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Obviously a lot of work has gone into this article by some intelligent people. But I believe the
current version has some major problems in terms of completeness and
neutral point of view.
Approximately three quarters of the words in this article are about the appearance, size, and shape of breasts. Plastic surgery is given around 600 words, which is more than the number of words on puberty, female sexual pleasure, cancer, and breastfeeding combined. From my perspective as a female reader, these ratios are plainly ludicrous. To make a more conventional Wikipedia argument, the article’s emphasis on breast size and shape, and on cosmetic surgery, is way out of line with how high-quality secondary and tertiary sources on breast health and sex education discuss the subject.
Consider, for example,
the WebMD article on breast changes in menopause. It lists three types of changes: 1. Tenderness or pain, 2. Changes in breast size and shape, and 3. Lumps in the breast. The Wikipedia article mentions menopause four times. Every single one of those four mentions relates menopause to changes in breast size and/or shape, and to nothing else. And this example is not an isolated problem.
I would expect a general article on this subject to talk a lot more about breast physiology, about sensations in the breast that are experienced by women and girls, about the health concerns that owners of breasts have (girls and women worry about their breasts a lot), and about the significance of the subject to infants. Some particulars I’d like to see are:
Expand discussion of breast changes during puberty. Eleven-year-olds
are routinely taught a lot more than what's currently in this article.
Expand discussion of breast changes during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause.
Describe where and how colostrum, and then mature milk, are produced within the breast. A good online source about the physiological basis of breastfeeding is here, from the WHO:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK148970/
Describe the hormonal and physical processes that cause ejection of milk
Mention that breastfed infants and toddlers nurse for comfort and bonding as well as for nutrition
Describe signs of breast cancer, and detection methods.
(In case this needs needs to be said - editors of all genders can write well about this stuff.)
The long sections on asymmetry and ptosis could be condensed to a few sentences each - these aspects are covered in far more detail than is necessary for a general article.
This article has an emphasis on plastic surgery that fills up most of four sections. The section on body image gives no alternatives to "a woman [who] considers her breasts deficient in some respect" except surgery and hormonal treatments. The idea of coming to accept one's body as it is is not mentioned. Given the limited extent to which the topic of plastic surgery is brought up in secondary and tertiary sources that discuss breast health for general readers, I think it warrants one section. In this, we should:
Briefly describe some conditions for which plastic surgery is performed
Mention that surgery for breast reduction can be medically necessary (e.g. to reduce strain on the woman’s back and shoulders)
Describe the risks associated with surgery and breast implants
Sensible proposal that should lead to a much improved article delivering considerably more value to women and girls. I'd add that the section on clinical significance in particular seems far too short at 1.5% of overall article length (it's even dwarfed by the material on plastic surgery). Compare, say, the
prostate article, where the section on clinical significance represents about 50% of the overall article.
AndreasJN46614:29, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
It's clear that you are focused on the biomedical aspects, but let's keep the "Society and culture" section in mind as well. Right now, the "Body image" subsection is a part of that section, and I see it as more relevant to that section than to the Clinical significance section. Of course, the Clinical significance section should mention breast surgery as well. As for "male breasts," human
male lactation is not well-documented and has been met with much skepticism.
I agree with
Cullen328 and support your great analysis, Clayoquot. Article structure tends to reflect the existing content of articles, so is usually a symptom (rather than a cause) of the problem, and is best relieved with a good health dose of editing and article expansion. --
Tom (LT) (
talk)
01:22, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Tom (LT), what about the suggestion to place a "Male breasts and lactation" section under the "Breastfeeding" "Clinical significance" heading? The section should include
gynecomastia material, but human male breastfeeding is not a significant thing. See the
Male lactation article and other sources on the matter. Also, body image material is significantly relevant to "society and culture."
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
01:33, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
I crossed out part of my above comment because I read part of the proposed layout wrong. I'm fine with a "Male breasts" heading, but I don't think we need "male lactation" as part of it. Male lactation can have a brief mention in the section, but I don't see that there's so much to state about it that it needs to be represented in the heading.
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
01:39, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Another thing I should have mentioned is that it's not typical to use the "Anatomy" heading in our anatomy articles since all of it is anatomy. We go by a
WP:MEDMOS#Anatomy setup. That stated, we don't always follow the entire setup.
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
01:50, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm inclined to move the proposed ==Endocrinology== section lower in the outline (it's more technical + less interesting to most readers), but otherwise, I think this is a good approach.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
01:51, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Sure. I was thinking that it might be efficient to have an early introduction to how various hormones affect the breast, but after looking into this more I don't think it's necessary.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
05:45, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Let's do it! Right now, here is where the article stands: Prose size (text only): 30821 characters (4852 words) of "readable prose size". I have already dug in on minor trimming, minor expanding, and minor refining. This is a large article and a formidable project. I am excited by the rally and proposals above! Cheers! {{u|
Checkingfax}} {
Talk}12:37, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Clayoquot, I see that you struck out "and lactation" in your proposed layout above. Thanks for that. I want to reiterate that I'm not stating that we shouldn't include a little on it. Just that it's not significant enough to have much space in the article and therefore not in a heading either.
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
18:38, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Content cut from the article, as discussed in September 2017 assessment
Extended content
Shape and support
Some breasts are mounted high upon the chest wall, are of rounded shape, and project almost horizontally from the chest. These features are common to girls and women in the early stages of thelarchic development (the sprouting of the breasts). In the high-breast configuration, the dome-shaped and the cone-shaped breast is affixed to the chest at the base, and weight is evenly distributed over the base area. In the low-breast configuration, a proportion of the breast weight is supported by the chest, against which rests the lower surface of the breast, thus is formed the
inframammary fold (IMF). Because the base is deeply affixed to the chest, the weight of the breast is distributed over a greater area. This reduces the weight-bearing strain upon the chest, shoulder, and back muscles that bear the weight of the bust.citation needed
In the course of thelarche, some girls develop breasts the lower skin-envelope of which touches the chest below the IMF, and some girls do not; both breast anatomies are statistically normal morphologic variations of the size and shape of women's breasts.[1]
Breast ptosis, or sagging of the breasts, is a normal consequence of aging[2] where the breast tissue droops lower on the chest and the nipple points downward.[3] Researchers have found that ptosis is influenced by several key factors: greater
age, higher
body mass index, larger
bra cup size, history of significant
weight loss (>50 lbs or 25 kg), number of pregnancies, and history of cigarette smoking.[4][5][6] It is not caused, as commonly believed by many women and medical practitioners, by breastfeeding.[7]
Plastic surgeons categorize ptosis by evaluating the position of the nipple relative to the
inframammary crease (where the underside of the breast meets the chest wall). This is determined by measuring from the center of the nipple to the
sternal notch (at the top of the breast bone) to gauge how far the nipple has fallen. The standard
anthropometric measurement for young women is 21 centimetres (8.3 in). This measurement is used to assess both breast ptosis and breast symmetry. The surgeon will assess the breast's angle of projection. The apex of the breast, which includes the nipple, can have a flat angle of projection (180 degrees) or acute angle of projection (greater than 180 degrees). The apex rarely has an angle greater than 60 degrees. The angle of the breast apex is partly determined by the tautness of the suspensory
Cooper's ligaments. For example, when a woman lies on her back, the angle of the breast apex becomes a flat, obtuse angle (less than 180 degrees) while the base-to-length ratio of the breast ranges from 0.5 to 1.0.[2]
Plastic surgery
After
mastectomy, the reconstruction of the breast or breasts is done with
breast implants or autologous tissue transfer, using fat and tissues from the abdomen, which is performed with a
TRAM flap or with a back (latissiumus muscle flap). Breast reduction surgery is a procedure that involves removing excess breast tissue, fat, and skin, and the repositioning of the nipple-areola complex.
, breast augmentation with implants, and combination procedures; the two types of available
breast implants are models filled with
silicone gel, and models filled with
saline solution. These types of breast surgery can also repair
inverted nipples by releasing milk duct tissues that have become tethered. Furthermore, in the case of the
obese woman, a breast lift (mastopexy) procedure, with or without a breast volume reduction, can be part of an upper-body lift and contouring for the woman who has undergone massive body weight loss.citation needed
^Lauersen, Niels H.; Stukane, Eileen (1998). The Complete Book of Breast Care (1st Trade Paperback ed.). New York: Fawcett Columbine/Ballantine.
ISBN978-0-449-91241-6. ...there is no medical reason to wear a bra, so the decision is yours, based on your own personal comfort and aesthetics. Whether you have always worn a bra or always gone braless, age and breastfeeding will naturally fcause your breasts to sag.
^Hartmann BW, Laml T, Kirchengast S, Albrecht AE, Huber JC (1998). "Hormonal breast augmentation: prognostic relevance of insulin-like growth factor-I". Gynecol. Endocrinol. 12 (2): 123–7.
doi:
10.3109/09513599809024960.
PMID9610425.
Clayoquot, personally, regarding
the asymmetry material, I would not have split the content off to create the
Breast asymmetry article. When it comes to
WP:Med and
WP:Anatomy, we merge a lot of content and this is something I would have considered merging if seeing it separated from this article. I often consider
WP:HASTE and
WP:No split, and am only open to splitting when I think it's necessary. If it's content composed of a few or several paragraphs, I usually don't consider that worth splitting. Either way, for now, breast asymmetry should be covered in this article and we should point readers to the Breast asymmetry article for further detail.
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
17:29, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi. I'm open to alternatives. How many sentences/paragraphs do you think the Breast article should have on breast asymmetry? And what should we do with the leftover content? One issue is that much of the content from the "Breast asymmetry" section is based on primary sources, i.e. sources that are not
WP:MEDRS compliant. Cheers,
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
04:51, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
How many paragraphs? I think it should get as many paragraphs as it needs to summarize the topic. Right now, the Breast asymmetry article is only four paragraphs long, which is why I questioned the split. The content being built on primary sources is another concern of mine, but we can replace primary sources (well, often enough for medical/anatomy topics).
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
01:10, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
OK. My hunch is that one paragraph will be enough for a summary. I plan to visit the library for sources later this week and will come back to this issue.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
05:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
I added another sentence on asymmetry to the Shape and support section, added a sentence to the Body image section, and redirected the
Breast asymmetry article back to the
Breast From what I've seen in some secondary sources on breast anatomy and breast health, that's a reasonable summary.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
22:05, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi everyone. I'm planning to remove this set of pictures, for the following reasons:
The pictures add little encyclopedic value beyond what the text says. There are no scars, no imperfections. In comparison, the photographs at, say,
Cleft lip and cleft palate are valuable because without them, it would be difficult to visualize what the results of surgery can be.
Interesting. Thanks Flyer22 Reborn. It looks as if Otto Placik's pictures have been replaced in the
Labiaplasty article. In articles that focus on surgery, I can understand why we'd consider them useful. For this article, we should also look at the question of how many surgery-related pictures to include, as opposed to other aspects of breasts. If we count each before-and-after-surgery pair as one picture, we'd have a total of five images related to plastic surgery (including the masectomy pictures that we already include). For comparison, we currently have one picture on breastfeeding and two on breasts in art.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
21:59, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
The article says: "In some cultures, like the Himba in northern Namibia, bare-breasted women are normal, while a thigh is highly sexualised and not exposed in public". But the girl showed as exemplar is exposing both breasts and thighs... --
ExperiencedArticleFixer (
talk)
05:56, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Yup, good point.
Himba people also includes many similar photos. Scanning the history, this has been in the article for years, but lacks a source. I copied older wording from a previous version which differentiated between Himba and unnamed African cultures which conceal thighs. This isn't ideal for several reasons, but it's better to be vague than wrong, I guess. I've also added a
template:cn, naturally.
Grayfell (
talk)
07:16, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Third paragraph
I suggest these edits for the lead:
Along with their major function in providing nutrition for infants, female breasts have social and sexual characteristics. HumanB breasts have been featured in notable ancient and modern sculpture, art, and photography. Female breasts can figure prominently in a woman's perception of herthe perception women and girls have of their body image 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, especially the nipples, are an erogenous zone on human females.
AnaSoc (
talk)
00:41, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestions. I added "adolescent girls". Regarding erogenous zones, I adjusted the wording to reflect the fact that breasts/nipples are erogenous zones for both men and women. Cheers,
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
06:22, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
As seen
here at
Talk:Lesbian, editors sometimes take issue with use of "female" or "females" in place of "woman." Furthermore, "
woman" can cover adolescent/teenage girls. And the literature is focused on adult women regardless.
As for
this edit by you, Clayoquot, I feel that it's unnecessary, since, as the article shows, the term breast usually does not refer to males, and the vast majority of the erogenous zone nipple/research is focused on women. But I don't have a big problem with the edit. I'm okay with it.
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
06:45, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm glad you brought up the fact that "woman" can cover adolescent girls, because that makes the Breast article much simpler. My main concern with AnaSoc's wording was that it possibly gives the impression that sexual attractiveness and erogenous zones are concepts that apply at all ages.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
06:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
I was at well, but I saw it as a positive that AnaSoc didn't use "girls and women" or "women and girls." I felt that you using "adolescent girls" was fine, especially since "woman" is usually taken to mean those 18 and older, but I'm also fine with just stating "women."
Flyer22 Reborn (
talk)
23:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
I have a good photo which shows variation of size (whole breast and areola) and shape between women and between the individual breasts of one woman. For the size and shape section.
File:Threenakedwomen.jpgThe size and shape of breasts vary between women and between individual breast
Not done There isn't actually much variation between the six breasts in the picture, the lighting and angles make it difficult to see some of the areolas, and 90% of this photo is not breasts at all.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
18:48, 31 January 2019 (UTC)