Blonde stereotype
Blonde stereotypes are stereotypes of blond-haired people women. Sub-types include the "blonde bombshell" and the "dumb blonde". Blondes are differently stereotyped from brunettes less intelligent. There are many blonde jokes made on these premises. Although chiefly aimed at women, jokes of this style have been aimed at similar stereotypes associated with men, such as the "dumb jock" and the "surfer dude". There are several aspects to the stereotypical perception of blonde-haired women. On one hand, over history, blonde hair in women has been considered attractive and desirable. Blonde hair has been considered attractive for long periods of time in various European cultures when coupled with blue eyes; this perception is exploited in advertising. In contemporary popular culture, it is stereotyped that men find blonde women more attractive than women with other hair colors. For example, Anita Loos popularized this idea in her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Blondes are assumed to have more fun.
Some women have reported they feel other people expect them to be more fun-loving after having lightened their hair. In much of the Americas, such as in North America, the blonde stereotype is associated with being less serious or less intelligent. On the other hand, a blonde woman is perceived as making little use of intelligence and as a "woman who relies on her looks rather than on intelligence." At the same time, people tend to presume that blondes are less serious-minded and less intelligent than brunettes, as reflected in "blonde jokes". The roots of this notion may be traced to Europe, with the "dumb blonde" in question being a French courtesan named Rosalie Duthé, satirised in a 1775 play Les Curiosités de la Foire for her habit of pausing a long time before speaking, appearing not only stupid but dumb; the latter stereotype of "dumb blonde" is exploited in blonde jokes. In Brazil, this extends to blonde women being looked down upon, as reflected in sexist jokes, as sexually licentious.
Alfred Hitchcock preferred to cast blonde women for major roles in his films as he believed that the audience would suspect them the least, comparing them to "virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints", hence the term "Hitchcock blonde". This stereotype has become so ingrained it has spawned counter-narratives, such as in the 2001 film Legally Blonde in which Reese Witherspoon succeeds at Harvard despite biases against her beauty and blonde hair, terms developed such as cookie cutter blonde, implying standardized blonde looks and standard perceived social and intelligence characteristics of a blonde. Many actors and actresses in Latin America and Hispanic United States have blonde hair and blue eyes and/or pale skin, such as Christina Aguilera and Shakira. Annette Kuhn divides blonde stereotypes in cinema into three categories in The Women's Companion to International Film: The "ice-cold blonde": Kuhn defined it as "a blonde who hides a fire beneath an exterior of coldness", she provided Grace Kelly, Veronica Lake, Kim Novak, Mae Murray, Eva Marie Saint as examples.
The "blonde bombshell": Kuhn defined it as "a blonde with explosive sexuality and is available to men at a price". She provided Brigitte Bardot, Lana Turner, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Mae West, Barbara Eden, Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors as examples; the "dumb blonde": Kuhn defined it as "a blonde with an overt and natural sexuality and a profound manifestation of ignorance". She provided Jayne Mansfield, Marion Davies, Alice White, Marie Wilson, Mamie Van Doren as examples. In cognitive linguistics, the stereotype uses expressivity of words to affect an emotional response which determines a gender role of a certain kind. In feminist critique, stereotypes like the blonde bombshell or the "dumb blonde" are seen as negative images that undermine the power of women; the blonde bombshell is a gender stereotype that connotes a attractive woman with blonde hair. The blonde bombshell is one of the most notable and popular female character types in cinema. Many showbiz stars have used it to their advantage, including Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Brigitte Bardot and Mamie Van Doren.
A review of English language tabloids from the United Kingdom has shown it to be a recurring blonde stereotype, along with "busty blonde" and "blonde babe". Jean Harlow started the stereotype with her film Bombshell. Following her, Monroe and Van Doren helped establish the stereotype typified by a combination of curvaceous physique light-colored hair and a perceived lack of intelligence. During the 1950s, the blonde bombshell started to replace the Femme fatale as the mainstream media stereotype. Marjorie Rosen, the historian of women in films, says of the two top blonde bombshells of the time that "Mae West, firing off vocal salvos with imperious self-assurance, Jean Harlow, merchandising her physical allure for the masses, transformed the idea of passive female sexuality into an aggressive statement of fact". In 1993, Sharon Stone hosted a documentary about Harlow: The Blonde Bombshell. "... We comes on at five. — lyrics from "Dirty Laundry", Don Henley, 1982The notion of "dumb blonde" has been a topic of academic research reported in scholarly articles and university symposia, which tend to confirm that many people hold to the perception that light-haired women are less intelligent than women with dark hair.
While there is no evidence that suggests that blondes are less intelligent than other people, it has been sugges
Jane Russell
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was an American film actress and one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. Russell moved from the Midwestern United States to California, where she had her first film role in 1943 in The Outlaw. In 1947, Russell delved into music before returning to films. After starring in several films in the 1950s, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1953, Russell again returned to music while completing several other films in the 1960s, she starred in more than 20 films throughout her career. Russell married three times, adopted three children, in 1955 founded Waif, the first international adoption program, she received several accolades for her achievements in films, including having her hand and footprints immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Russell was born on June 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota, she was the eldest child and only daughter of the five children of Geraldine and Roy William Russell.
Her brothers are Thomas, Kenneth and Wallace. Her father had been a first lieutenant in the U. S. Army, her mother an actress with a road troupe. Russell's parents lived in Edmonton, Canada until shortly before her birth and returned to that city nine days after her birth, where they lived for the first one or two years of her life; the family moved to Southern California where her father worked as an office manager. Russell's mother arranged. In addition to music, she was interested in drama and participated in stage productions at Van Nuys High School, her early ambition was to be a designer of some kind, until the death of her father in his mid-40s, when she decided to work as a receptionist after graduation. She modeled for photographers, and, at the urging of her mother, studied drama and acting with Max Reinhardt's Theatrical Workshop and with acting coach Maria Ouspenskaya. In 1940, Russell was signed to a seven-year contract by film mogul Howard Hughes, made her motion-picture debut in The Outlaw, a story about Billy the Kid that went to great lengths to showcase her voluptuous figure.
The movie was completed in 1941. Problems occurred with the censorship of the production code over the way her ample cleavage was displayed in promotion of the film; when the movie was passed, it had a general release in 1946. During that time, Russell became known nationally. Contrary to countless incorrect reports in the media since the release of The Outlaw, Russell did not wear the specially designed underwire bra that Howard Hughes had designed and made for her to wear during filming. According to Jane's 1985 autobiography, she said that the bra was so uncomfortable that she secretly discarded it and wore her own bra with the cups padded with tissue and the straps pulled up to elevate her breasts. Russell's measurements were 38-24-36, she stood 5 ft 7 in, making her more statuesque than most of her contemporaries, her favorite co-star Bob Hope once introduced her as "the two and only Jane Russell". He joked, "Culture is the ability to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands." Howard Hughes said, "There are two good reasons.
Those are enough." She was a popular pin-up photo with servicemen during World War II. Speaking about her sex appeal, Russell said, "Sex appeal is good - but not in bad taste. It's ugly. I don't think. I've seen plenty of pin-up pictures that have sex appeal and allure, but they're not vulgar, they have a little art to them. Marilyn's calendar was artistic."She did not appear in another movie until 1946, when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow for Hunt Stromberg, who released through United Artists. The film was a box office failure. In 1947, Russell attempted to launch a musical career, she sang with the Kay Kyser Orchestra on radio, recorded two singles with his band, "As Long As I Live" and "Boin-n-n-ng!" She cut a 78 rpm album that year for Columbia Records, Let's Put Out the Lights, which included eight torch ballads and cover art that included a diaphanous gown that for once put the focus more on her legs than on her breasts. In a 2009 interview for the liner notes to another CD, Fine and Dandy, Russell denounced the Columbia album as "horrible and boring to listen to."
It was reissued on CD in 2002, in a package that included the Kyser singles and two songs she recorded for Columbia in 1949 that had gone unreleased at the time. In 1950, she recorded a single, "Kisses and Tears," with Frank Sinatra and The Modernaires for Columbia. Russell's career revived when she was cast as Calamity Jane opposite Bob Hope in The Paleface on loan out to Paramount; the film was a sizeable box office hit, earning $4 million. Russell shot Montana Belle for Fidelity Pictures in 1948; the film was intended to be released by Republic Pictures, but the producer sold the film to RKO, who released it in 1952. Howard Hughes bought RKO Pictures. At that studio, Russell co-starred with Groucho Marx and Frank Sinatra in a musical comedy, Double Dynamite, shot in 1948 and released in 1951, it was a commercial failure. Hughes cast Russell opposite Robert Mitchum and Vincent Price in His Kind of Woman, a film noir directed by John Farrow in 1950 which would be re-shot by Richard Fleischer the following year.
Russell did two
Ann-Margret
Ann-Margret Olsson, known as Ann-Margret, is a Swedish-American actress and dancer. As an actress, Ann-Margret is best known for her roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, The Cincinnati Kid, Carnal Knowledge, The Train Robbers,Tommy, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, All's Faire in Love, she has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, six Emmy Awards. In 2010, she won an Emmy Award for her guest appearance on Order: Special Victims Unit, her singing and acting careers span five decades, starting in 1961. She has a sultry vibrant contralto voice, she had a minor hit in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, scored a disco hit in 1979. In 2001, she recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album, an album of Christmas songs in 2004. Ann-Margret Olsson was born in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland County, the daughter of Anna Regina and Carl Gustav Olsson, a native of Örnsköldsvik, she described Valsjöbyn as a small town of "lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle".
Her father worked in the United States during his youth and moved there again in 1942, working with the Johnson Electrical Company, while his wife and daughter stayed behind. Ann-Margret and her mother joined her father in the United States in November 1946, her father took her to Radio City Music Hall on the day they arrived, they settled in Illinois. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1949. Ann-Margret took her first dance lessons at the Marjorie Young School of Dance, showing natural ability from the start mimicking all the steps, her parents were supportive, her mother handmade all of her costumes. To support the family, Ann-Margret's mother became a funeral parlor receptionist after her husband suffered a severe injury on his job. While a teenager, Ann-Margret appeared on the Morris B. Sachs Amateur Hour, Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, she attended New Trier High School in Winnetka and continued to star in theater. In 1959, she enrolled at Northwestern University, where she was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta, but did not graduate.
As part of a group known as the Suttletones, she performed at the Mist nightclub in Chicago and went to Las Vegas for a promised club date which fell through after the group arrived. They moved on to Los Angeles, through agent Georgia Lund, secured club dates in Newport Beach and Reno, Nevada; the group arrived at the Dunes in Las Vegas, which headlined Tony Bennett and Al Hirt at that time. George Burns heard of her performance, she auditioned for his annual holiday show, in which she and Burns performed a softshoe routine. Variety proclaimed that "George Burns has a gold mine in Ann-Margret... she has a definite style of her own, which can guide her to star status". Ann-Margret began recording for RCA Victor in 1961, her first RCA Victor recording was "Lost Love" from her debut album And Here She Is: Ann-Margret, produced in Nashville with Chet Atkins on guitar, the Jordanaires, the Anita Kerr Singers, with liner notes by mentor George Burns. She had a sexy, throaty contralto singing voice, RCA Victor attempted to capitalize on the'female Elvis' comparison by having her record a version of "Heartbreak Hotel" and other songs stylistically similar to Presley's.
She scored the minor hit "I Just Don't Understand", which entered the Billboard Top 40 in the third week of August 1961 and stayed six weeks, peaking at number 17. The song was covered in live performances by The Beatles and was recorded during a live performance at the BBC, her only charting album was The Beauty and the Beard, on which she was accompanied by trumpeter Al Hirt. Ann-Margret appeared on The Jack Benny Program in 1961, she sang at the Academy Awards presentation in 1962, singing the Oscar-nominated song "Theme from Bachelor in Paradise." Her contract with RCA Victor ended in 1966. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she had hits on the dance charts, the most successful being 1979's "Love Rush," which peaked at number eight on the disco/dance charts. In 2001, working with Art Greenhaw, she recorded; the album went on to earn a Grammy nomination and a Dove nomination for best album of the year in a gospel category. Her album Ann-Margret's Christmas Carol Collection produced and arranged by Greenhaw, was recorded in 2004.
In 1961, she was signed to a seven-year contract. Ann-Margret made her film debut in a loan-out to United Artists in Pocketful of Miracles, with Bette Davis, it was a remake of the 1933 movie Lady for a Day. Both versions were directed by Frank Capra. Came a 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical State Fair, playing the "bad girl" role of Emily opposite Bobby Darin and Pat Boone, she had tested for the part of Margie, the "good girl", but seemed too seductive to the studio bosses, who decided on the switch. The two roles represented two sides of her real-life personality — shy and reserved offstage, but wildly exuberant and sensuous onstage. In her autobiography, the actress wrote that she changed "from Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot-Banshee" once the music began, her next starring role, as the all-American teenager Kim from Sweet Apple, Ohio, in Bye Bye Birdie, made her a major star. The premiere at Radio City Music Hall, 16 years after her first visit to the famed theater, was a smash hit: the highest first-week grossing film to date at the Music Hall.
Life put her on the cove
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
Online Etymology Dictionary
The Online Etymology Dictionary is a free online dictionary written and compiled by Douglas Harper that describes the origins of English-language words. Douglas Harper compiled the etymology dictionary to record the history and evolution of more than 30,000 words, including slang and technical terms; the core body of its etymology information stems from Ernest Weekley's An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. Other sources include the Middle English Dictionary and the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, although the sources for each entry are not stated. In producing his large dictionary, Harper says that he is and for the most part a compiler, an evaluator of etymology reports which others have made. Harper works as a Copy editor/Page designer for LNP Media Group; as of June 2015, there were nearly 50,000 entries in the dictionary. The Online Etymology Dictionary has been referenced by Oxford University's "Arts and Humanities Community Resource" catalog as "an excellent tool for those seeking the origins of words" and cited in the Chicago Tribune as one of the "best resources for finding just the right word".
It is cited in academic work as a useful, though not definitive, reference for etymology. In addition, it has been used as a data source for quantitative scholarly research. Official website
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and singer. Famous for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and was emblematic of the era's attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. More than half a century she continues to be a major popular culture icon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married at the age of 16. While working in a radioplane factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career; the work led to short-lived film contracts with Columbia Pictures. After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress and had roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock.
Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photos before she became a star, but the story did not tarnish her career and instead resulted in increased interest in her films. By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars; the same year, her images were used as the centerfold and in the cover of the first issue of the men's magazine Playboy. Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed when she was typecast and underpaid by the studio, she was suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project but returned to star in one of the biggest box office successes of her career, The Seven Year Itch. When the studio was still reluctant to change Monroe's contract, she founded a film production company in late 1954, she began studying method acting at the Actors Studio. In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave a larger salary, her subsequent roles included a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop and the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and the Showgirl.
Monroe won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her work in Some Like It Hot, a critical and commercial success. Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits. Monroe's troubled private life received much attention, she struggled with substance abuse and anxiety. Her second and third marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, were publicized and both ended in divorce. On August 5, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroe's death was ruled a probable suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death. Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926 as the third child of Gladys Pearl Baker. Gladys was the daughter of two poor Midwesterners. At the age of 15, she married a man nine years her senior, John Newton Baker, had two children by him and Berniece, she filed for divorce in 1921, Baker took the children with him to his native Kentucky.
Monroe was not told that she had a sister until she was 12, met her for the first time as an adult. Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. In 1924, she married her second husband, Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated only some months and divorced in 1928; the identity of Monroe's father is unknown and she most used Baker as her surname. Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy. Soon after the birth, Gladys was able to place her daughter with foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne, they raised their foster children according to the principles of evangelical Christianity. At first, Gladys lived with the Bolenders and commuted to work in Los Angeles, until longer work shifts forced her to move back to the city in early 1927, she began visiting her daughter on weekends taking her to the cinema and to sightsee in Los Angeles. Although the Bolenders wanted to adopt Monroe, by the summer of 1933 Gladys felt stable enough for Monroe to move in with her and bought a small house in Hollywood.
They shared it with actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie. Some months in January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital, she spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was in contact with Monroe. Monroe became a ward of the state, her mother's friend, Grace McKee Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs. In the following four years, she lived with several foster families and switched schools. For the first 16 months, she continued living with the Atkinsons. Always a shy girl, she now developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In the summer of 1935, she stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard and two other famili
Breast
The breast is one of two prominences located on the upper ventral region of the torso of primates. In females, it serves as the mammary gland, which secretes milk to feed infants. Both females and males develop breasts from the same embryological tissues. At puberty, estrogens, in conjunction with growth hormone, cause breast development in female humans and to a much lesser extent in other primates. Breast development in other primate females only occurs with pregnancy. Subcutaneous fat covers and envelops a network of ducts that converge on the nipple, these tissues give the breast its size and shape. At the ends of the ducts are lobules, or clusters of alveoli, where milk is produced and stored in response to hormonal signals. During pregnancy, the breast responds to a complex interaction of hormones, including estrogens and prolactin, that mediate the completion of its development, namely lobuloalveolar maturation, in preparation of lactation and breastfeeding. Along with their major function in providing nutrition for infants, female breasts have social and sexual characteristics.
Breasts have been featured in notable ancient and modern sculpture and photography. They can figure prominently in the perception of a woman's body and sexual attractiveness. A number of Western cultures associate breasts with sexuality and tend to regard bare breasts in public as immodest or indecent. Breasts the nipples, are an erogenous zone; the English word breast derives from the Old English word brēost from Proto-Germanic breustam, from the Proto-Indo-European base bhreus–. The breast spelling conforms to the North English dialectal pronunciations; the Merriam-Webster Dictionary states. Old Irish brú, Russian bryukho". A large number of colloquial terms for breasts are used in English, ranging from polite terms to vulgar or slang; some vulgar slang expressions may be considered to be sexist to women. In women, the breasts overlie the pectoralis major muscles and extend from the level of the second rib to the level of the sixth rib in the front of the human rib cage. At the front of the chest, the breast tissue can extend from the clavicle to the middle of the sternum.
At the sides of the chest, the breast tissue can extend into the axilla, can reach as far to the back as the latissimus dorsi muscle, extending from the lower back to the humerus bone. As a mammary gland, the breast is composed of differing layers of tissue, predominantly two types: adipose tissue. Morphologically the breast is tear-shaped; the superficial tissue layer is separated from the skin by 0.5–2.5 cm of subcutaneous fat. The suspensory Cooper's ligaments are fibrous-tissue prolongations that radiate from the superficial fascia to the skin envelope; the female adult breast contains 14–18 irregular lactiferous lobes that converge at the nipple. The 2.0–4.5 mm milk ducts are surrounded with dense connective tissue that support the glands. Milk exits the breast through the nipple, surrounded by a pigmented area of skin called the areola; the size of the areola can vary among women. The areola contains modified sweat glands known as Montgomery's glands; these glands secrete oily fluid that protect the nipple during breastfeeding.
Volatile compounds in these secretions may serve as an olfactory stimulus for the newborn's appetite. The dimensions and weight of the breast vary among women. A small-to-medium-sized breast weighs 500 grams or less, a large breast can weigh 750 to 1,000 grams or more; the tissue composition ratios of the breast vary among women. Some women's breasts have varying proportions of glandular tissue than of adipose or connective tissues; the fat-to-connective-tissue ratio determines the firmness of the breast. During a woman's life, her breasts change size and weight due to hormonal changes during puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause; the breast is an apocrine gland. The nipple of the breast is surrounded by the areola; the areola has many sebaceous glands, the skin color varies from pink to dark brown. The basic units of the breast are the terminal duct lobular units, which produce the fatty breast milk, they give the breast its offspring-feeding functions as a mammary gland. They are distributed throughout the body of the breast.
Two-thirds of the lactiferous tissue is within 30 mm of the base of the nipple. The terminal lactiferous ducts drain the milk from TDLUs into 4–18 lactiferous ducts, which drain to the nipple; the milk-glands-to-fat ratio is 2:1 in a lactating woman, 1:1 in a non-lactating woman. In addition to the milk glands, the breast is composed of connective tissues, white fat, the suspensory Cooper's ligaments. Sensation in the breast is provided by the peripheral nervous system innervation by means of the front and side cutaneous branches of the fourth-, fifth-, sixth intercostal nerves; the T-4 nerve, which innervates the dermatomic area, supplies sensation to the nipple-areola complex. 75% of the lymph from the breast travels to the axillary lymph nodes on the same side of the body, w
