Brouhaha over Breasts

A babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain.
Marion Zimmer Bradley

Ahh the hoopla. A breast. On a magazine. A magazine about parenting. A magazine about pregnancy. A magazine about BABIES! What is wrong here? Aren't we subjected day in and day out to boobs in our face and other various sexual images through the media, on the beach, at the mall? Now we have a breast shown in its PRIMARY function as a giver of life, and people are objecting! And the battle rages on!

The furor over this issue amazes me. The scariest thing is that it is other WOMEN that are doing most of the complaining. Other women that admit to having breast fed their babies too. Have they forgotten what it is like to have to hunker down in public with a wailing infant just so someone won't be offended by a glimpse of a stray boob? Are these women really that afraid that their husbands and sons might be turned on by seeing this random breast? And that these same husbands and sons must obviously have no self control of their reactions? And that these same husbands and sons don't realize that breasts have more functions then serving as an object for fondling or pasty attachment? Pleeeeeease.

Lindsey at Theology & Geometry doesn't mince words when addressing the naysayers. "You should really get a frigging life if...some exhausted nursing mother, carrying around a diaper bag and stroller and a fragile little mound of soul and some pretty heavy emotional weight, has to shuffle her way into a damp stinky restroom to feed her baby just so you don't have to think about your dirty boys having naughty thoughts about boobies that aren't yours." Read the rest here.

Our Puritan roots seem to be getting the best of us. Pornography is rampant, and yet a breast-feeding baby causes people to get all riled up.
Kenneth Love, a stay-at-home dad of his own cute little bundle of joy, questions a society that can "find Victoria's Secret's yearly lingerie parade to be good clean entertainment" and its effect on women's body images, including our breasts.

I think that Babytalk's editor Lisa Moran summed it up when she said that the cover controversy clearly echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public. "There's a squeamishness about seeing a body part even part of a body part. It's not like women are whipping them out with tassels on them! Mostly, they are trying to be discreet."

Human milk is the preferred feeding for all infants, including premature and sick newborns. It is recommended that breastfeeding continue for at least the first 12 months, and thereafter for as long as mutually desired.

- excerpt from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) breastfeeding guidelines

Europeans get it. Most of the civilized world gets it. Even underdeveloped coutries get it. Many of our government agencies and employers get it. So why can't the public at large? Go to Goggle or Blogger and type in "babytalk magazine" and you will see what I mean. "sigh" We Americans have such a long way to go.