Butt... I digress

They made Her Excellency Freddie Mercury’s rocking world go round. When a girl walked in with an itty-bitty thing and a round thing in his face, it sprang the valiant Sir Mix-A-Lot. Beyoncé didn’t think you could handle being ready for her jelly. And Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas asked you to get all love-drunk over her lovely lady ones again and again and again – and yet again.

So it’s about time that the buttocks got the smack-dabbing attention they so justly deserve.

Despite being the only other pair of spherical objects on the female anatomy, the behind has been unfairly targeted as the "butt of jokes." But why do rear ends deserve such shabby treatment while the other northern set of spherical objects get all the praise? Why do people crudely remark "Kiss my butt!" instead of saying "Kiss my breasts!"? Why is it always the breasts that get more adulation, more attention, more silicone?

Why Men Lie and Women Cry clearly illustrated this anatomical discrimination: The female behind is way behind the female breasts. The rump (or, as the book more diplomatically describes it, hemispherical buttocks) is ranked three times lower than the twin bumps (or full breasts) in terms of what attracts the attention of ogle-happy Martians. But why is there such a big discrepancy between these two sets of body parts when all it boils down to is a matter of fat distribution? Or, for some, the lack of it.

Human relationship experts Allan and Barbara Pease assert that nature (a bosom friend to some, and an evil, unjust foe to others) distributes excess fat tissue as far away as possible from the body’s vital organs so as not to impede their operations. There is usually little or no fat around the brain, heart and genitals (although women might argue that two out of those three organs mentioned are not vital). So where does the excess fat end up squatting? On a woman’s thighs, upper arms and – yes – inside her lovely lady lumps.

According to The Naked Woman (a great book with a lotta pictures), an examination of the female breasts reveals that most of their bulk is made up of fat tissue, while only a small part of the breast is involved in milk production. The rounded shape of the breast is actually created by fat tissue. Meanwhile, the buttocks are formed by masses of gluteal muscles, or "glutes," upon which sits a layer of fat. The Science of Female Beauty tells us that the buns are the chief repositories of fat for the post-pubescent female. And (depending on how you look at it), an undesirable consequence of this fact is cellulite, or the irregular despot – I mean, deposit – of fat, estimated to occur in 95 percent of women over the age of 25. Before you plan on strangling nature for the wrath of cellulite, there is a reason for this despot: the buns store excess amounts of fat for use in breast-feeding and also as emergency food storage in lean times, which is similar to a camel’s hump – a hump, a hump, a hump, a lovely camel hump.

What lesson can we learn from this, aside from the fact that fat is not always that bad? It is that strategically situated fatty tissue attracts men. This is because female bodies evolved as sexual signaling devices for men, and the visually appealing curves on the female bodies are the fast-forward buttons.

But that still begs the question: What makes the fat up there more attractive for some men than the fat down there? Why aren’t both pairs of pairs equally attractive to men? Aren’t they both hemispherical? Doesn’t staring at either twins for more than 30 seconds give the woman every right to crush a man’s family jewels with a pair of rusty pliers?

The popularity of female breasts actually owes a lot to those buns. The rump should actually remind those upper bumps that they are nothing but second-rate, trying-hard copy cats (Cherie Gil, you still rule). According to ethologist Desmond Morris, when our ancestors walked on all fours, it was round, fleshy, swelling red buttocks that played the main role in attracting males, who mounted their mates from the rear. However, when our ancestors started to walk upright (supposedly so that men could throw spears and hold beer cans without spilling the beer), the "female of the species" needed to "successfully shift the interest of the male round to the front, evolution would have to do something to make the frontal region more stimulating." And evolution didn’t think it would be a good idea to develop a pair of stimulating facial cheeks.

Thus, the sexual signals that originally decorated the derriere (in Pinoyspeak, pwet) went TNT to the female’s chest and head instead. Women evolved reddened lips to mimic, ahem, another set of lips while dangling fleshy breasts to mimic puffy buttocks. The result? The breasts became the new bottoms.

By the early part of the 20th century, the bottom was at the bottom of male turn-ons, but the bottom was held in high esteem in ancient cultures. A protruding rear was an ancient signal of female sexuality that was so honored in Greece that a temple was built in honor of Aphrodite Kallipygos – whose name literally meant "the goddess with beautiful buttocks" – thereby making the buttocks the only part of the human body so honored. As I came across this factoid, I was floored. "Dear Lord," I thought. "I wonder what that temple looked like."

But it wasn’t only the early Greeks who thought that fat-bottomed girls made their rocking world go ‘round. Both men and women were fascinated by an extreme case of buttock protuberance (in Pinoyspeak, pwet na pwet), known as steatopygia, a condition that is still seen in some southern African tribes.

In the 19th century, an African woman known only as the "Hottentot Venus" (a.k.a. the original "Baby got back") was once paraded across Europe because of her anatomical phenomenon: She possessed a singularly well-developed case of steatopygia. The Hottentot Venus inflamed the imagination of overly repressed Victorian males who mistakenly believed that African women possessed a stronger sexual drive than their European counterparts, and that this sexual drive manifested itself as (in the words of the Black Eyed Peas) "junk in the trunk." However, much like the signature campaign of Sigaw ng Bayan, the genuineness of this claim was highly disputed. Nevertheless, European women were so desperate to chunk up their trunks that they used artificial means, such as bustles and padding, to get Hottentot on their behind.

But big buns are coming back like bellbottom jeans. Thanks to the likes of J. Lo and Beyoncé, bottoms are well on their way to becoming the new breasts. As women of enhanced derrieres walk, they make men want to prostrate themselves on the altar of Aphrodite; the unique leg and hip design on the female skeleton causes female buttocks to undulate, or (in the words of Sir Mix-A-Lot) "shake that healthy butt." To put it another way, she wiggles while she walks. This causes all post-pubescent males within a 30-foot radius to fall into a hypnotic state because it looks like she is intentionally wiggling her behind at them. And when a woman dons a pair of high-heeled shoes, it forces her to push out her rear even more, making her wiggle more wiggly. It was reported that Marilyn Monroe added two centimeters to her heels to emphasize her wiggle during her performance of Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

And you know what? Eat a couple more of those Gonuts Donuts, because cellulite ain’t as bad as you thought it was. The more hump in the rump, the more fetching it is to the opposite sex. In fact, when women work on tightening them buns, what really happens is that they are losing out on a pair of great-looking hemispheres. The article "Fetching Bums: The Quest for the Callipygian Ideal" explains that women who work out too much lose the natural curve and shapes of their rears. Those bums are what instinctively signal the otherwise clueless Martians that the females in question have potential as mates and not that the females can easily crush Martian skulls between their glutes (although I am sure that this ideal would appeal to some women).

Butt in the end, does it really matter if the breasts or the buns take the title of top turn-on? To my three female readers, just remember this: Like hakots to a political rally, men are drawn to hemispherical female curves even if they aren’t quite sure where they belong. The authors of Why Men Don’t Have a Clue and Women Need More Shoes conducted "The Breast Test" where they showed several pictures of breast and buttock cleavage to men. More than 50 percent of the time, men failed to differentiate one set of cleavage from another. But, you needn’t worry, this is one test that men would be more than happy to take and fail many, many times.

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For comments, suggestions or if you would like to administer the breast test, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.com.