In many ways you can understand why talking about this woman's breasts forces us to really think about how we define our ideal woman and what makes her beautiful . For example, in line 3 we see that Shakespeare avoids a direct comparison. It simply gives us the strong image of sparkling white snow and places it next to the equally strong image of brown or grayish-brown breasts. It makes us think about our colors and what we want to see on a woman. White is the symbol of purity, cleanliness, virginity, etc. and putting all this next to what Shakespeare says about his mistress's brown breasts makes them seem dirty and disgusting. Another play analyzed by Shakespeare concerns his mistress's hair. A major cliché today about women's beauty concerns their hair. Men assume it must be silky and smooth and sometimes even shiny. Shakespeare ends up overturning this hypothesis in this poem. In Shakespeare's time, readers might have recognized all these worn similes as allusions or references to images from other love poems. For example, the image of hair as black as wires coming out of his head could be intended to disgust the audience. It almost seems like Shakespeare is referring to a scary character.