Danbooru

Breast size and the ToS

Posted under General

Rampardos said:
Also, saying that huge breasts are inherently bad proportions is pretty silly. That's almost like saying chibi is inherently bad proportions. Exaggerated features are not only used in art all the time, it's often the point. Real life anatomy and proportions are used more as a guideline, with some things followed more closely than others. It doesn't mean it can't be deviated from for the sake of cuteness appeal or sex appeal, as long as its done tastefully.

I agree with the first paragraph, there probably needs to be more focus on quality rather than outright "It's too big, axe it". Of the images I've seen get flagged for having grotesque proportions, some of them were well-done enough, while others lacked that quality and/or went into the realm of absurdity and fully deserved to be cropped. That said, there still needs to be an official "too large" or as said before, that determination is left entirely to what each individual thinks is "too large".

As for the proportions, the connection can't be made there. Chibi is a style, a subgroup of the anime/manga style. Just sticking out-of-place huge boobs on a person is not a style. Well, to be precise, there is a style that exaggerates and draws attention to certain objects, but I doubt we're supposed to be tolerant of that. Where does it stop? Are we supposed to approve images with horrendously oversized arms, feet, hands, fingers? No, we'd say they have terrible proportions and axe them. Breasts, hips, whatevers are the same.

I would just like to point out, for the record, my own personal tagging/flagging practices.

I don't just go through the gigantic breasts tag index and flag everything I find. There are a fair number of images with that tag that I find to be of fair enough quality that I wouldn't object to keeping them around, despite the technical violation of the guidelines.

It's certainly not the case that I have an automatic kneejerk response to flag anything deserving of the tag; rather, the response is to eye the image with a good deal more scrutiny. I have never, to the best of my recollection, had the thought that "it's a pity this is a ToS violation; I'd have liked to see it stay... but, no, flag it."

I think that there's a line, though, between "this image isn't to my tastes at all; I would never approve something with breasts that big" and "these breasts are so big that they're flat-out grotesque; this image is an eyesore on Danbooru that needs to be removed."

I think that the current enforcement -- and the thinking among flaggers -- is closer to "Danbooru is for a certain sort of art, and large breasts aren't part of that art."

My understanding from what Albert says is that the grotesque rule was intended to be purely a quality rule, along the lines of the 'eyesore' guideline -- it wasn't one of the rules intended to determine what was appropriate (in the way the, say, 'anime' rule is), but to serve as a guideline on removing things that were flat-out grotesque. Since even 'grotesque' can be subjective, it needed a guideline like that, but it should be breasts that are on par with extreme mutilation, extreme bodily distension and feces -- that's the kind of thing that that rule is for, not 'her breasts look kinda stupid that big.'

It's supposed to be a guideline for removing things that make bile rise in the back of your throat; instead, it's getting enforced more the way people would decide what to approve themselves -- the threshold to tag images as 'grotesque' isn't where it was intended to be.

None of the images posted here have really been to my tastes, but I don't think anyone could seriously describe them as 'grotesque', either.

(Also, rereading the ToS -- what's up with the 'manga' prohibition? Is that one ever enforced, given the number of pools we have for specific doujinshi?)

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Arrei said:
As for the proportions, the connection can't be made there. Chibi is a style, a subgroup of the anime/manga style. Just sticking out-of-place huge boobs on a person is not a style. Well, to be precise, there is a style that exaggerates and draws attention to certain objects, but I doubt we're supposed to be tolerant of that. Where does it stop? Are we supposed to approve images with horrendously oversized arms, feet, hands, fingers? No, we'd say they have terrible proportions and axe them. Breasts, hips, whatevers are the same.

The fact that altered and over exaggerated proportions are an accepted style is exactly my point, though. An artist isn't drawing bad proportions if their intent was to draw a stylistically altered version of the human body to appear more cute, and nor is he if he draws a woman with unrealistically large bust to appear more attractive. Bad proportions is more about about an artist not understanding anatomy and how a human's body fits together. In other words, there's a difference to between "this person just doesn't look right" and "this looks like a normal person with a very large chest." Only one of them is about a lack of artistic talent or quality, the other is just about subject material.

Xabid said:
(Also, rereading the ToS -- what's up with the 'manga' prohibition? Is that one ever enforced, given the number of pools we have for specific doujinshi?)

It's discouraged because Danbooru is primarily for art, and not a Manga depository.

BiZzAr0 said:
There are times when images depicting perfectly acceptable sizes are flagged. This is one of them: post #931071.

I'm not certain breast size was the only offender there.

Anyway.

Rampardos said:
Bad proportions is more about about an artist not understanding anatomy and how a human's body fits together. In other words, there's a difference to between "this person just doesn't look right" and "this looks like a normal person with a very large chest." Only one of them is about a lack of artistic talent or quality, the other is just about subject material.

The artist's intent has no bearing on an image's worth. That's been established numerous times. They can purposely give images bad proportions in other areas, they're still going to be judged as bad proportions. They stuck super-sized breasts or hips or legs on a subject to make them attractive, fine. Doesn't mean that we can pass them off as "style", it's still judged under the standard criteria of the anime style that the mod force uses to examine everything else. Why would giant breasts be exempt from that?

Suppose you had two versions of a painting where one had super-huge boobs and the other didn't. You wouldn't say they were different styles, you'd just say one had super-huge boobs.

Intent doesn't excuse anything, of course. Style doesn't excuse bad proportions either, however. If proportions is solely about how well it compares to basic human anatomy than the chibi style is just as much a culprit as drawing huge breasts. But that isn't all it is, is it? There's a difference between incorrect proportions and distasteful proportions.

The question we're having here is to what extent to super-huge boobs start being distasteful. That's the main issue, not that they are merely incorrect. That's what I was trying to say.

Rampardos said:
The question we're having here is to what extent to super-huge boobs start being distasteful. That's the main issue, not that they are merely incorrect. That's what I was trying to say.

Took the long way around to say that, eh?

I'm still in support of the two-heads standard.

Rampardos said:
The question we're having here is to what extent to super-huge boobs start being distasteful. That's the main issue, not that they are merely incorrect. That's what I was trying to say.

Then we just kinda discussed a whole lotta nothing the last few posts, huh?

That's what I meant by people enforcing the two-heads rule not because of guro, but because they feel going past that creates the distasteful proportions in question. Envisioning three-heads in my mind, for example, gets me breasts that make up the entire torso. That just doesn't look right.

Changing the TOS won't change much. Instead of deleting a picture based on TOS they can just let it die or unapprove it then let it die in the queue.

Maybe albert would be better off telling the janitors to be less biased. The way I take it some janitors are actively being biased because that is what is asked of them.

Sounds to me like the core problem is that the Janitors are asked to do two different things. They are asked to apply a set standard such as the two-heads rule while also having to make a judgement call as to if that set standard needs to actually be applied or not depending on the quality of the picture. As long as that is the case it's going to be a balancing act.

Arrei said:
They stuck super-sized breasts or hips or legs on a subject to make them attractive, fine. Doesn't mean that we can pass them off as "style", it's still judged under the standard criteria of the anime style that the mod force uses to examine everything else. Why would giant breasts be exempt from that?

I think that this is the core of the problem.

My sense, from what a lot of people have said, is that the current enforcement of the rule isn't really about grotesqueness at all -- it's about 'anime style', like your post says. The idea is that anime is supposed to be about Delicious Flat Chest and that large breasts go against it.

I don't think that this was the intent. It's in the 'grotesque' area of the ToS, not the 'non-anime' area.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that grotesque body proportions should be exempt from moderation! But the current guidelines set the bar for grotesqueness as on-par with extreme mutilation, extreme bodily distension and feces -- I think it's self-evident that the current enforcement of the breast-size rule is deleting things that are way, way, less grotesque than any of those, under any reasonable standard.

And I think the reason of this comes down to what you said -- people feel that if the breasts are too big, it doesn't fit the 'anime style'.

(That's just how I feel we got to this situation -- whether it can be reasonably changed or should be changed is another question entirely.)

Xabid said:
I think that this is the core of the problem.

My sense, from what a lot of people have said, is that the current enforcement of the rule isn't really about grotesqueness at all -- it's about 'anime style', like your post says. The idea is that anime is supposed to be about Delicious Flat Chest and that large breasts go against it.

Huh?

The anime camp that's against DFC is pretty damn big, too, you know. I don't know where you're getting that idea from. Anime style's even stereotyped as giving characters over-sized breasts, and in fact it'd be pretty accurate compared with those of real humans.

Given that "large" breasts are very common within the anime medium, going not too much further past that can easily create the distasteful proportions. It could just have to do with perception of how humans are supposed to look, and at some point people start to think "That doesn't even look human anymore!"

Not to mention this rule also applies to butts, hips, and thighs. Those too are inflated along with breasts and end up at bizarre proportions.

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I have no idea what delicious flat chest has to do with any of this. If the breasts are bigger than the person's head, even though a person could potentially get breasts that big, its still pretty damn grotesque. Especially when they are pics with breasts bigger than the person's body.

Anelaid said:
If the breasts are bigger than the person's head, even though a person could potentially get breasts that big, its still pretty damn grotesque.

This really comes down to a matter of taste. I could direct you to several dozen nude models and softcore porn actresses who's natural breasts exceed this size, and I'd say they are quite tasteful.

The "grotesque" guideline seems to line up more with the examples I linked earlier, going by what albert said in forum #63446.

"Bigger than their head" isn't quite at that "unacceptable" level. Take note that though I said it could be because things start to look inhuman past a certain point, drawings don't follow real humans' proportions to a T either, so some leeway is appropriate.

But when the breasts are the same size as the entire torso, you've got some problems, and that's only three heads large.

Three heads is usually larger than the torso already. Almost every proportion guide I've read for realistic humans recommends two heads width for the torso. Given anime heads tend to be larger than normal, 1.5 heads might be closer.

In any case, I think 2 heads is a generous limit as it is, as because as I mentioned earlier, if each breast is two heads wide, (4 heads total) they each already overhang by a full head on either side of the realistic 2 head torso, which is definitely stretching the bounds of tastefulness and appropriate proportions.

Two heads is probably the realistic upper limit, but there should be an intentional gray area. It's entirely possible for a drawing with breasts three heads in size to be worthy of belonging on this site. You can still delete those images, but you should rely on other arguments (it's poorly drawn, it's ugly, etc.)

Based on the discussion here I'm going to increase the limit to three heads.

Reluctant though I am, I'll abide by your decision.

Now, please clarify, since this was a point of contention before, and it's your judgment that matters here:

Three heads in area, as I demonstrated earlier, or three heads stacked in some direction, as Action Kamen measures it?

And, if the latter, which direction?

  • Width of head to width of breast,
  • Height of head to height/length of breast,
  • Height of head to width of breast, or
  • Width of head to height of breast?

Also, shall I edit the wiki for gigantic breasts to denote breasts between two and three head-sizes, with anything more being not allowed?

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