Breastfeeding Outrage
» Zealots, Crusaders, Pests
About a fourth of the readers of Babytalk, a parenting magazine, were upset by a cover showing a woman breastfeeding her baby. What an emotionally unhealthy bunch.
“I was shocked to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,” one woman from Kansas wrote in reaction to the picture in Babytalk, a free magazine for young mothers. “I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table.”
I wonder exactly why hubby was uncomfortable? Did he yearn to be the baby?
Bare breast needs cover-up, not front cover

Comments
I was very, very appalled by reading about these reactions. It’s a BREAST, for F’s sake! Just around half of the world’s population has them, and the vast majority of us have at some point been sucking on our mothers’, so what on earth is so shocking about them?
It’s horrible to think that women’s bodies are so inherently linked with sex in popular culture. A man can show his torso without it being necessarily sexual, but even the hint of a breast in a non-sexual context will still be considered somehow sexual and explicitly so.
I liked the cover, and I thought it was very beautiful and not in the least sexual.
Posted by: Søren Riis | August 5, 2006 8:41 AM
I thought the outrage over something as natural as breastfeeding show’s how IQ’s are dropping in this country. We are definitely going back to the dark ages when a woman can’t feed her child the way the Goddess intended her too. Whats wrong with a breast? Women DO have them and they are nothing to be ashamed of.
Posted by: Lashra | August 6, 2006 5:38 PM
It is a good clear indication of the dark heart of American puritanism that something nurturing could be found obscene.
Posted by: Richard Evans Lee | August 6, 2006 5:48 PM
I think a lot of christofascists were offended by that magazine cover because it makes them think about sex, which they all believe is dirty and evil. In my heart of hearts I see them, fully clothed (of course) in the dark (natch) desperately trying to fumble into the missionary position once a month, but only after the man has showered, used underarm deodorant, and brushed his teeth twice.
And the men always secretly feel guilty when they get their loads off. The women feel guilty because they wonder if there is anything to that “woman’s orgasm” muth they used to hear about.
Posted by: tamehorse | August 13, 2006 2:45 AM