Boobs Of Steel - Television Tropes & Idioms

The middle girl is the brawler. Her breasts say so.

When you have a larger group of females who may be involved in some action (...err, as in "fighting"), the one with the biggest breasts will be the strongest one. You'd think that those giant knockers would impede her in some way... another one of the big advantages of the Most Common Superpower?

The simplest explanation is that the woman is simply bigger than the other female characters, or simply older and thus more fully grown and developed, or both at once. In any case, her greater general size leads to both larger breasts as well as greater muscle-mass and leverage.

If all of the female characters are physically active and she is the oldest, it can also be assumed she's been actively building strength and learning how to use it longer than her juniors have.

Sexually, this could be boiled down to a function of fanservice: a Law of Skin-To-Strength Ratio. Take the classic barbarian of either sex — they wear little and bare a lot of skin, but are incredibly reliant upon brute strength. The more flesh they have to bare, the more strength they bring to bear. While this trope doesn't rely on explicitly bared skin, the female's attire will seldom hide her impressive shape, and instead tend to emphasize it. (Or, in the more extreme cases, perhaps they merely need to be that strong in order to stand up straight.)

Visually, it's a fairly simple design point: the artist wants to indicate and reinforce the notion of physical strength. A large-breasted female tends to look larger overall, and more solidly built. The other route for showing obvious physical strength would be giving the woman a massive bodybuilder physique. As the former is more commonly appealing, and the latter is more commonly intimidating, you can see the obvious choice.

It is to be noted that breasts contain no muscle, being composed mostly of fat tissue and glandular tissue (for milk-making), with lots of nerves interwoven throughout. In fact, seeing as women's breasts are basically big balls of nerves, hitting a woman in the boob is about equivalent to kicking a guy in the balls. Thus, the power that larger breasts contribute is indirect. A good pair generally comes with more weight, usually not of the breasts only, either. And, admittedly, unlike most modern sports, where weight slows one down, a heavy yet sufficiently mobile frame is an advantage in a fight. There's a reason for weight categories in most combat sports: even among boxing superstars, next to none of the lighter weights have a one-hit KO punch, and are instead highly agile and technical fighters (notable exceptions like Kostya Tszyu, who is both, notwithstanding). A manageable amount of extra weight simply boosts power.

When fighting, the power of any hit comes from two sources: the first is from pushing off of the ground, and typically women have very strong lower bodies. The second source comes from using all of the body's muscle and weight in concert. This means that a woman who is reasonably larger is going to be a stronger fighter. Hence the Boobs Of Steel trope, because as mentioned, a woman with large breasts is probably going to be larger in other areas, as well as having more upper body weight behind her punches. Bear in mind that the average woman's center of mass is in her hips and belly, even when/though she has a nice pair.

It has been suggested that having larger breasts could actually impair a woman by unbalancing her. However, a woman's bottom effectively counteracts the weight of the breasts, which taken together is negligible compared to overall body weight, and the combined weight of the hips, belly, and thighs. If anyone was to be unbalanced by extra weight in the upper body, it would be a male character

- simply because men are less balanced than women, and hence why women are better dancers, etc. They're simply less likely to fall over, having a stronger root to the ground (i.e., a lower center of gravity).

Even so, most known women athletes tend to be quite modest in cup-size, especially runners and gymnasts. This is why you rarely see Olympic athletes with anything above a B-cup. This may also be because it is hard to adjust for a large set of breasts, actually forcing one prodigy gymnast to drop the sport when she developed; likewise, a stronger female athlete will have, on average, a higher testosterone-level, which likewise means smaller breasts. On the other hand, working out can make breasts perkier, because it tightens the muscle they're against. And if a woman is less concerned with her total weight than with her actual health and personal appearance, maintaining a reasonable layer of healthy fat can help her retain soft, flattering curves over her hard, strong muscles — the best of both worlds. Olympic athletes probably neglect to do so because the additional, unnecessary weight could negatively affect their performances.

But in Real Life the average athletic woman is typically very femininely shaped

- the idea that athletic women are all flat-chested is a misconception based on watching professional athletes (runners, gymnasts, swimmers) who are of unusual shape for a woman. This is the same idea behind comparing runway models to the average woman - another trope entirely. Indeed, there are plenty of women atheletes considered quite busty - and a lot of these are indeed found in martial arts (the heart and soul of Boobs Of Steel), such as Gina Carano. It has been suggested that women with larger breasts shy away from professional sports because adequate support gear is not available, and also because some coaches are just plain crazy.

It should be noted that the Greco-Roman ideal of beauty and health for men and women not only involved physical fitness, but also included such a layer of fat (but with small breasts for the women). The person's curves denoted vitality and wealth, as poorer individuals could not afford to eat so well and thus suffered from a lack of strength and energy. Other cultures tended to prefer curvier women with larger breasts, albeit these cultures did not necessarily see women as athletes.

A physically strong female without Boobs Of Steel is most likely a Cute Bruiser.

Compare Most Common Superpower. Contrast Gag Boobs, where large breast size is Played For Laughs, and Booberiffic, where it comes with in-universe fanservice.