

Of her mammoth mammaries Dolly Parton once said, “I don’t know if I’m supporting them, or they’re supporting me.” The price of surgical enhancement: about $10,000. But do big-breasted women really attract more male attention ? To answer the question, psychologist Nicolas Gurguen — who has studied the sexual benefits of makeup, dog ownership, and other social cues– has now added cup size to his repertoire.

Gurguen knew that previous studies found that guys rate large breasts as more physically attractive than average breasts. But does that affect men’s behavior in real-life situations? To find the answer, he created a variety of studies involving young women and an assortment of padded bras. In one experiment, young women were instructed to sit in a nightclub for several nights — sometimes unpadded, sometimes lightly padded, and sometimes heavily padded under a snug shirt — while the researchers counted the number of men who approached them. Unsurprisingly, the bigger a woman’s breasts appeared, the more men approached her.

But here’s the nagging question: Does having big breasts simply boost a woman’s confidence, encouraging her to unconsciously display more seductive body language? Could it be the attitude rather than the boobs that actually attracts guys? Addressing this technicality in a second experiment, Gurguen recruited a twenty-year-old flat-chested woman and gave her his stash of trick bras. Put on a bra under a tight shirt, he said, stand on the side of the road like a hitchhiker, and stick out your thumb to catch a ride. Cars sped by quickly; motorists had time to see the woman’s silhouette but not her expression or any other subtle body language. The woman alternated between wearing unpadded (A-cup), lightly padded (B-cup equivalent), and heavily padded (C-cup equivalent) bras. The results? Size, it turns out, really does make a difference. Significantly more male drivers pulled over when the woman was wearing the C-cup bra than the A-cup bra. (Important: Although more cars stopped for the woman with a C-cup than B-cup silhouette, the difference was not statistically significant.) Female drivers, meanwhile, were no more compelled to stop for a bosomy hitchhiker.

Why are men so attracted to breasts? Do they signal receptivity, fertility, nurture? In BLONDES I address the question from a scientific standpoint — there are several fascinating psychological and evolutionary theories, including a new one from neuroscientist Larry Young that I blogged about earlier this week. Breasts are a hot research topic in these troubled times. Perhaps Gurguen will investigate a link between recessions and breast size. To what extent are women really still willing to pump and pad themselves? How much is a little lift really worth?