Once the Abrahamic Religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) became huge. It's all about "Women are evil sluts who do nothing but sin and tempt the good and pious men", it's pretty evident in modern societies that have large populations of people that follow these religions.
The correct answer has three upvotes, and Victorian era rises to the top. Well, at least you have 4 upvotes now.
I feel like it has to be much more complicated than this. Sure they influenced the culture but a lot of polytheistic cultures seemed to also have coverings
Victorian England is responsible for most of our annoying modesty rules. As to why... I'm not certain, they were just fucking prudes.
Women have been covering their breasts for modesty for ~5,000 years, not 150. Used as a means of identifying which women are “respectable” and which women are “publicly available” to men, upper class women in ancient Mesopotamia were made to wear veils that were wrapped loosely over their hair and fell to their waists, but poorer women were not allowed, and faced harsh punishments if they dared to wear them.
modesty codes have predated Victorian England by a vast margin.
in fact... by some standards, VE was positively hedonistic. there are cultures where a woman seen un-escorted by her husband would be murdered for it. can you imagine what would have happened if the iranian girls protesting a hijab instead decided to flash people? those laws predates victorian england by quite a lot.
Victorian England is responsible for most of our annoying modesty rules.
Yeah, it's why people still avoid showing any skin at all, why women still wear corsets, and why we still wear ridiculously large hats.
And then we just never changed from then.
Hey, man, don't shit on my corsets and hats.
It’s a conspiracy by Big Dairy to keep us udderly focused.
My Holstein brings all the boys to the yard...
I have been told that the taste of breast milk makes you want to hurt yourself, so Big Dairy is doing us all a favor with that one, honestly.
I am more concerned with minimalism being a scheme by Big Small to sell us more less.
I see people blaming "Victorian England" for modesty, as if Full Female only Body and Face veiling hasn't been prevalent since before the Byzantine Empire
"Blame England" is basically the "Blame Canada!" of history discussions.
Okay I'm gonna post something like an actual answer, which I feel like will get downvoted bc y'all are men but whatever.
Women's bodies are sexualized, plain and simple. Breasts perform the biological function of nourishing a baby, but that has seemingly become secondary to their entity as an object of sexual desire, namely by men. So you have 3 factors - breasts are seen as sexual in nature, sex is considered taboo in many western cultures, and men are generally the ones who hold positions of power. Put that all together and you have laws and cultural attitudes that require that breasts be concealed in public.
Men's nipples are completely fine though. Men can walk around shirtless (in many places, perhaps not "most" but 100% more than can be said for a woman) and no one bats an eye, but the female nipple is considered obscene because it is seen as sexual.
All this "they don't" "not in Europe" "yeah aren't you disappointed" "hurr durr udders" fuckouttahere with that dismissive bullshit lmao
I think OP knows all this and agrees with it as well. I think they were asking historically when the shift happened.
Breasts don't need to be large throughout adult life for the purpose of nursing. Look at the non-human apes and other primates. The hypothesis that large adult human breasts outside of nursing evolved due to sexual selection is completely reasonable.
Sexual selection is not inherently good or bad. It just is. If that theory is correct, then breasts which are (on many women) large before and between nursing stages came about due to sexual attraction. There was selection for women with larger breasts and selection for men attracted to them. It's not the responsibility or fault of either sex, and the genes increasing both the attraction in males and the breast size in females are passed through both sexes. Fathers and mothers who have daughters with larger breasts and sons attracted to them will have more grandkids.
None of this comes with the baggage of how we should set up our society. We can suppress sexual activity in public, demand consent, be free to cover or not cover regardless of how it was we got to where we are today.
Isn't the breastfeeding function part of the reason breasts are sexualized? In other words - biologically males seek a female that can provide for her offspring so there'd be an evolutionary advantage for women who can at least appear to be able to do so.
I think it's more "Women have them, but men and children usually don't".
You are 100% correct.
I think OP agrees with you too, but the question is more around the "why". Once, we were also like animals, and didn't have clothing. To the animal brain, things like large breasts or wide hips means better reproduction. Did we start to cover up because it was cold and we got sick? It makes more sense to me that we started for practical reasons, and the hyper-sexualization came later, probably with religion.
Today, women are sexualized to an insane degree, and expanded to any number of inane body parts and not just breasts.
I think OPs question could also be phrased as "why did sex become so taboo?" And we might get a broader picture.
Since we are all going; here is my take. Breasts were always sexual in nature. For most species they signal fertility and what part of the cycle the individual is in at the moment. At some point human females evolved to have perpetually inflated breasts. There are a few different theories as to why that happened, but it is beside the point for this discussion. So considering they were evolved to attract or dissuade males, I say they certainly have a sexual function. In addition to this, breasts play a big part in sexual pleasure for the wearer.
Now consider people pairing up in monogamous couples. The male suspects that other males might be motivated to pursue his mate by the visage of his mates nice boobies. He asks his mate to cover them up so he feels more safe in his position. Now hundreds of years pass, and what do you know, it is in grained in the cultures. It's not really too bad for the women, so they have lived with it, for the sake of peace. Sometimes it is even convenient to be covered. For example in cold weather. I bet there is a correlation between climate and a cultures willingness to have boobs in the open.
Tribes have not only hidden their populations breasts, they have been known to hide their women all together, so the neighbouring tribes don't steal them. I feel that this is a bit similar. Put a gold bar in a glass display long enough, and someone will try to take it. Everything carries risk. If your society isn't good at maintaining law, then it's a bad idea to display the gold bar. In some places it might not be an issue at all. All women could go around topless as well, but the risk that they are approached by an aspiring male will probably be slightly increased.
So why do it now, in my amazing, functioning, egalitarian and lawful country? It is down to history and people being comfortable with what we have always done.
My humble opinion is that we abolish any law that prevent any boob owner from showing them anywhere. But I'm lazy, so I won't start a revolution over it.
But this ignores all the cultures where women's breasts are not considered sexually. I lived in Africa, and it was actually a big adjustment for me, even though the local people's attitudes were changing due to Western media. 25 years of Canadian upbringing made it hard not to look when women or teenage girls took off their shirts. But that was my problem, not theirs.
And not just Africa. In rural Japan japan, before WWII, women were often topless.
I am not arguing that this happens everywhere, in the same way and is then set in stone forever. People in different places and times had different circumstances. Hence, they could have chosen to handled things differently. Cultural norms can also sometimes change over night. Look at the sexual revolution of the 60-70s for example.
I was trying to answer the question where this norm comes from. Not why this norm isn't universal.
It seems obvious to me that a culture that have normalized breasts in everyday life, would also consider them less sexual in nature.
It varies by culture, but the short explanation is "Victorian morality".
Where?
There's more than a few countries even in Western Europe where women can go topless in public.
Depending on where you're talking about, there's lots of different answers including "they don't"
Can but it's still not normal or typical.
It's actually becoming less normal in a lot of places since every creep has a smartphone with a camera these days. Women have found their pictures or filmclips back on the internet, which was not the reason for going topless.
Also, it's been allowed in the last 50 - 60 years for most countries, not so much before.
Women can go topless in public in most of Canada and the US too, they just don't most of the time.
Tell us about the ones you know about
Even though it's just a text post, I can hear your disappointment.
Once all the boomers die, y'all can hang out topless wherever you want. Everybody else is cool with it.
men realized that women can cast spells with those thing, so we forced you to hide them
AS A MAN I KNOW it's when I got chubby and because I don't like air on my nipples.
Maybe when wars started over them?
I blame the uptight protestants who needed a severe moral code or something.
Also, for a time period, in some tropical places bare breasts supposedly meant a prostitute was working.
I think that in Korea, up to the early 20th century, women of age were topless to show they weren't married. Covered up meant they were no longer free? Need a source on it for specifics if anyone cares to search.
And it was in an African tribe i think that the opposite happened. Bare breasts meant a mother that was actively breastfeeding.
It's all foggy memories though, so accuracy is low.
It's probably to keep prices high.
I'd guess since about the first civilized settlements with agriculture.
