Boobs

This is my opinion of boobs in the media. Not the ones attached to women but the ones who raise a ruckus every time a celebrity does anything normal or natural in an open and public way. Recently Brad Pitt took some very nice photos of Angelina Jolie breastfeeding one of their newborn children. The photos are very tastefully done. There have been many other photos of Angelina that showed much more skin in the past, even down to and including the entirety of both breasts. Those photos we never heard about. Nobody raised a stink. People were not incensed that Angelina had posed for photos in a such a state of undress. "It's art", I can just hear them saying. "It's perfectly natural and beautiful." But let this same beautiful woman be photographed in the act of breastfeeding her child and the floodgates are loosed. Is it the child they object to, or simply the act of natural maternal sustenance via a mammalian appendage? I have read numerous comments on the cover photo that stirred this whole controversy. Thankfully, most embrace the photo as the beautiful expression of maternal love and bonding it was intended to be.

Sadly there were still those who had a problem with the tips of those four tiny fingers extending from under the cover and laid gently on Angelina's left breast. One woman seemed to have a problem with anyone even having a child. As I recall, she said something to the effect that it had been bad enough to have to endure the pregnancy publicly but this was just going too far. Really? What was it about Angelina's pregnancy that so offended this person, I wonder? Was it the fact of the publicity the pregnancy garnered? Sorry, lady, but this is a major league Hollywood star we're talking about here! It seems they aren't allowed to breathe without someone in the press snapping the picture to prove that it is so. This wasn't even a publicity event. These were reportedly pictures Brad took in a quiet family moment, so it would seem that argument doesn't even apply here.

I know how Brad felt. My wife breastfed all five of our sons and it is a wonderful and joyful thing to watch the bond formed between mother and child as they learn about each other through that process, especially in the first few months. Now I have a granddaughter and my wife and I are watching our daughter-in-law go through the same thing. It is a beautiful thing to see.

What is not so welcome to see is all this hubbub about breastfeeding when you have a child or grandchild that has just begun the process! Just because some boobs have to take a prurient or prudish interest in a woman breastfeeding her child it may cause problems for those I hold dear because, now that this has come up again, everyone feels a need to express their negative opinions of women who breastfeed their children, especially in public. Get the news people! Breastfeeding is the best way to nourish infants! This has been proven over and over again. It yields benefits to the child and the mother that are physical, mental and emotional. This has been proven.

So, you boobs out there, get over yourselves! Breastfeeding is something between a mother and an infant and it has nothing to do with you! If the sight of the act offends you, avert your eyes! The child is hungry and he or she likely won't return the favor by coming to stare at you as you dig into your next plate from the sushi bar! I think most people who are supposedly offended by breastfeeding are only objecting because they find it difficult to keep from staring at the woman's breast and they don't care to find themselves caught ogling the areola. In our culture, I guess that's understandable. We make such a big deal about a bare breast in this country, that you would seem somehow less than normal if you didn't have some sort of reaction to a naked nipple.

Go to Europe some time in the summer! Bare breasts are not exactly everywhere, but they are not nearly as rare as they are here. They are on broadcast TV in prime time in Italy. There is not nearly the reaction to a bared breast over there that we see here. When I saw that, it taught me something. By acting like there is something improper or sexual about a woman baring her breast to feed her child, we are continually playing into the hands of those who would see it that way. We are feeding their prurient interests by acting like it is a dirty thing to do. Shame on us, as a society, for promoting such thought! Leave these women alone and quit being a boob!