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.

Eros Diluted

Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.
D.H. Lawrence

What is it with men and porn? I have heard a number of excuses from different men, but they all seem to say the same thing...it is harmless, it means nothing, it is liberating, it makes me crave REAL sex more. I once read that women should see men's interest in porn as sort of an appetizer, something that would whet their appetite for the real thing. But haven't you ever gone to a party and eaten so many appetizers that, by the time the main course arrived, you were too full to eat?

Unfortunately, the Internet has taken porn from its seedy origins to complacency. It has become mainstream. Need a stress reliever? Use porn! Need to spice up your marriage? Use porn! Want to be the "cool girl" on campus? Use porn! But porn doesn't really whet men's appetites, it just turns them off of the real thing.

There's an episode of Friends - The One With The Free Porn - in which Chandler and Joey discover they have tuned into a porn channel. And it's free. They leave the TV on, afraid switching off will mean no more pornography. By the end of the episode, Chandler is seeing the world through porn-tinted spectacles. "I was just at the bank," he complains, "and the teller didn't ask me to go do it with her in the vault." Joey, bewildered, reports a similar reaction from the pizza-delivery girl. "You know what," decides Chandler, "we have to turn off the porn."

Porn creates unrealistic values that women then have to live up to. How can we possibly compare to the air-brushed, silicone-enhanced Amazons who not only willingly but enthusiastically submit to any guy's misogynistic fantasies. Naomi Wolf compares our diet of pornography to our unhealthy consumption of fast-food, asserting that "if your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so."

Merryhanukkwanzaa

Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry.
Charles Osgood

Everyone is so PC these days! The Religious Right is up in arms about the "War on Christmas". (What war?) Some Jews get upset when they see creche scenes in public places, but then can't seem to understand why others would object to menorah displays. And what about Ramadan, Davali, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, Boxing Day, etc. etc. etc. Whatever happened to freeedom of religion AND freedom of expression!?