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January 05, 2009

Breasts: Baby Bottles or Boobies?

Kevin has brought to my attention a fascinating debate that is raging right now over Facebook’s decision to remove photographs of mothers breast feeding their children if any portion of the nipple or areola is showing. As one can easily imagine, breast-feeding mothers and advocates are outraged and are engaging in a variety of protest activities. Time has a piece on the debate that highlights the absurdities involved in society’s view of breasts, and particularly of nipples, and the appropriateness of their public exposure. I find the whole controversy both humorous and revealing (no pun intended).

[P]lunging necklines or string bikinis are fine — just no nips.

I’m a tad on the conservative side here. I breast-fed both of my children, one until about 14 months and the other until 11 months when, to my dismay, he decided he was finished with it. I fed them in public all the time, but I always draped a light blanket over myself so as to avoid making others uncomfortable and only rarely did anyone around me realize what was occurring. It wasn’t that I felt I was morally superior in any way, but rather that I didn’t want others’ titillation coloring that precious mothering experience with my babies. Most Americans are perfectly comfortable with the motherly sweetness of an infant nursing, but the second that baby lets go, the breast magically transforms from bottle to booby. God willing, all the protesting and “education” won't ever change that, because having something that is both utilitarian and that much fun is a rare gift indeed.

Women have undergone an interesting transition in their views toward breasts and breast-feeding over the past several generations. My great grandmother nursed her own children and would have had no problem working as a wet nurse for another woman’s infant if that woman could not nurse her own baby. But she would never have done so in front of men; in fact, she was the most modest person I've ever known. My grandmother probably would not have nursed another’s infant, as the bottle had become a viable option, but she nursed her own children and was less obsessed with modesty. My mother’s generation (but thankfully not my mother) often opted for the bottle over the breast, and many viewed breasts as purely sexual objects, while breastfeeding was seen as somehow undignified at best, and downright disgusting and indecent at worst.

Happily, breastfeeding has made a comeback. Unhappily, many women today have swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme of where my mother’s generation stood on the matter, viewing breasts as purely utilitarian organs and denying the sexual effect they have on many men when displayed in public. As a result, society today is terribly mixed up on this whole matter. (Now, I don’t doubt that some men today are perfectly capable of seeing a woman breast-feeding in public without being aroused by the display of the breast and, especially, the nipple. But I don’t know any such men and tend to think a fair bit of denial would have to be involved.)

As Time points out:

When a tabloid website catches a star like Britney Spears, Keira Knightley or Tara Reid in a red-carpet "nip slip," traffic goes through the roof, as Web surfers click to catch a glimpse of the forbidden bit of skin.

It is perhaps understandable that we'd be so enflamed by the sight of women's nipples because we see them so rarely. Barbie dolls don't have nipples. Magazines routinely airbrush out nipples on fully clothed (but presumably chilly) models.

… Meanwhile, men's nipples aren't a problem. Recent photos of President-elect Barack Obama walking shirtless on a beach were greeted with puns about how he is "fit to be President," "buff-bodied" and "chiseled."

And perhaps the surest sign that "pregnant man" Thomas Beatie has been accepted as a man — even though he still has female sex organs and the ability to deliver a baby — is the fact that his nipples, the same ones he had when he was a woman, are suddenly O.K. to look at. They are acceptable features for the cover of a book, the pages of a magazine —and the profile photos for the Facebook groups supporting him.

Personally, I’m not bothered by breast-feeding in public, even when a nipple is plainly visible, but then I’m about as heterosexual as a woman can be. My husband, on the other hand, gets downright ecstatic over such events. And that’s fine – I’m happy to see him enjoying himself and find it rather funny, actually. The only problem I really have with it is when the women who are doing the public breast-feeding want to deny the reality that their breasts will be viewed by some as boobies, and not as baby bottles. I think if you’re going to hang it out there, then you’re going to have to be prepared to have it gawked at, and you shouldn’t get indignant about it. If it bothers you that men can't get past the sexual aspect of the breast, then do what I did when it bothered me to have sexuality intruding on my "baby" time – cover up.

Posted by Becky at January 5, 2009 01:14 PM