Get to know the girls: 15 facts about breasts

I like to think I know a lot about boobs. Although it seemed like I had to wait forever for them to appear (freshman year can be so tortuous for the flat-chested), being fashionably late did not prevent my girls from arriving in full splendor. They've been there --really, really there -- for more than twenty years now, at the center of many conversations, as a conduit for nourishing my child, as both an unwanted and welcome attention-getter, as a new source of pain when I started running, as a glorious stabilizer of some of my favorite summer tops, and as the reason I have invested in many boxes of safety pins just to keep the space in between my shirt buttons from gaping.

Most of my friends have them and all of my friends talk about them. Once I became a mother, the conversations about breasts went from somewhat-shushed to seemingly open to much-publicized opinion from everyone. Between the OB/GYN, the lactation specialist I saw for six months, the mammogram techs, the cystic breast specialist I now see, and the nice lingerie lady who can fit me in the perfect-sized bra just by looking at my chest, my boobs has a bigger team of professionals than any other part of my body.

Given all of that, I still don't know it all. I need the card hanging in my shower to remind me to examine my breasts monthly. I still get confused about how to calculate my cup and strap sizes. I am continually taken aback when I get the telltale tenderness every month. And I am even amazed, after all these years, to see all that cleavage pile up in some outfits.

As out there as they are, I have a lot to learn about my breasts. This is why I was so mesmerized by this infographic making the rounds on the interwebs. These 15 little points (ahem) reveal a lot about how much more there is to know about the body part most of us feel very well-acquainted with.

These facts have raised a lot of questions for me -- If the average cup size is really this big, why do the cute bras suddenly get matronly and ugly exactly at this size? Who in the world thought glass balls would really work out as a good implant material? And the whole saggy boob-smoker thing? Weird.