeing the problem.
56: Make sure to swing by Newcastle with it so the locals can get an eyeful.
see, cryptic? just read 56. there's a man who appreciates a good piece of fresh coal. a man from wales.
and if it were brand new, just squeezed coal, i'm sure he'd only be the happier.
now let's see how he feels about sticks. with the bark left on, too!
to be honest, sticks with bark on them leave me cold. At my school, you were either a sheep-fucker or a stick-waver - the two youth tribes didn't really mix with each other. So the whole craze sort of passed me by, and you have to admit that in retrospect it seems kind of silly.
"the pubescent in north wales must find joy where they can: a tumescent mentula, or an old rubber band."
61 sounds like a Black Box Recorder song lyric.
i'm laughing a lot more at your part of the exchange than mine, and this despite the fact that i'm usually the first person to think i'm funny, indeed the only.
i take consolation in the thought that i'm at least feeding you good straight lines, or at least you're making something good out of them.
12: ttaM has a terribly literal mind. He may suffer from Aspergers.
I suppose that if I started talking about shitloads of this or that he'd be going on about the average Scottish shitload and then comparing it to American shitloads.
Well, given how much of the Scottish diet depends on stuff like blood and organ meats, I'd be willing to bet those are some pretty major shitloads.
We were just fantasizing about 20 pound boobs in a perfectly normal male heterosexual way, and then he comes in with his "reality".
The thought of 20 pound boobs is truly not sexy to anyone who, unlike you, doesn't think of cattle as sexy.
67--
you'd think. i do think. and yet the p.3 girls in london tabloids are photo-shopped into those proportions.
baffled me why they thought anyone would like it, but apparently large parts of london do.
and cattle still roam for the most part unmolested in s. england.
English men are too busy molesting each other.
69. He was only living the fantasy of half the population of these islands.
68: I've seen the p.3 girls. And no, they really aren't photoshopped into 20lb boobs.
71--
are you doubting that they are photo-shopped?
that they are photo-shopped so as to appear to have grotesquely large breasts?
that such breasts, even grotesquely large as they are made to appear, would weigh 20 lbs?
i'll share the third doubt with you. maybe the weight corresponding to that size would be 12 lbs. maybe one stone, since we're in the uk.
but the first two doubts just suggest you saw different tabloids.
(nora: they shot you *four* times in the tabloids!
nick: that's ridiculous--they didn't get close to my tabloids.)
that such breasts, even grotesquely large as they are made to appear, would weigh 20 lbs?
That one. Or even 12 lbs. Seriously.
Whatever. One of my breasts totally weighs 6 pounds.
Jesus, B. you were the one who started off believing th 20 lb. shit.
20 lb. shit, now that's feasible.
yeah, i'm with you--see my 39.
who knows what weight would correspond to the p.3 grotesqueries. if there are men whacked enough to find that attractive, there may well be a population even more whacked who would find 20 lb'ers a turn on.
or breasts as large as four-drawer filing cabinets.
or breasts as large as double-wide trailers.
or breasts as large as the principality of monaco.
there's just no telling how whacked some guys can be.
75: Right, but then I looked at the link in page 13!
74: Really? Crap, now I have to change my mind AGAIN? I don't believe you, LeBlanc.
Also, are you going to DC?
77: Eh, the point of things like the p.3 girls isn't "what men find attractive"--it's I dunno, some weird thing about some *performance* of masculine identity that requires exaggerating one's sexual response to exaggerated feminine sexuality. Or the advertising thereof, so as to define one's target audience or "realness" or something along those lines.
I have a cold and am not going to articulate it more clearly than that.
71. The tradition predates photoshop by decades. Pure surgery. The classic of the genre is long since retired and living with her girlfriend and manager, which I love.
78: I dunno, I'll weigh them later. But definitely at LEAST 4 pounds. I mean, a big apple is like a pound, isn't it? Shit.
And yeah, I think I will go to DC. Why the hell not?
I meant that an apple was a half pound.
Also, the butter analysis is no good. Breasts are human tissue, which means they are full of water, right? Mostly water.
80--
pure surgery. i like that line.
okay--any doubts that it involves photoshopping or surgery or other deeply non-natural processes?
79--
this could be right. i'm not the person to ask, since i was neither finding the whole thing attractive nor performing any masculinity.
but i suppose part of your point is that even the right person to ask would be the wrong person, in that he would have to keep up the performance in answering it.
82: Try the boob vs. soup can heft when you get home, LeBlanc, and let me know. Also FUCK you're going to DC. I hate missing out on fun.
84.1: No, of course not: surgery.
I have a cold
Is it a chest cold?
It is, actually. Goddamn cough. I'm totally wallowing in self-pity here.
Though I will say that a hacking cough while you're taking a piss is kind of fun, actually.
Next time I have to pee, I will, and I'll report back.
Tina Small was never (IIRC, AITID) a page 3 girl, but certainly had a following in the Sunday Sport in the 1980s, so the taste is incipiently there among the British working class of whom I am thankfully not one.
Samantha Fox had a Top Forty song in the midst of her soft-porn career. She's popular in Bollywood. She's a born-again Christian lesbian nude model. She's everything that you'll never be.
Making a lot of assumptions about the unfoggetariat, aren't you John?
I didn't mean it in a harsh way.
I'm certain we can put together at least some of those traits. TLL is a Christian. Ogged was a nude model.
Labs is totally popular in Bollywood.
Actually, I was speaking to you personally, Rob.
Moira is a lesbian. Ben had a top forty hit in the middle of his soft porn career.
OK, lesbians and Christians are thick on the ground here. I question the nude models and the pop stars.
And I question them rigorously, using highly advanced coercive interrogatory techniques.
According to reliable sources, the human head weighs 8 pounds. Would breasts really weigh more than twice that?
Wiki says 12 pounds for the average human head.
i looked into this recently, trying to figure out the percentage change on the burden on my neck muscles when i wear a bike-helmet of such and such weight.
i was coming up with 6-8 kg. lower than i would have thought, but more than 8 lbs. these numbers came up a lot, tho.
Eskimos have over two words for snow.
105:Let me try the kitchen scales. The levitation will help in accuracy.
Nope. 3 1/2 pounds.
Oh, for fuck sake, somebody just decapitate someone and weigh the head.
This is the problem with Unfogged - all theory, no empiricism.
I think MSNBC just quoted that 15-23lb stat, which I've heard elsewhere, without thinking about it. Anyhow, what LB said about cup sizes being proportional, and what everyone else said about no fuckin' way it's 10lb a breast.
My head is bigger than your boobs, laydeez.
I think this is the thread that I will point my gf to to explain who we are going to see in DC.
I once went out with girl who was a Samantha Fox fan. Fox's song "Naughty girls need love too" meant a lot to her.
10 lbs/breast? I could believe that. The point of this post is to make me wistfully heft 10 lb plates next time I'm at the gym, I suspect.
This is how we know both that Labs is gay, and totally not going to the gym. I'm married to a woman who's, uh, generously endowed, and no way are those things even close to a 10 lb. plate.
For a project once I sat down and look at something like 10,000 images of breasts. Although it had nothing to do with what I was looking for, you couldn't help but notice the variability. Especially in isolation, like that. Every once in a while an image would come up that would make you think: wow, that poor womans back. (JE's head wouldn't stand a chance)
Has any of the people making comments about page 3 models actually seen a British tabloid paper?
Massive plastic surgery enhanced boobs aren't really typical of the genre. It's not generally (outside of the Sport which isn't a mainstream tabloid but rather a weird soft person version of the National Inquirer) the aesthetic they are going for.
It's all about marketing a certain type of fake 'girl next door' fantasy. Huge artificial breasts don't fit with that fake girl next door look.
ttam, we're too fine a class of people here to do the kinds of things you Scots seem to like doing, such as trainspotting, heroin, and low-res tabloid porn.
117: To that list, I would add Mars bar fritters.
Um, In Minnesota we eat those.
Come to think of it, up there in Newfieland I think you guys do too.
Huge artificial breasts don't fit with that fake girl next door look.
Sez yu. My fake girl next door has appropriately huge artificial breasts, tho after smoking for forty years, I can no longer inflate them to their original awesomeness.
Did anyone write msnbc to alert them to their error?
116: Has any of the people making comments about page 3 models actually seen a British tabloid paper?
Yes, but not since the early 90s. Admittedly my memory is not as, uh, fresh as yours, Mr. Scot.
Come to think of it, up there in Newfieland I think you guys do too.
A base slander against the good people of Newfoundland.
I didn't know you had Mars bar fritters in Minnesota. How come I can't get one in NYC, supposed culinary capital of North America? Yes, I'm using the term culinary rather loosely.
Mafia control. Corrupt Italian Catholics. Need I say more?
124: They serve them at Chip Shop in Park Slope, 5th Ave and 6th St in Brooklyn.
The Mafia's gonna get those motherfuckers. Mark my words.
This seems apposite to the post and several comments, especially 77. Maybe it's too obvious to mention.
That movie was terrible, and not even terrible in a new way, but in a John-Waters-ripping-off-everything-he's-ever-done way.
123:I went agoogling for informative purposes only, and was not impressed with the style of the Sun's principal photographer for decades, who is firstnamed Beverley anyway.
So I have seen a few hundred of the pictures.
Have a look at Mrs. Dog the Bounty Hunter. If your head is bigger than her breast then you are probably a hippo or a rhinoceros or something.
My brother bought that Samantha Fox single when it came out, because it had a picture of her on the outside. To this day, I still think it's the stupidest thing he's ever done.
For research purposes only: the canonical Page 3. And the archives, going back to the 80's.
Some airbrushing, surely (or the modern day digital equivalent thereof), but not, I think, photoshopping to enhance size, and certainly nothing grotesquely large. Perhaps you were perusing the more low-rent publications whilst you were abroad, kid and B?
And anyway, Amurica certainly has its share of outlandishly huge breast publications, although I don't think any of them also purport to provide news.
124
How come I can't get one in NYC, supposed culinary capital of North America?
Your culinary capital is partly imaginary. Hell, until 1964 or so you New Yorkers had never even heard of tacos.
Can you get a good breaded pork tenderloin sandwich anywhere in NY? (hint: the good ones have a slice of onion at least 1/4 inch thick, at least four dill pickle chips, and mustard). And do your salad bars have two kinds of pickled herring, hmmmmm?
And chicken-fried steak -- and all-you-can-eat walleye -- "broasted" chicken --
In Elgin ND, a hamburger and fries and a fountain Coke is only $3.63, and coffee is still a nickel.
If you lived on good solid Midwestern fare such as this, the idea of ten-pound breasts would seem less far-fetched.
good solid Midwestern fare
vs.
tacos and chicken fried steak.
Does not compute.
Chicken-fried steak is a truckstop mainstay from Indiana to the Dakotas.
wrt tackos: OK, I concede. They're not midwestern fare.
But the broasted chicken, now, and the all-you-can-eat walleye ...
This is the first I've heard tell of broasted chicken, "an American tradition since 1954." I'd like to remind everyone that
The words ..."Broaster®," "Broasted®," "Broaster Chicken®," "Broaster Foods®," "Broasterie®," and
"Bro-Tisserie®" are registered trademarks of The Broaster Company.
Wikipedia claims chicken-fried steak is associated with Southern food, and indeed “is part of the official state meal of Oklahoma”. Furthermore, it laughably claims:
The frying medium has traditionally been butter, lard, or other shortening, but in recent years health concerns have led most cooks to substitute vegetable oil.
The people must rise up to correct these offences against nature.
BitchPhD: Me: 40DD. 10 lbs, even for both: not a chance.
I stand definitively corrected, and shall in future assert that I am an expert about bras alone, and not their contents.
It is funny how hard it is to reject something flatly stated in an article as just plain false. I should have known it was nonsense from the "How big is ten pounds of butter" argument, and I was still trying to save it as true somehow.
re: 143
I can't believe you doubted 2.
ttaM is gloating. Obviously he's hefted a lot of those thingies.
And Hilzoy, the philosopher, is flaunting her assets. Hmph.
I'll put breast-weight down with oatmeal on my list of topics on which not to doubt a Scotsman.
And don't ever ask them whether they're wearing anything underneath that.
re: 147
I've never worn a kilt. I kid about it online but I don't really have much time for the 'heritage' version of Scottishness. It bears about as much relationship to present-day Scotland as the Confederate reënactors do to the modern day U.S.
re: 146
tbh, I did pretty much the same 'butter' type calculation you did. And then thought about an object that weighs 20lbs -- and the things I came up with were heavy.
ringdingdiddleiddlelahdio, ringdiediddlyio-och! lad I don't know where ya been but I see ya won first prize!
why are we still floundering in umempiric ignorance?
i don't know why any of our inquisitive, scientifically-minded female posters has not done a simple displacement test.
find a bowl whose capacity you can measure, when the bowl is filled to the brim. fill it so. then use your breast to displace water from the bowl, e.g. by lowering your breast into the bowl until you feel the rim of the bowl press with an even and moderate pressure on your rib-cage all around its rim (or rib-cage, sternum, clavicle, guggle, and zatch).
now subtract the volume of water remaining in the bowl (oh--did i point out this would be better done in the bath?) from the volume of water originally in the bowl. see how many fluid ounces your breast displaces.
your breast will weigh that many avoirdupois ounces, or perhaps a bit more.
please post your results in the thread below. no blaming me for wet floors.
As I suspected, my left boob (size C cup) is not quite a pint. Say, 12 oz. Please send these results to all relevant journalistic venues.
thank you, awb.
you get first-author credit on the article in nature.
(lancet? jama?)
If a pint of water is a pound, and AWB's boobs were made of water, they'd be about 1.5 lbs. However, if they were made of gold, they'd be roughly 19 times that, or almost 30 pounds. Mercury would be about 13 times that, which comes close to 20 lbs. and also would be jiggly.
