Reading between the lines and an unrelated tidbit

First, I'm not sure what to make of an email I received a little while ago from Lifestyle, the condom maker. Maybe some auto search engine their marketing folks use linked my name with "lifestyle" reporting and they thought I was the official boom-chicka-wa-wa reporter for the Miami Herald.

You always have to be careful what you open at work. But the subject line got my attention, so I opened it. It read: "Survey says America likes big butts and it cannot lie."

Hmmm. OK. Again, I'm not sure why they sent this to me. I'm fairly certain there's no bulletin online that says James Burnett is seeking academic studies on large behinds. But someone thought this was newsworthy.

While my own boom-chicka-wa-wa habits are not up for discussion, I did read the attached survey. And I have to confess, it was sort of interesting.

Apparently, using pictures instead of detailed questions, Lifestyle encouraged its Web site visitors to download a free poster portraying the image they liked best. Based on those downloads, Lifestyle would measure what people (I'm guessing mostly guys) like most. Among the choices of picture were a woman smiling coyly while wearing a white tank top and gray undies and sitting on top of a washing machine, and a woman wearing a vest and lowrider jeans with her bare midriff showing.

Now, here's the interesting part. Most of the images used featured full-length shots of women in various poses. The picture that won, hands down, however, was a cropped shot of a single body part: a big butt. It was not a bare butt, BTW. It was covered, in case the I.T. department guys are reading this post in horror right now.

Anyway, 15% more people downloaded that butt shot than any other image on the site.

I have no idea why that interests me, 'cause I have always been a fan of proportionality in human female bodies. But I guess I'm shocked, 'cause in spite of what ad campaigns like this obvious one that Lifestyle sent me and TV and movies and music thrust in our faces, most guys I know agree with me: that a proportionate body is 10X more attractive than a body with one extremely large part...or set of parts.

I'm still not convinced. This is unscientific, of course, but I'd guess that only 1-in-10 guys I know is impressed by a disproportionately large part on a female body. Balance isn't just good for the universe.

Ladies I'm not sure how this Lifestyle survey would work for you. But I'm certainly curious about what y'all think.

And here's the unrelated tidbit: My most recent article, an artist profile in Sunday's paper.