Do you find this magazine cover offensive? A surprisingly large portion of Babytalk's readership did when the magazine hit the stands last month.
By Jocelyne Zablit in Washington
August 04, 2006 01:53pm
"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 that caters to young mothers.
"I was offended and it made my husband very uncomfortable when I left the magazine on the coffee table."
Her reaction was among some 5000 letters the magazine received in response to a poll to gauge reader sentiment about Babytalk's August cover photo, which shows a baby nursing.
Several readers said they were "embarrassed" or "offended" by the Babytalk photo and one woman from Nevada said she "immediately turned the magazine face down" when she saw the photo.
"Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob," the mother of a four-month-old said.
Another reader said she was "horrified" when she received the magazine and hoped that her husband hadn't laid eyes on it.
"I had to rip off the cover since I didn't want it laying around the house," she said.
A national television program also ran a segment on the controversy, interviewing several people in New York who expressed disgust over the cover photo.
I'm disgusted too, at how asnine people can be. It's a nursing baby! There's nothing sexual about this photo! In fact, IMHO, this is the most non-arousing image of a woman's breast anyone could come up with.
And it's not so much about the breast, either. Janet Jackson showed off more of her boob at the Super Bowl a few years ago.
And yet, people have had a shit fit about it, and I really don't understand why. That's not to say the image isn't moving and strikingly beautiful. When my Lovely Wife was nursing our kids, I could stare at her doing it for hours on end. To be perfeclty honest, I was a little envious at times at the connection my Lovely Wife had with our children when she was nursing them. The whole world seemed to stop.
Why do I bring this up now? Two reasons, I suppose. First, those anal-retentive puckered-up prudes on the far-right edge of the political spectrum are so fucking uptight they're in a hissy about anything even remotely connnected to S-E-X even when the images in question have absolutely nothing to do with sex. Exposed breast? Bad! Bad, bad, bad! It doesn't matter what context in which the breast is exposed, it's bad, goshdarn it!!!
What a tragedy. What a beautiful image. If I were an OB/GYN I'd try to blow that one up and put it on the wall in my waiting room, to encourage women to be unafraid when sanctimonious assholes blow their collective tops at the sight of a mother nourishing her child.
The second reason I'm bringing this up is to announce that the times, they are a-changing. Rather than kunckle under to the pressures of the puritanical prudes, the editorial board of Babytalk is taking pride in having shocked polite society.
From the article:
Babytalk executive editor Lisa Moran said though most of those who responded to the poll about the cover photo gave the magazine a thumbs up, she was surprised that some 25 per cent expressed outrage.
"There is a real puritanical streak in America," Moran said.
"You see celebrities practically baring their breasts all the time and no one seems to mind in this sort of sexual context.
"But in this very natural context of feeding your child, a lot of Americans are very uncomfortable with it."
She said the controversy was all the more surprising in light of concerted efforts by the US government and health professionals to encourage women to breastfeed.
"Everyone is saying that breastfeeding is best for baby, but there is so little support for it in public," Moran said.
She said the Babytalk cover photo marked the first time a major parenting magazine in the United States had dared to break the taboo about showing a woman's breast and the outrage it had prompted was not about to discourage editors from doing it again.
"This hasn't scared us off at all," Moran said. "We're thrilled and hopefully this will help women get more support for nursing."
Good for them. If we're going to unclench our collective sphincter muscles about the human body, we need to do so about the non-sexual aspects of the body as well as the sexual aspects.
The negative reaction to the magazine cover may have something to do with the size of the breast.When my wife breast fed our kids at church (they had couches set up in the lady's room)the smaller breasted women were the ones that freaked at my wife's 42I cups.Even now she gets glares for wearing the same tank top that another smaller breasted woman is wearing.
ReplyDelete