Last week I wrote about some of my favorite sparrow species that I’ve photographed in Chicago. When going through my photos of dark-eyed juncos, I wanted to choose one for the post where the sparrow was facing the camera but its distinctive white tail feathers were still noticeable. At first I didn’t think I would have one like that because typically the bird would have to be facing backwards to see its tail feathers, but eventually I found one I’d taken that perfectly showed off the tail feathers with the sparrow still looking towards the camera. I used it in the post as an example of a dark-eyed junco without any further thought.
Later that day, Eric Lesch pointed out to me that the dark-eyed junco I had photographed was in a perfect boob/butt pose. For those of you who are thankfully not aware of this trope, the boobs/butt pose is a common pose for illustrated female figures in which both a woman’s butt and boobs are facing forward. The purpose of it, presumably, is to make sure you can see the illustrated lady’s tuchas and tits at the same time, because clearly that is the most important thing to consider when drawing a woman’s body.
There are many great examples of the boob/butt pose on the Escher Girls tumblr, but for an example of one I’ve personally been seeing a lot of lately, here is the character Theory from the Nintendo Switch game Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a game I’ve been playing a ton of for the past couple of months. Theory’s character art consists of one of the most egregious examples of the boob/butt post that I have ever seen.
Of course, it’s anatomically impossible for a real life woman to contort herself into the boob/butt pose, but, as I discovered last week, it’s not impossible for birds. This dark-eyed junco is doing a perfect boob/butt pose and could not be more proud of itself.
Granted, birds don’t actually have boobs per se, but the point remains that this particular dark-eyed junco can perfectly show off both its tail feathers and chest at the same time, unlike us inflexible, clunky humans. From now on whenever I come across the boobs/butt pose in a video game or comic book, I’m just going to imagine this proud sparrow instead.
