The Outrage Over the Breast

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

01 Dec 2006 08:54 AM

We're pro-breast here at the Baby Blog - we're pro anything that is comfortable and healthy for mom and baby. So if you choose to breastfeed, huzzah, if you choose to express the milk and bottle feed, huzzah and if you chose to rely on formula, huzzah for you.

So imagine my surprise this morning as I read a vitriolic letter written to a parenting magazine about having a bare breast on the cover of it with a baby attached to the breast, nursing. It's a beautiful photograph and the baby was adorable. Yet the reader labeled this photograph as pornography.

Pornography & the Breast

The breast is may be considered a sexual organ because it can be stimulated during the sexual intimacy, but then so can the ears and the fingers and we don't keep those covered up. When a baby is nursing, it's a beautiful sight and it is completely natural. The argument that we have formula now and that makes the breast obscene borders on the ridiculous.

I'll grant you that seeing a mother nursing may not be comfortable for some people, but you don't have to stare at it. To condemn a parenting magazine that focuses on it's issues on new moms and writing articles about parenting for mothers of newborns from the first time mom to the fifth time mother.

The photograph was hardly exploitive and in my world and perhaps I am alone in this and I can live with that is that pornography is exploitive and gratuitous - there is nothing exploitive about this photograph. The baby is clear in the photograph and you can only see the curve of the breast - hardly more than you can see in a triangle cut bikini.

Some readers letters established that they were disgusted, others called it pornography and yet others called it indecent exposure. Ladies, our breasts are our own and when our children are born - and we choose to nurse them - it's not about being sexual, it's about being nurturing. If you are not comfortable with breastfeeding, you don't have to do it. If you don't want to see a mother nursing her child - don't look.

But the last thing I refuse to do is to be made to feel ashamed of my breasts and the idea of a baby nursing at them - it's hardly pornographic, shameful, dirty or indecent. It's a gift and it's natural and if you've ever seen the image of the Madonna with the infant Jesus at her breast - then you would realize that if it was good enough for him - then it should be more than okay for us.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Related Articles:

The Miracle of the Breast Pump

Don't Be a Breastmilk Bully

Why You Won't Catch Me at a Nurse-In

Practices that Promote Breastfeeding

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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Valorie Delp (49340) 01 Dec 2006 08:33 AM

Do I really HAVE to comment here Heather--for you to know what I'm thinking? Great blog Heather! I also wrote something when that cover first came out (unless this is another one); entitled "The Breast in Breastfeeding". Oh--and huzzah? Classic, Heather, classic!

Eliza Ferree (725) 01 Dec 2006 09:49 AM

Hmmm, I saw this a while back and wondered if it would get to the magazine or not. I'm totally breast as well, actually did it with all three of mine and plan on doing it with this one. I think that photo was just fine, I saw no porn in it, I think that person is just plain uncomfortable with breasts.

Julie Gentry (5915) 11 Jan 2007 12:43 AM

I didn't see the cover, but I do get upset with women who breastfeed in public without covering themselves. Yes, it's natural. But my 14 year old doesn't need to see breasts. Maybe the magazine ought to have known their customer base better. If there's that much hoopla, it probably wasn't the best choice.

Valorie Delp (49340) 11 Jan 2007 10:27 AM

I never cover myself and I can guarantee you you'd not even realize I was breastfeeding! I agree women should be discreet. . .but I think most women try to be.

Mary Ann Romans (26881) 11 Jan 2007 11:10 AM

I'm nursing as I read this. I did see the cover, and there is the same amount of breast in the photo as there is on the cover of some other magaazines that advertise cars, etc. it is a shame that those magazines don't make anyone blink an eye.

Breast versus bottle is such a hot issue that I think helps fuel the controversy.