I hate to get all political on your arse* but...
today I was trawling through the blogs. as you do. and over at Larvatus Prodeo was this post about a parenting magazine getting a flogging for it's front cover, namely, this -
- because a picture of a breast-feeding baby is obscene.
what the hell is that all about? thank you, conservative America, for completely missing the point about babies, mothers, a natural and fabulous process, and stopping mothers from feeling embarrassed about all of the above.
I won't write much more because a) you can feel my righteous indignation, and b) the following blogs/zines have done it for me - The Consumerist, Zulkey, and an article on the MSNBC website. Harry? if you're reading this, can For Rattle! borrow your sword for a while?
that is all.
* well, it's not really your arse I'm getting political on.
Friday, August 04, 2006
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7 comments:
btw - does anyone know how to do titles on our posts? I couldn't see a way of doing it on the 'create a post' page. there was the window for the body of the text, but usually above that is a window for a title. if you know what I mean.
Yeah, there was a person in Livejournal who was issued a notice to remove their usepic, which was a picture of a baby breastfeeding. She was using it in a breastfeeding community, so it was in context (for a start). The LJ people said she was using an offensive userpic. The whole thing created quite the uproar and I'm not sure whether LJ ended up backing down on it. Should chase that up...
Lou Blogger won't let me explain headings the way I want to...
so you have to use these: <> with h1 inside the brackety doovies (for largest size), then smaller h2, h3 etc then <> with /h1 again inside the brackety doovies (or whatever) does this explain it? It might not...painkillers are working...
I did read about that, and I was slack and didn't end up seeing what happened either...
This is a copy of my comment on LP
I never found breatsfeeding that erotic or sexual or even especially nice. It did make me sleepy though. Just what a new mother needs!
I think that there has been this debate about breastfeeding going on for a while now. The whole breast is best/bottles are fabulous/if you don’t breastfeed until they’re 30, they’ll be sickly and die/ you’re an aging hippy if you breastfeed longer than a year/etc. arguments keep popping up and gets a trifle dull after a while.
It would be nice if you were allowed to do whatever you wanted, wherever and whenever you wanted, but it’s never going to happen.
I will defend the right for any woman to feed her baby anywhere and in fact have feed in the middle of a food court at lunch time on school holidays (oh, those defenceless young children being exposed to porn, the horror)
The best advice I got re: breastfeeding in public, is find a quiet spot out of the way and drape a cloth over you and the baby. Not only does it stop the stares it’s also a bit more peaceful for you and the little one.
Also if you do feed when they’re toddlers, you are going to be noticed. It’s the way of the world. If you chose to do so, you have to fight that battle. Don’t try the whole ‘the breasts shouldn’t be sexualised, they’re purely for nutrition of the next generation purposes’ crap. If that were the case, women wouldn’t have bigger boobs than men (generally) we also wouldn’t have bigger hips etc. These are the two biggest sex attractors and have been for quite a while. Yes, they are both linked with having babies and that’s what makes them so very raunchy to male dna that wants to procreate.
Done ranting now!
PS - I think the photo has been airbrushed. There’s no lines or marks or veins.Cute baby too.
Yeah...definately airbrushed...speaking of which. Went and saw 'The Pregnant Lady' at the National Art Gallery yesterday. All I can say is "Wow!"
She is perfect...right down to the texturing on her palms. I reckon if you touched her, she would be warm. Amazing!
ARGH!
I have a couple of theories about this..
1. Is that people don't seem to have the ability to comprehend that boobs have 2 potential functions. 2! That's right.. more than one! yes, they are sexual and provide both sexes with pleasure, and like DV said, have a role to play in getting a mate (else why do we have much larger ones than men - size doesn't matter when breatsfeeding after all). They also provide the bestest food for our offspring etc etc. I think some idiots think "breasts are attractive to me, therefore all aspects are sexual and breastfeeding is teh bad coz I might get a hard-on" 2 purposes people TWO. Is that so hard?
and the second reason I thinks is not that people are threatened by boobs being sexualised - hell every other billboard has sexualised boobs on them.. but are threatened by non-sexualised boobs. Not sure why... but I really believe that it's the fact that boobs AREN'T sexual in this instance that is the big hangup.
*shrug* I dunno.
agrred Meg - there seems to be something threatening about non-sexual boobs. too confronting perhaps? too real?
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