shimmer

'Breast' Cover Gets Mixed Reaction

By JOCELYN NOVECK
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 27, 2006; 5:55 PM

NEW YORK -- "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.

These readers weren't complaining about a sexually explicit cover, but rather one of a baby nursing, on a wholesome parenting magazine--yet another sign that Americans are squeamish over the sight of a nursing breast, even as breast-feeding itself gains more support from the government and medical community.

Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo--a baby and part of a woman's breast, in profile--inappropriate.

(Read the rest of 'Breast' Cover Gets Mixed Reaction)

My favorite quote from the whole story was this:

"I'm totally supportive of it _ I just don't like the flashing," she says. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

Yeah, they probably hate that! I suspect she actually means she didn't want them to accidentally see a breast that SHE didn't want them to see.

At any rate, I think people really just need to get over this issue. I've seen nursing women relegated to bathrooms (Eww! Would YOU want to eat in the bathroom?!?) and asked to leave restaurants just because they are feeding their baby. Just ridiculous.

When I was nursing my children, I was reasonably discreet and usually covered the baby/breast conjunction with a little blanket, but there was no way I was going to the bathroom to nurse. It says a lot about how puritanical and life-denying our culture really is that this is such a big deal. Isn't this 2006? What is wrong with people, anyway?

Posted by Jean on Friday, July 28, 2006 at 10:21 AM | Permalink