300% Increase in Boob Size on Comic Book Cover Art | Hacker News Reader

300% Increase in Boob Size on Comic Book Cover Art

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I know this isn't strictly OT, but I see it a lot and it bugs me. The article mentions "more than triple the cover space" while the title mentions a 300% increase. A 300% increase is a four-fold increase relative to the starting value, not 3x. This is because a 100% increase is a doubling, of course, so it's easy to get mixed up. If something went up by 1100% it's a twelve-fold increase, etc.

I don’t think percent is ever more clear than “times”. Wish we’d just use that. But I think people like the big numbers.

Boobs up by 30,000 basis points.

> Have illustrators hit their maximum allowable peak for racy imagery, or is there still more to come?

Here's some inspiration from Japan, from a popular comic for teens called Shonen Jump (as in, this isn't even considered porn). The main pic is racy enough, but it duly censors the nipples. However, if you hold it and the following page up to a light, the illustrated "tapioca pearls" shine through in just the right place.

https://soranews24.com/2019/11/06/weekly-shonen-jump-under-f... (NSFW, obviously)

What’s so bad about some titties? I ask this seriously.

Nothing.

Seriously, nothing. It’s just that some exceptionally prude people think female nipples are so sexual that they must be hidden. Not sure why, they’re for babies, and that’s the only thing that sets female nipples apart from male nipples, which are not vilified for public exposure.

Unless a suckling baby turns them on, which is totally on them.

EDIT: Minor clarification

>It’s just that some exceptionally prude people think female nipples are sexual.

I don't think being attracted to breasts/nipples are limited to "exceptionally prude people".

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#Breast...

Back to what separates female nipples from male nipples? It takes a certain amount of prudishness to vilify “immodesty” in only one sex.

That's certainly not the reason most people I know would typically object to imagery of females where the entire focus is on their outward appearance, which is usually some exaggeration of a fantasy "ideal" that a tiny percentage of real women would actually match. But I'll admit I personally find it offensive because of the implied assumption that most guys it's targeted at aren't able to judge women on any other criteria.

You have to look at both sides. Women are also attracted to imagery of men where the entire focus is on their outward appearance, which is usually some exaggeration of some fantasy "ideal". Why no outrage articles about those depictions?

None of this is really new for shounen manga and anime. Before the 2000s, it wasn't uncommon for shounen anime broadcast on network TV to show nipples at times.

Of course it's Yuuna-san and the Hot Springs. Somehow I feel like I saw that coming. It's a nice ecchi show actually, kinda like a newer To-Love Ru.

The title seems misleading because the boobs aren’t getting bigger, the cover composition has just changed to feature then more prominently?

“Modern day covers feature busts that consume more than triple the cover space”

This is supported by the the last chart[1]. Breast area has gone up, but breast to waist ratio has stayed flat, indicating that they're staying the same size relative to the body. In other words, the main characters are taking up more space on the cover, and as a result breasts are taking up more space as well.

[1] https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...

Main change in the 90's?

I think they needed to do something like breast to head ratio, from the sounds of it the waist has got bigger, but the breast to waist ratio has stayed the same. I think if it was compared to head it would give a sense of "size" increase (if any).

Yea, just anecdotally, I feel like comic covers have gotten less horny as the target market has moved away from being exclusively teenage boys (which isn't to say there aren't still plenty of sexually titillating covers). But at the same time, as the art has gotten more sophisticated, I feel like a lot more covers have detailed images of the protagonist, rather then more "zoomed out" action seens with more going on but less fine detail.

I'd like to point out a tragic but unfortunately relevant story surrounding what I think was probably the best book in the business for a while, a little gem in the middle of a sea of junk: the 2001 Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke reboot of Catwoman.

Prior to Brubaker taking over, Catwoman had become a sexist, ridiculous fantasy character for teenage boys. It was meant to be titillating rather than good. Then Brubaker completely rebooted her, writing her as a defender of the little guy in what amounted to a comic book version of film noir, even bringing back Slam Bradley, the original "detective" of Detective Comics (DC). Accordingly Cooke utterly redesigned her look as toned down, realistic and smart, and tough:

https://www.heroicgirls.com/looking-back-darwyn-cookes-catwo...

Brubaker's stories were first class and a full break from past, and even Cooke himself got to both author and draw an excellent one-off graphic novel called Selena's Big Score.

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Catwoman:_Selina%27s_Big_Score

For a little while -- about three years maybe -- Catwoman was like absolutely nothing else on the shelves. It was like a throwback to the 1940s, classy and dark and smart. Then Brubaker and Cooke left for other projects, and the comic almost immediately reverted to its previous boobfest. It's kind of bounced back and forth in style since then but has never recovered. Without a visionary creative team, comics just revert to the lowest common denominator.

The math in incorrect. It should read, 200% increase in ...

From the article, "Modern day covers feature busts that consume more than triple the cover space and show twice the amount of cleavage compared to comics from the mid 20th century." And, "Busts occupy more than triple the cover space today"

Going from X to X*3 is not a 300% increase but a 200% increase. But... math doesn't seem to be where the author has placed his attention.

It's not just the author. I noticed some years ago that a lot of people have started saying the equivalent of "3 is three times larger than 1" instead of "3 is three times as large as 1" or "3 is two times larger than 1".

It's worth to note that an increase has been in real life as well as result of plastic surgery. And it's not only boob size. Same goes for men though I belive they make use of the gym& supplements. Everyone wants to look "better"/more attractive for obvious reasons(i.e better pay, better life etc)

I assumed boobs were getting bigger because more and more people are becoming obese.

That is the case. A lot more people have become obese since the 1980s for example. Boob sizes would naturally go with it.

"The average Americans' weight change since the 1980s is startling"

"The average woman, meanwhile, expanded from 152 pounds to 169 pounds while her height remained steady at just under 5 feet, 4 inches."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-weight-gain-since-198...

10%, I’ve gotta be honest, isn’t huge. Especially when there are other measures like malnutrition rates falling by 13% which could account for it.

BMI, as an aside, is a crap measurement tool. The body-shape preferences of a Victorian man shouldn’t be used for anything more valuable than toilet paper on the modern day.

Saying the difference between 152 vs 169 is only 10% more is not the right way to think about it though.

Here is what I mean by that:

Let's say for the sake of example that the healthy target weight for that height is 135. So then 152 is 17 pounds overweight and 169 is 34 pounds overweight.

169 is twice as overweight as 152, which is a big deal: A 100% increase in how overweight people are.

It may technically be accurate to say there was only a 10% increase in weight, but we don't start measuring healthy weight at 0 pounds, so it's measuring from the wrong point.

Setting a target weight for a height is BMI. Which i still contend is a crap measurement. Have decent muscle mass, you’re obese. Live a sedentary lifestyle but hit the weight target? Perfectly healthy.

So stupid.

It's crap but it works for most people. I'm not sure many people can even develop the musculature to mess up a BMI measurement unless they are trying really hard

BMI takes nothing but height and sex into account. It's the laziest possible evaluation of someone that's based off two numbers. But that laziness is also why it's so popular, because it takes no effort to produce a judgement over someone.

Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters fame was 185# at 5'8" while on the show (according to some filmed weigh-ins). According to BMI calculations, he's overweight and trending towards obese. And I wouldn't say he's trying very hard to build muscle, he just has a physical job and works out.

It's crap, even for "average" people.

Looking at Jamie from 10 years ago, he looks like he has a lot of visceral fat, as well as a smallish pair of man boobs.

If he doesn't seem overweight to you, that might just be because we have so many people these days who are actually obese.

Take Jamie to China and people would probably call him fat.

It's not just boobs, it's everything in life.

We are now so much more exposed to content options that there's an increasing race for attention. Anywhere you look, you see these changes.

I think the peak for ridiculous boobs was over 10 years ago. On the comic book subreddit, there will be a lot of comments on how ridiculous some of the huge boobed female pics that get posted. I definitely think it’s falling out of favor, which I agree with.

I remember bust size being a notable topic in comic books as a kid because of J. Scott Campbell's illustrative style on Danger Girl as well as Brian Pulido's Lady Death.

Curious about this except butt sizes instead.

Boobs are in the front side. So you won't be able to find many covers with butts.

lol sure you will

https://comicbook.com/news/catwomans-controversial-brokeback...

It’s called the “brokeback pose”.

https://www.thegeektwins.com/2012/03/10-most-ridiculous-brok...

*Broken back.

Brokeback is something quite different.

A lot of female superhero covers twist the character into strange positions so that they can show both boobs and butts. This has become mildly controversial as some of the contortions are essentially impossible for a real human to perform.

- https://i1.wp.com/www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010...

- https://i2.wp.com/www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010...

- https://i2.wp.com/wetalkpodcasts.com/wp-content/uploads/2014...

- https://i2.wp.com/storage.googleapis.com/stateless-thedailyf...

For this we have Instagram

It’s the boobing frog effect.

Lol. What a post for a sunday evening.

Big data is now big tata.

Seriously: don’t you have to be just a little obsessed with breast size to even notice that the depictions are getting larger?

Perhaps the increase in size is all down to how little we care— the size increase is a reflection of how it takes more sex energy to get us to buy things. We’re jaded.

No? It's really obvious and jarring.

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