Magazine cover blasted by public squeamish over sight of nursing breast

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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14065706/

 

 

 

 

Eyeful of breast-feeding mom sparks outrage

 

Magazine cover blasted by public squeamish over sight of nursing breast

 

 

Updated: 5:33 p.m. PT July 27, 2006

 

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 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.

 

Click for related content

 

* Message Board: Breast-feeding in public — human nature or

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* Diet, exercise OK for breast-feeding women

* Sex close to due date could trigger labor

 

" 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. "