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Breast fetishism (also known as: mastofact, breast partialism, or mazophilia)^[1] is a type of sexual fetish which involves a sexual interest and psychological investment among males and females for female breasts.

Debate exists on whether the modern widespread sexual attraction to breasts among heterosexual males of western society constitutes a sexual fetish.^[2] In clinical literature of the 19th century, the focus on breasts was considered a form of paraphillia; but in modern times this interest is considered normal except when the interest overshadows or dominates the relationship with the partner.^[3] The clothing rituals of tight clothing and the display of cleavage have been attributed to breast fetishism in males.^[4]

The phrase is also used within ethnographic and feminist contexts to describe a society with a culture devoted to breasts, usually as sexual objects.^[5][4]

[edit] History

A protest which appeals to the view that breasts possess a cultural power (comparable with bombs), and are agents which may effect change within a society.

Feminists have argued that examples of breast fetishism have been found going back to the neolithic era, with the goddess shrines of Catal Huyuk (in modern Turkey). The archaeological excavations of the town in c. 1960 revealed that the walls of the shrine(s) were adorned with disembodied pairs of breasts that appeared to have "an existence of their own". Elizabeth Gould Davis argues that the breasts (along with phalluses) were revered by the women of Catal Huyuk as instruments of motherhood, but it was after what she describes as a patriarchal revolution – when men had appropriated both phallus worship and "the breast fetish" for themselves – that these organs "acquired the erotic significance with which they are now endowed".^[6]

The reverence and theorizing shown to breasts also appears in the science of modern civilization. Breast fetishism is claimed to be an example of a contagious thought (or meme) spreading throughout society,^[7] and that breasts are primarily biosemiotic features that have evolved to influence human sexuality rather than serve an exclusive maternal function.

[edit] American culture

Some authors from the USA say that the female breast is the American fetish-object of choice,^[8] and that breast fetishism is predominantly found in the USA.^[9][10][11] The critic Molly Haskell, a feminist from the USA, goes as far as to say that: "The mammary fixation is the most infantile, and the most American, of the sex fetishes".^{[12][verification needed]}

[edit] Nacirema case

In 1957, the American Anthropological Association published a parody essay Body Ritual among the Nacirema by the anthropologist Horace Miner which satirized - by alluding to "the magical beliefs and practices" of the Nacirema tribe - the attitudes to the human body within American culture. The Nacirema ("American", with the letters reversed) society is described as practicing rites of increasing or decreasing breast size in comic opposition to natural circumstances; a process which is motivated by a dissatisfaction with the idealized form of breast(s) existing "virtually outside the range of human variation". Miner goes on to describe the fetishistic situation with which the few women with "hypermammary development" find themselves; "... so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee".^[13]

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[edit] Further reading