Breast/Legends

"Mara can't exactly drop what she's doing either. She's feeding Ben."

- Luke Skywalker

Breasts were the mammary glands of mammalian species, normally a distinguishing feature of the female of the species.

Biological role
"She feels all... mushy"

- Ben Skywalker

In many cultures, sentient females nursed their own young. This was true of both primitive and high-tech societies: warrior-women of the Singing Mountain Clan on the planet Dathomir would feed their children even during solemn councils of war, while Mara Jade Skywalker nursed her son Ben until he was a few months old.

Even Tenel Ka Djo, Queen Mother of the Hapes Star Cluster nursed her daughter Allana herself, although this may have reflected her own Dathomiri heritage.

Cultural significance
In mainstream Galactic society, breasts were normally kept covered, but the direct evidence for whether the baring of the breasts in public was taboo is ambiguous.

Female patients in bacta tanks could often had their breasts covered, and on Alderaan, the bust of high-ranking women like Princess Leia was generally minimized by their clothing, but Leia herself seemed unperturbed by the sight of Shen breastfeeding in public on Dathomir, and Luke Skywalker was similarly unfazed when he encountered the Fallanassi adept Norika wearing only a sarong.

Of course, based on these occurrences, it can be stated with confidence that bared breasts were considered uncontroversial among the Dathomiri and the Fallanassi, at the very least. Some Twi'lek dancers may have performed bare-breasted, and Askajian females were prized as dancers and lingerie models because of their six-breasted physique.

Non-Mammals with breasts
A number of females belonging to non-mammalian of species are known to have had breasts, most notably the reptillian Falleen. Some sources seem to suggest that these reflect a mammalian connection in the Falleen's genetic ancestry, but other sources indicate that the size of the spinal ridge as the main distinguishing feature of gender dimorphism in this species. It is possible that large-chested Falleen females like Savan had cosmetic surgery, or that this was an evolutionary trait reflecting the Falleen's nature as highly-evolved sexual predators.

Similarly, the physique that T'ra Saa, who is a Neti&mdash;essentially a sentient tree&mdash;assumed in her pseudo-human form can be regarded as consciously chosen, as she was in fact a shape-shifter.

Behind the scenes

 * As in many other comic books, female characters are sometimes depicted with breasts on the verge of being disproportionally big. However, breast size is only ambiguously canonical, as characters that appear in both comics and movies typically have smaller breasts in the movies, whose canonicity overrides that of the comics.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Heir to the Empire
 * The Courtship of Princess Leia
 * Tyrant's Test
 * Star by Star
 * ''Tempest