A mannequin displays her wares, and a little bit more, in the window of Ann Taylor Loft in New York City’s Times Square. (Photo by Mary Johnson/CNS)

When David Naranjo worked for the teen boutique Charlotte Russe, his job was to make sure the chain’s displays — and its mannequins — looked fabulous. He supervised their clothes and their poses, but he never gave any thought to their anatomy. The mannequins had nipples, pretty pronounced ones, and in the store’s tight-fitting styles, those stood out.

The complaints trickled in slowly, mostly from moms unhappy with what they saw as a sexual signal being sent to their daughters. Naranjo took action. He handed members of his team files and sandpaper and sent them to multiple store locations. Their task: get rid of the nipples.

“It wasn’t our intention to offend anyone,” said Naranjo, who from then on stipulated “no nipples” on all mannequin order forms. “It’s something we didn’t think about prior to getting those letters.”

Naranjo thinks about it now. For the past 11 years, he has been the creative director of Greneker, a 75-year-old mannequin manufacturer in Los Angeles that counts Macy’s, Ann Taylor Loft, Dillard’s, and Frederick’s of Hollywood among its clients. Each of his company’s mannequins is molded to include nipples as part of the natural sculpting process, he said. But before sending out any of his products, Naranjo asks his customers if they want that specific element included. Most of his customers will say no, he said, in which case the titillating addition can be sanded down in five minutes, free of charge.

“Sometimes they can look a little vulgar,” Naranjo admitted.

Although many of Naranjo’s customers would prefer a smoother bosom, breasts with a bit of a tip dominate the store windows of many retailers, judging from a recent walking tour in Manhattan, one of the world’s fashion capitals. Nipples poked through the latest spring styles at Macy’s, Gap, Zara, Donna Karan, American Apparel and Club Monaco, to name a few. And people are taking notice. Two Facebook groups ask why mannequins would need such an enhancement, and bloggers all over the globe wonder the same thing. Some posit that such body parts make mannequins more realistic, even though these fake bodies are often devoid of facial features, limbs and heads. Other observers joke that they could be purely functional, allowing mannequins to nurse their fiberglass offspring. And then there’s the sales angle.

“I mean, I can’t imagine that women think, ‘I wasn’t sure about this blouse, but now that I see how excited it makes her, I’m sold!’” one commentator quipped on the blog DemocraticUnderground.com.

Overexposure is generally not a look the retail customer is after, according to Kristie Foster, a boutique owner in Astoria, N.Y. She said her customers are mortified if they try on a top without the right bra and end up showing off more than they intended. “Most women that come in my store don’t want that shown, period,” said Foster, who displays her merchandise on headless dress forms, with no nipples.

But that mentality hasn’t always been predominant, said University of Oxford professor Linda M. Scott. In her 2005 book “Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism,” Scott claims the benippled mannequin was created in the 1970s as a response to the feminist movement’s rejection of bras. No bras meant no coverage, and these women were suddenly showing off more than ever before.

“It was a really provocative thing to show up to a party with no bra on,” said Scott, an expert in consumer culture. “It became almost instantly a fashion statement.”

Not long after bra burning became a popular political statement, nipples popped up on store mannequins everywhere, she said.

That was then. Bras have since worked their way back under the blouses of American women. So what’s the point in choosing nipples over none when purchasing a mannequin?

Many retailers are reluctant to discuss their policies regarding mannequin anatomy, but Glenn Sokoli, an adjunct assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said specific sculptural details rarely play a role in selecting a mannequin. “It’s more choosing the right mannequin for the display,” said Sokoli, who has specialized in visual merchandising for 25 years. “It’s got nothing to do with nipples.”

Some retailers prefer a more abstract mannequin design, while others, like Sokoli, value realism. “The mannequin companies say that they sculpt to life,” he explained. “It’s a true art.”

For some customers, however, the “realism” reasoning doesn’t hold up.

“These damn plastic women with plastic perky nipples just piss me off,” one woman wrote several years ago on her blog, CookieBitch. “That’s why I have decided to ban all stores with mannequin nipples from now on. I’m making a political statement here people! That erect, perfect, north-pointing nipples have no place in the real world!”

Store window mannequins show women how to wear the latest trends. But when it is often deemed unnecessary for these life-size replicas to have heads or arms, why do they all have nipples?