Diary of a Wolfeman

Found this european article by way of Wired Tales:

Boom for Busty Danish Natural Resources

Eva Andersen reported some very good news in yesterday’s Jyllands-Posten (Danish Women Are Bursting with Health): the trend has been upward (meaning, I suppose, “outward”) for some time in women’s bust-sizes there. She reported agreement on this point among anthropologists, gender-researchers (k?nsforskeren – you know, those fellow students who were into “Gender Studies” back in college) and, most definitive of all, national underwear producers.

Now, I myself have noticed this phenomenon here in the States, only I saw it way back in the spring of 1990. I don’t know for certain if this has remained a constant in the intervening years or if it has ebbed and waned, but I notice the difference now as well.

See, back in ’90, I was in my senior year of high school. I had survived the ’80’s and was looking forward to graduation and the new decade. For those of you who did not experience this timeframe, you may have noticed that all of the movies geared toward the younger crowd from that time (you see them on USA Network,) featured leading actresses who were rather less endowed than what you see today.

Now, I only noticed this in spring because that’s when the jackets started to come off for the warmer weather. I got to comparing the new Freshman class to my agemates and realized that the only Senior girls with comparable bra sizes were generally larger girls.

At the time, I felt kind of robbed, ya know?

In the years since then, I had no real reason to hang around a high school, so I don’t know what it was like. I can tell you though, that as I have travelled around I have seen fairly consistently that women about three to five years younger than myself are generally buying larger bras than women my age or older. Now that my own son is in high school, I have once again noticed the disparity – and felt like a dirty old man for noticing. (Ahh, the wonders of fatherhood!)

Some might want to chalk this up to the current trend toward obesity here in America, but I would have to disagree. My last job had me driving by both a high school and a college on a daily basis, and most of the girls were of an average, healthy weight.

I have two theories for the difference:

The first is that it might be due to the trend of girls to go through puberty at a younger age. This is theorised by many (if not proven) to be the result of a fattier diet these days. Now, medical science says a girl will enter puberty and have her first cycle when her body is physically capable of bearing a child to term. The magic numbers here are 107# and 14% body fat – when these conditions are reached, menses begins. So, if we eat a fattier diet, a girl retains more fat and adds weight more quickly, thus enters puberty much younger and has more years to develop physically. Seems reasonable enough, no?

The second is that it may be something in the milk. Think about it – the farmers are going to want to select the cows who produce the most milk, and they quite possibly have added supplements to their diet to further increase their production. Who’s to say it wouldn’t have a similar effect on the milk-producing organs of a human female?

It could also be a combination of the two. Of course, I should probably stop wondering about it and simply enjoy the results ;)

Over the weekend, BtFR agreed to loan his washer / dryer pair to C, since Greyduck brought his older pair with him when he moved in and C was using a lousy laundromat for her wash. Swapping the pair in/out wasn’t an issue, and it gave me a chance to chat with C’s new guy, who it turns out is beginning to tinker with Linux and had a couple questions. Happy to help the guy out :)

Anywho, I went down earlier tonight and threw in a load of wash, then went back up to veg with the boys. I went back down after an hour or so to swap the load over to the dryer only to find that the float sensor for the washer had jammed, and water was pouring out into the garage and soaking the bit of carpet at the end of the stairs. Commence swearing here.

So tomorrow it looks like I get to dust off the ol’ tool kit and see if I can’t convince it of the error of it’s ways.