Big bum science: Kim Kardashian's bare bottom photo shoot
- Published
The celebrity is photographed in a series of naked photos one bearing her whole backside
Kim Kardashian's attempt to "break the internet" with pictures of her bare bum have left people asking the inevitable question; is it real?
The series of shots in Paper magazine, external show her in various states of undress; topless, bottomless; front and back.
Unsurprisingly, the images of her greased-up behind are the most looked at pictures online with more than 100,000 searches.
So we've looked into the science of... having a big behind.
Meghan Trainor's number one single All About That Bass lyrics are all about having a big "booty"
From Victorian human freak shows to modern day music videos there seems to be an appetite for a big bottom.
It's no secret the lyrics to Meghan Trainor's recent number one hit All About The Base covers the same subject.
She sings: "Yeah my mama told me don't worry about the size, boys like a little more booty to hold at night."
And Jason Derulo in his Wiggle track featuring Snoop Dogg opens up with: "I got one question How do you fit all that... in them jeans? You know what to do with that big fat butt...wiggle."
So while these tracks and the latest photos of Kim Kardashian celebrate the love of a big bottom, it seems there is also an upside health-wise.
In 2010, scientists at Oxford University discovered, after a study of 16,000 women, that those with larger than average butts are not only increasingly intelligent but also very resistant to chronic illnesses.
Jason Derulo's lyrics also include: "Your booty like two planets"
The researchers also found big-bottomed people need more Omega 3 fats, which have been proven to help brain development, ABC News, external reported at the time.
Another bit of scientific research related to this part of the anatomy comes from Dr Alice Roberts, an expert on human evolution.
For her BBC Two Origins of Us programme, she looked at why human beings have larger bums compared with ancestral apes.
It appears to be based on a theory from a famous study called The Naked Ape, external in 1967 by zoologist Desmond Morris.
He concluded that humans needed to be upright for longer than apes; so the buttock muscles known as the gluteus maximus evolved to support standing up.
Dr Alice Roberts also explained in a scientific test that humans needed bottom muscles to engage in running, more so than apes.
Hottentot Venus was bought as a slave to appear in human freak shows in Europe for her large behind
Not that you see Kim Kardashian and her famous behind running very often.
If the web had been around in the 1800s, the name people would be typing in would be Hottentot Venus, real name Saartjie Baartman, who was born in 1789 in South Africa.
She was bought and sold to perform in human freak shows in Europe because of her big bum.
But while Kim Kardashian is riding high around the web, the story of Hottentot Venus is one of enslavement and degradation.
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