Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXThe contrast of this exuberance with the more closel)knit male form, the force of association, and the unquestionablefact that such development is the conditionneeded for healthy motherhood, has served as a basis foran ideal of sexual attractiveness, while broad hips, whichinvolve a large pelvis, are necessarily a characteristic ofthe highest human races, because the races with the largestheads must be endowed also with the largest pelves.It can scarcely be an accidental coincidence that it isprecisely among people of black race, those with the smallestpelvis, that we find a simulation of the large pelvis ofthe higher races admired and cultivated in the form ofsteatopygia. This is an enormously exaggerated developmentof the subcutaneous layer of fat which normallycovers the buttocks and upper parts of the thighs inwoman, and in this extreme form constitutes a kind ofnatural fatty tumor. True steatopygia only exists amongBushman and Hottentot women, and among the peopleswho are by blood connected with them. An unusual developmentof the buttocks is,other African peoples. Sometimes admiration for thischaracteristic is associated with admiration for markedobesity generally, and itmay be noted that a somewhatgreater degree of fatness may also be regarded as a femininesecondary sexual character. This admiration is speciallymarked among several of the black peoples of Africa.An occasional extension of the idea of sexual beauty asassociated with developed hipsis found in the tendencyhowever, found among many(which existed at one time in medieval Europe) to regardthe pregnant woman as the physically most beautiful type.Only second to the attraction of the feminine pelvis,and in civilization usually higher, we must place thebreasts. Among Europeans, indeed, the importanceregion isof thisso highly esteemed that even when the genera][69]