Objects of obsession

They have more nicknames than you can count. They have their own restaurant chain. And women spend more than $1 billion every year dressing them up even though they’re usually covered up.

The attention we give breasts borders on the obsessive. And in October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month – they’re especially everywhere.

They’re on display for a worthy cause, but we cringe when the message borders on the sexual. They nurture us when we come into the world, yet the image of a breast-feeding mother makes many people uncomfortable.

So why are we so fascinated with breasts?

Perhaps it’s the allure of the forbidden. As Jerry Seinfeld put it, if women kept their heads covered instead of their breasts, men would all be rushing to the corner store to pick up the latest copy of “Heads Illustrated.”

Women are equally fixated. Despite the recession, breast augmentation was the most popular cosmetic surgery last year, above rhinoplasty and liposuction, with 296,000 procedures, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

The federal government backs breasts, too. It spent more on breast cancer research last year than on lung and prostate cancers combined, according to the National Cancer Institute.

There’s a deep, subconscious reason for that, says renowned physical anthropologist Helen Fisher.

“When you have liver cancer and they chop off part of your liver, it doesn’t affect your reproductive value,” says Fisher, famous for her work on the evolution of human sexuality.

She says our obsession with breasts is deeply tied to our species’ survival. Breasts evolved not just as a means of feeding babies but as an honest signal of age and reproductive value, Fisher notes.

“Men unconsciously seek a woman who has just the right chest-to-waist-to-hip ratio,” she says. “There are many aspects of our needs that our breasts play a role in, and when that is threatened, we feel as if major parts of our life are threatened, too.”

The obsession is not limited to Western cultures. When traveling with the Hadza, a Tanzanian tribe of bare-chested hunter-gatherers, Fisher says, the men confided in her that size does matter.

Size doesn’t matter to Jerry Sarlis, 30, of Brentwood, Calif. He’s dating a woman who is a double D, but he says he doesn’t discriminate.

When asked why he loves the body part, he grows flustered. Suddenly, Sarlis is tongue-tied.

“They’re … just … boobs,” he stammers, his brown eyes expanding on the “ooo.”

In 2009, AskMen.com tried to answer the same question with an article that has since gone viral.

In “Thanks for the Mammaries: Men’s Fascination with Breasts,” writer Ryan Murphy explained that men are obsessed with breasts because they are a key to arousing women and because men are stimulated visually, among other reasons.

When asked to expand, editor-in-chief James Bassil keeps it simple.

“It’s a fascination that comes from not having them,” Bassil says on the phone from Montreal. “It’s the allure of taboo.”

Leigh Hurst, of Middleton, Pa., is trying to break another taboo. She is the founder of Feel Your Boobies, a grass-roots campaign that seeks to dispel the stigma associated with breast self-examination.

Hurst believes the obsession is tied to our puritanical society and the inherent issues Americans have with sexuality and their bodies. For example, many people tell Hurst that her message is offensive and oversexualizes breasts.

“As an independent woman, breast cancer survivor and mother who breast-fed, I am constantly surprised by this reaction,” says Hurst, 41.

“They’re taking it to a sexual place; I’m not doing that. I’m just telling women to be familiar with their breasts so they can be aware of changes that occur.”

Fisher agrees with Hurst – and she’s blunt about it.

“Americans are particularly square,” Fisher says. “People in other cultures think we’re so sexually progressive, but we’re actually a sex-negative society. We link sex with sin and religion.

“And we still see the breast as purely sexual instead of as a source of nourishment. We grow uncomfortable when a woman breast-feeds in public, but we don’t look the other way when she’s feeding the child a hot dog.”

Amy Mayer used to be a little self-conscious when feeding her infant, Asher, in public. The Walnut Creek, Calif., mother of two says she didn’t want to offend anyone.

But now that Asher is 8 months old, she doesn’t give it a second thought. And she doesn’t cover up, either.

“This is why we have breasts, and I’m not going to cover myself with a shroud to feed my child,” says Mayer, who has breast-fed in parks and restaurants, and during parties at friends’ homes. “If you have a problem with it, you can move.”

Jenny Littleton, of Oakland, Calif., says her 20-something friends talk about their breasts all the time. The women with smaller breasts envy the cleavage of the more voluptuous women in the group, she says.

Meanwhile, the curvier ladies admire their flat-chested friends because they have more options when it comes to clothing and lingerie. They also tend to be thinner.

“I think the media fuels our obsession because we see these images of women who look perfect, whether they have small boobs or big boobs,” Littleton says. “And there’s no way we can look like that.”

Indeed, Hollywood plays a role in our breast fixation. The London-based blog Beauty and the Boob tracks well-endowed celebrities such as Helen Mirren and Christina Hendricks of “Mad Men.”

Lottie Longford, a refugee of the plastic surgery industry, says she launched the blog because she felt that the Internet had countless spots for men to look at breasts but lacked a place where women could read about them.

“I used to work for a leading cosmetic surgery company, and I couldn’t believe the volume of women of all ages who wanted to change the aesthetic appearance, for larger or smaller, of their breasts,” she says via email. “Women are just always going to be very aware of their bodies.”

Atherton, Calif., plastic surgeon Dr. Jane Weston thinks this awareness stems from women’s relationships with their mothers and sisters.

“Everyone thinks women get their ideas of breasts from the media or popular icons,” she says. “But during the majority of my (breast augmentation consultations), the patient will casually mention that their sister or mother has huge breasts and that they ‘got nothing.’ ”

But maybe the answer as to why we’re obsessed with breasts is as simple as this:

“It’s an area of sexual attractedness that perpetuates our species,” Weston says. “And because 50 percent of the population is male.”