By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP
APBabytalk editor Susan Kane says the mixed response to the cover clearly echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public.
NEW YORK (July 27) – “I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,” one person wrote. “I immediately turned the magazine face down,” wrote another. “Gross,” said a third.
Full article here
This article makes me want to scream. Really? A breast? We’re not talking Janet Jackson – we’re not even seeing nipple! It’s a baby nursing. In fact, if you didn’t know what it was, you’d think it was the side view of a round elbow or something. What I’m trying to say is, it’s not indecent in the least!
Not only that, it’s on the cover of a free magazine geared toward mothers of babies. Gee. I wonder how many of them are nursing?
With the government doing this big push about how great nursing is (comparing formula a bucking bronco no less – but I can’t find the link) – and then mother’s are actually sending in mail to the editor complaining about this photo?
One mother who didn’t like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.
“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast – it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.”
Oh please. I don’t think seeing a baby nursing is going to spawn a great pubescent rush of hormones. I mean dude. A breast first and foremost is the means for which our human spawn to receive nurishment. It’s our society and culture that has sexualized the breast. To be shamed, or called indecent, or anything else when showing the breast in it’s original intent is asinine and ignorant. I shouldn’t have to grapple with blankets etc to try and breastfeed my child in public because I might offend someone *gasp*.
And neither should this magazine – which caters to mothers of babies trying to find the best way to nurture them – censor themselves from showing a breast as nature intended it.
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