from this strict code. verse 59 of sura 33 says, "tell the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments (jalabib, s. jilbāb) over their persons". jilbab and khimar are the only two women's clothing items mentioned in the quran. women used to wear clothes that were parted at the front to expose the breasts when the verses were revealed. these verses were later interpreted as requiring the complete covering of women's bodies. some islamic clerics and scholars, including ibn taymiyyah, argued that the entire female body is "a shameful part" (awrah) and therefore is to be covered entirely, with a niqab or burqa, centuries after the time of muhammad. according to egyptian historian sayyid-marsot, male islamic scholars (ulama, s. alim) since the 18th century started interpreting that a woman's whole body needs to be entirely covered. but as late as in the 1980s, women of the al-akhdam (servant) class in yemen and baladi (folk) women of egypt still wore cleavage revealing clothes as the islamic dress codes were not universally applied. in the early 21st century muslim world, there is a popular consensus that modesty requires coverage of any cleavage. breastfeeding practices breastfeeding advocate maria miller argued that the american obsession with breasts is caused by american men's and women's unfamiliarity with the extraordinary variety of normal breasts and their ignorance of "what the breast is really for". in alexandre guillaume mouslier de moissy's 1771 play la vraie mère ("the true mother"), the title character rebukes her husband for treating her as an object for his sexual gratification; "are your senses so gross as to look on these breasts—the respectable treasures of nature—as merely an embellishment, destined to ornament the chest of women?". in the 18th century, biologists and philosophers like carl linnaeus and jean-jacques rousseau attempted to popularize the idea of breastfeeding of one's own children as natural and fashionable. according to valerie steele, director of fashion institute of technology, "for centuries (even in the judeo-christian and islamic worlds), the sight of a woman nursing was accepted as normal. this factor contributed to the fairly rapid acceptance of dresses with low necklines, which were introduced in the fifteenth century." since emerging in the christian west, the early décolleté dresses—which were termed by french court historian jean froissart as "the smile of the bustline"—had increasingly plunging necklines because the renaissance celebrated the beauty of the unclothed human body. moralists, who blamed any number of chest illness on bare cleavage, were shocked by the development. downblouse "downblouse" is the act of looking down a woman's dress or top to observe or photograph her cleavage or breasts. it may occur as a form of voyeurism or sexual fetishism. in some jurisdictions it is a sexual offense. the issue has been publicly discussed during the 21st century, although the term downblouse has been used in english since 1994. the popularity of covert downblouse and upskirt photography has increased with the proliferation of camera phones since 2000. nasuwt, a uk teachers' union, reported an upward trend in such pictures at schools in 2018. many of these covertly taken pictures are uploaded to websites, including pornographic websites like pornhub, xvideos and xhamster, as well as subreddits like r/creepshots. some websites host tutorials on taking downblouse and upskirt pictures. as early as 2004, google listed about four million websites that were tagged with "upskirt" and "downblouse". some jurisdictions, including the uk, germany, and a number of american and australian states, have statutes that prohibit such covert photography. in the uk, people who take such pictures and post them online can be listed on the sex offender registry, and in japan the government has pressured mobile phone manufacturers to make their phones produce a warning sound whenever such pictures are taken. these types of offenses "largely unreported" and, according to maria miller, chair of the women and equalities committee, the legal provisions are inadequate. controversies despite a long history, display of cleavage can still be controversial. uk women's magazine stylist in 2017 and indian newspaper mid-day in 2019 reported "cleavage shaming" was commonplace in news and social media. female bollywood actors disha patani, deepika padukone, priyanka chopra, nargis fakhri and others were trolled and shamed for wearing cleavage-baring outfits in social and new media, including newspaper times of india. extraordinary attention was generated when politicians angela merkel, hillary clinton and jacqui smith wore cleavage-revealing outfits even from media outlets the washington post and the new york times. as late as the 2010s, reports from langley, british columbia; shreveport, louisiana; louisville, kentucky; reno, nevada; rockford, illinois; houston, texas; thunder bay, ontario; kerikeri, new zealand and elsewhere showed female students, especially non-white students, had been expelled and banned from schools, and punished for wearing dresses that reveal cleavage and legs. at the same time, there also has been reports of passengers of airlines, including southwest airlines, spirit airlines and easyjet, were instructed against and evicted for showing "too much cleavage". in 2014, a television series called the empress of china was taken off-air in china days after its premier because of too much cleavage; the show was aired again after much censorship. in the next year, organizers of chinajoy, the largest gaming and digital entertainment exhibition held in china, levied a fine of us$800 on women who revealed "more than two centimeters of cleavage". as of 2011, women in saudi arabia and afghanistan were required to completely cover their bodies; iranian law required the wearing of a chador (over-cloak) or a hijab (head scarf), and in egypt, the exposure of cleavage in the media was considered to be nudity. various other presentation of clothed breasts, like side cleavage and bottom cleavage, are also regulated by law in some u.s. counties. both were banned by cbs as "bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic" at the 55th annual grammy awards in 2013. underboob was banned in springfield, missouri in 2015 after a free the nipple rally. thailand banned selfies showing underboob with provisions for up to five years in jail in 2016. amazon subsidiary twitch, a live video streaming service, banned underboobs and instructed on the amount of cleavage permissible in 2020. theories fertility ratings as a function of breast size and intermammary cleft distance hypothetically, non-paraphilic sexual attraction to breasts is a result of their function as a secondary sex characteristic. the breasts play roles in both sexual pleasure and reproduction. according to the american psychiatric association's dsm-5, sexual attraction to breasts is normal unless it is highly atypical and is therefore a form of partialism. according to psychiatrist larry young, attraction to breasts "is a brain organization effect that occurs in straight males when they go through puberty." according to sociologist anthony joseph paul cortese, the cleavage area between the breasts is "perhaps the epicentre" of display of female sexual attractiveness and stimulation of male sexual interest. according to social historian david kunzle, waist confinement and décolletage are the primary sexualization devices of western costume. according to music writer ben watson in art, class and cleavage (quartet books, 1998), the deployment of the cleavage punctures through art's "spiritual pretensions" and alerts about the bodily roots of all culture. vincenz czerny, one of the early surgeons to perform a breast surgery, believed the aesthetics of cleavage to be a sign of symmetry and hence beauty. a study published in 2020 found intermammary distance (imd), or cleavage gap, is one of the major influences on people's perception about a woman's fertility, health and age; accordingly, surgeon gregory evans recommends an intermammary distance between 2 and 3 centimetres (0.79 and 1.18 in). another study found women who display cleavage are more often identified as "voluptuous" than women who do not. evolutionary perspective zoologist and ethologist desmond morris, author of the naked ape, theorized that female human breasts as a sexual signal imitates the cleft between the buttocks that is a prevalent signal among other apes. evolutionary psychologist david m. buss explains that female humans evolved to have permanently enlarged mammary glands, unlike all other 222 primates. functional anatomist owen lovejoy ("the origin of man", 1981) suggests, partly based on speculations by morris, that prominent breasts among female australopithecines helped attract males and cement the pair-bond necessary for further physical and cultural evolution toward modern humanity. evolutionary psychologists theorize humans' permanently enlarged breasts, in contrast to other primates' breasts—which only become enlarged during ovulation—allowed females to "solicit male attention and investment even when they are not really fertile". hence breast and buttock cleavages, sharing a similarity between their appearances, are considered to be erotic in many societies. another school of thought in evolutionary psychology supports the view, that it was 'nature's plan" to make large-breasted females to appear more attractive to straight males, because large breasts have an evolutionary advantage in providing breast milk to their off-springs. historical perspective american cultural anthropologist katherine ann dettwyler, proposed that men aren't necessarily biologically drawn to breasts as "humans can learn to view breasts as sexually attractive." author elizabeth gould davis said breasts, along with phalluses, were revered by the women of çatalhöyük as instruments of motherhood but after a "patriarchal revolution", when men had appropriated both phallus worship and "the breast fetish" for themselves, these organs "acquired the erotic significance with which they are now endowed". some scholars argue that it is important that the breast is partly or fully covered to be erotic. french semiotician roland barthes observed, "woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked"; while historical commentator susan l. stanton observes, "there is no mystery in a naked breast, there is no need to fantasize about what is beneath the clothing." according to author marilyn yalom in a history of the breast, around these times, male thinkers decided a nursing mother's breasts were both erotic and a source of nourishment for future citizens of the nation. according to psychologist richard d. mcanulty, when breasts are hypersexualized, they are not perceived as a body part to breastfeed infants. therefore, exposure of the breast, such as in public breastfeeding, is considered embarrassing. science journalist natalie angier shifts from using the term "functional" to using the term "maternal" to describe the "non-aesthetic breast" in her book woman: an intimate geography (1999). in the same book, she argues human fascination with full cleavage may be a result of our fascination with round objects and attraction towards well-defined curves. history ancient princess nofret (27th century bce) of the fourth dynasty of egyptminoan snake goddess (17th century bce) in 2600 bce, princess nofret of the fourth dynasty of egypt was depicted wearing a v-neck gown with a plunging neckline that exposed ample cleavage that was further emphasized by an elaborate necklace and prominently protruding nipples. in ancient minoan culture, women wore clothes that complemented slim waists and full breasts. one of the better-known features of ancient minoan fashion is breast exposure; women wore tops that could be arranged to completely cover or expose their breasts, with bodices to accentuate their cleavage. in 1600 bce, snake goddess figurines with open dress-fronts revealing entire breasts, were sculpted in minos. by that time, cretan women in knossos were wearing ornamental fitted bodices with open cleavage, sometimes with a peplum. another set of minoan figurines from 1500 bce show women in bare-bosomed corsets. ancient greek women adorned their cleavage with a long pendant necklace called a kathema. the ancient greek goddess hera is described in the iliad to have worn something like an early version of a push-up bra festooned with "brooches of gold" and "a hundred tassels" to increase her cleavage to divert zeus from the trojan war. women in greek and roman civilizations had at times used breastbands like taenia in rome to enhance smaller busts but more often, women of the masculine greco-roman world, where unisex clothes were often preferred, used breastbands like apodesmes in greece, and fascia or mamillare in rome to suppress their breasts. among these mamillare was a particularly strict leather corset for suppressing women with big busts. a silver coin that was found in south arabia in the 3rd century bce shows a buxom foreign ruler with much décolletage and an elaborate coiffure. rabbi aha b. raba (circa 5th century) and nathan the babylonian (circa 2nd century) measured the appropriate size of