From Vaseline nightmares to a set of jugs that only lasts a weekend, milk-wagon enhancement has traveled a long, bouncy road to reach the lofty peaks of today.

Boobs are great. And bigger boobs are even greater. For the last 120 years, people have been cramming things in their chests to look sexier with results ranging from bombshell to bombed-out. From Vaseline nightmares to a set of jugs that only lasts a weekend, milk-wagon enhancement has traveled a long, bouncy road to reach the lofty peaks of today.

Sweater Puppies of the Past
As with most medical procedures before 1900, people had almost no clue what they were doing when it came to the first boob jobs. Around 1890, an Austrian doctor injected paraffin (imagine mineral oil mixed with Vaseline) into a young man’s scrotum to re-create his missing testicle. After successfully curing One-Ball Johnson’s asymmetry, the doctor went on to use the goopy mess to enhance the bust line of young ladies around Europe. And the women enjoyed their new curves — until they exposed their new cans to sunlight, at which point the injectables would slowly melt and disburse throughout their body, forming painful and often deadly growths. Despite the disastrous results, the Vaseline-style enhancement procedure grew in popularity and spread throughout America for the next 30 years.

By the late 1920s, middle-class women looked for a more permanent option to stuffing their bras. Sensing gobs of money to be made, doctors began experimenting with the novel idea of how to make bigger cans without killing the woman carrying them around. For the next three decades surgeons tried almost everything to fashion bigger bazookas for their clients (apparently including what they had lying around the house): ivory, glass balls, ground rubber, carved wood, ox cartilage and even wool. And of course, all of the results were terrible. By the late 1950s they finally tried silicone, and 1962 saw the first set of big fake hooters that looked decent and didn’t murder their owner.

Funbags of the Future
There were a few more medical hiccups on the path to chesticle perfection. For example, there was the class-action lawsuit in the ‘90s totaling $3.2 billion for faulty silicone implants that affected nearly 200,000 women. Or the brief attempt at filling implants with “all natural” soybean oil (if you remember Tara Reid circa 2004, you’ll remember how badly that turned out). But modern medicine has since ironed out the problems and boob jobs are now the number one plastic surgery in America, racking up over 300,000 procedures in 2013 alone. And from super lightweight implants to advances in stem cell research, the future of hooters looks glorious. Ladies looking to give their girls a boost now have over 450 options for implant sizes. And the newest item on the market is the “gummy bear implant,” which harnesses over 10 years of scientific research to create the most realistic melons imaginable.

And if you’re only in the mood for a weekend of bigger bras, a doctor in New York has pioneered the first 24-hour boob job. Dubbed the “Instabreast,” he injects straight saline into your titty meat to create a set of Cinderella double D’s — all for around $2,500. He’s also pioneering a set of “vacation breasts” that lasts a few weeks. But no matter how big your boobs are, ladies, remember that men will love them just the same.

Boob Enhancement Factoids

  • 36 MMM: the world’s largest fake breast size, weighing in at 20 pounds each
  • Utah: State with the largest growing number of breast augmentations
  • 4.93%: women in the US that have undergone boob jobs

Real vs. Fake: How to Tell What You're Workin' With
With next-level advances in push-up bra technology, it’s getting harder to discern whether that hottie at the end of the bar has been under the knife or not. We’ve distilled our combined decades of boob appreciation into a foolproof guide for cracking the silicone code.

Real

  • Relaxed slope off the chest
  • More dynamic, water-like jiggle
  • Pear or teardrop shape
  • In correct proportion to body size

Not So Real

  • Higher nipples
  • The breast moves as one solid unit
  • Full, almost unsettling symmetry throughout the entire titty
  • Unnatural fullness where the boob meets the upper chest

– by Dave Reuss