In compiling Taschen's titillating new coffee table book,
The Big Book of Breasts, editor Dian Hanson pored over thousands of photographs of well-endowed women from the forties and fifties before settling upon a select few hundred. Here, we asked Hanson to turn her expert eye toward the present and name her favorite contemporary pairs.
Scarlett Johansson: "A fine pair of seemingly natural breasts of perfect shape. They're probably a large C or a small D, but they've got a youthful fullness and up-tilt."
Salma Hayek: "Probably a good D. Shapely, full, well-placed, and properly spaced."
Jessica Simpson: "She has a little more hang to her breast than some of these ladies, and that's attractive to people who like large breasts. Plus, she shows them off, and we've got to be proud of a girl who flaunts them."
Nigella Lawson: "A beautiful woman with an old-fashioned English figure. English women have been noted for decades for having superior breast development—I sometimes think it has to do with their dairy intake."
Rachel Dratch: "She has the biggest pair of undiscovered knockers on the American screen. Last night I was watching an old clip of her from Saturday Night Live when Ben Affleck was hosting, and when her head was turned, he would stare at her giant boobs. When men like really big breasts, they will look past other factors."