In the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in the history of man form an important element.  From a primitive point of view a sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so.  The beautiful woman is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it,

    “With buttokes brode and brestes rounde and hye”;

that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children and to suckle them.  These two physical characters, indeed, since they represent aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large breasts, and large projecting nates.[134]

To a certain extent—­and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only—­the primary sexual characters are objects of admiration among primitive peoples.  In the primitive dances of many peoples, often of sexual significance, the display of the sexual organs on the part of both men and women is frequently a prominent feature.  Even down to mediaeval times in Europe the garments of men sometimes permitted the sexual organs to be visible.  In some parts of the world, also, the artificial enlargement of the female sexual organs is practised, and thus enlarged they are considered an important and attractive feature of beauty.

Sir Andrew Smith informed Darwin that the elongated nymphae (or “Hottentot apron”) found among the women of some South African tribes was formerly greatly admired by the men (Descent of Man, Chapter XIX).  This formation is probably a natural peculiarity of the women of these races which is very much exaggerated by intentional manipulation due to the admiration it arouses.  The missionary Merensky reported the prevalence of the practice of artificial elongation among the Basuto and other peoples, and the anatomical evidence is in favor of its partly artificial character. (The Hottentot apron is fully discussed by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd.  I, sec. vi.)

In the Jaboo country on the Bight of Benin in West Africa, Daniell stated, it was considered ornamental to elongate the labia and the clitoris artificially; small weights were appended to the clitoris and gradually increased. (W.F.  Daniell, Topography of Gulf of Guinea, 1849, pp. 24, 53.)

Among the Bawenda of the northern Transvaal, the missionary Wessmann states, it is customary for young girls from the age of 8 to spend a certain