Oh PUH-LEASE….
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'Breast'
Cover Gets Mixed Reaction
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 Thursday July 27, 2006 4:53pm
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NEW YORK (AP) - "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 greater 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.
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."
It's the same reason that Ash, 41, who nursed all three of her
children, is cautious about breast-feeding in public - a subject of enormous
debate among women, which has even spawned a new term: "lactivists,"
meaning those who advocate for a woman's right to nurse wherever she needs to.
"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."
Another mother, Kelly Wheatley, wrote Babytalk to applaud the cover,
precisely because, she says, it helps educate people that breasts are more than
sex objects. And yet Wheatley, 40, who's still nursing her 3-year-old daughter,
rarely breast-feeds in public, partly because it's more comfortable in the car,
and partly because her husband is uncomfortable with other men seeing her
breast.
"Men are very visual," says Wheatley, 40, of Amarillo, Texas.
"When they see a woman's breast, they see a breast - regardless of what
it's being used for."
Babytalk editor Susan Kane says the mixed response to the cover
clearly echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public. "There's a
huge Puritanical streak in Americans," she says, "and 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!" she
adds. "Mostly, they are trying to be discreet."
Kane says that since the August issue came out last week, the magazine has
received more than 700 letters - more than for any article in years.
"Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob," wrote Lauren,
a mother of a 4-month-old.
The evidence of public discomfort isn't just anecdotal. In a survey published
in 2004 by the American Dietetic Association, less than half - 43 percent - of
3,719 respondents said women should have the right to breast-feed in public
places.
The debate rages at a time when the celebrity-mom phenomenon has made
breast-feeding perhaps more public than ever. Gwyneth Paltrow, Brooke Shields,
Kate Hudson and Kate Beckinsale are only a few of the stars who've talked
openly about their nursing experiences.
The celeb factor has even brought a measure of chic to that unsexiest of garments:
the nursing bra. Gwen Stefani can be seen on babyrazzi.com - a site with a
self-explanatory name - sporting a leopard-print version from lingerie line
Agent Provocateur. And none other than Angelina Jolie
wore one proudly on the cover of People. (Katie Holmes, meanwhile, suffered a
maternity wardrobe malfunction when cameras caught her, nursing bra open and
peeking out of her shirt, while on the town with husband Tom Cruise.)
More seriously, the social and medical debate has intensified. The U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services recently concluded a two-year breast-feeding
awareness campaign including a TV ad - criticized as over-the-top even by some
breast-feeding advocates - in which NOT breast-feeding was equated with the
recklessness of a pregnant woman riding a mechanical bull.
There have been other measures to promote breast-feeding: in December, for
example, Massachusetts
banned hospitals from giving new mothers gift bags with free infant formula, a
practice opponents said swayed some women away from nursing.
Most states now have laws guaranteeing the right to breast-feed where one
chooses, and when a store or restaurant employee denies a woman that right, it
has often resulted in public protests known as "nurse-ins": at a
Starbucks in Miami, at Victoria's Secret stores in Racine, Wis. and Boston,
and, last year, outside ABC headquarters in New York, when Barbara Walters made
comments on "The View" seen by some women to denigrate breast-feeding
in public.
"It's a new age," says Melinda Johnson,
a registered dietician and spokesperson for ADA. "With the government really getting
behind breast-feeding, it's been a jumping-off point for mothers to be
politically active. Mommies are organizing. It's a new trend to be a mommy
activist."
Ultimately, it seems to be a highly personal matter. Caly Wood says she's
"all for breast-feeding in public." She recalls with a shudder the
time she sat nursing in a restaurant booth, and another woman walked by,
glanced over and said, "Ugh, gross."
"My kid needed to eat," says the 29-year-old from South Abingdon, Mass.
And she wasn't going to go hide in a not-so-clean restroom: "I don't send
people to the bathroom when THEY want to eat," she says.
But Rebekah Kreutz thinks differently. One of six women who author
SisterhoodSix, a blog on mothering issues, Kreutz didn't nurse her two
daughters in public, and doesn't really feel comfortable seeing others do it.
"I respect it and think women have the right," says Kreutz, 34, of Bozeman, Mont.
"But personally, it makes me really uncomfortable."
"I just think it's one of those moments that should stay between a mother
and her child."
Best
Regards,
Kelly Zantey
Creator, BellyBelly.com.au
Gentle Solutions From Conception to Parenthood
BellyBelly Birth Support
- http://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth-support
