Why is Breastfeeding Equated to S*X?
And why won’t Heather write the word S*X? (answer: because Lord Knows what the hell will link here if I do! Can you imagine the amount of Porn? So, bear with me while I add a tiny asterisk to the middle of a three letter word, as if that will confuse the spiders and robots and googlemonsters of the world ;o)
Over the next few days I’ll be posting four comics that attempt to answer that question of why is breastfeeding equated with S*X. I think you’ll find it funny, AND bawdy and that this is not a good week to teach the kids to read with Hathor comics ;o) Unless of course you’ve been wanting to have a little ‘talk’ with your youngster and then by all means.
Enjoy!
xox,
Heather
pookietooth said,
January 15, 2008 @ 11:42 pm
Could it also be because the porn industry makes breasts into a commodity by always showing women with those fake silicone jobs? Sexualizing the breast is big money — it sells fancy push-up bras, boob jobs for women whose breasts don’t meet the Hollywood definition of attractive (perky, C- or D-cup), and lots of low cut blouses among other things. Not to mention making more of a woman’s body sexual, as if that wasn’t already a problem. Women’s bodies are viewed as property for men to use for their pleasure — either directly through sex or indirectly through ogling. Hooters is just one example of this. The term and the place, that is.
Julinda said,
January 16, 2008 @ 5:26 am
Well, the thing is, if it IS sex, then we should be able to put it all over the place because in today’s culture, that’s okay! Wait, kids are involved so that makes it not okay. Sigh.
It goes back to one of my pet peeves - there are magazine covers in every store in the nation with explicit words and suggestive pictures on them, but no one says a peep about that. (Well, I do, but not to anyone who could do anything about it.) But let a magazine show breastfeeding (even discreetly) and people come out of the woodwork to protest. And sex is all over the television but I have never seen anyone breastfeeding on TV. (Maybe on those birth shows - I don’t watch those.) Or in movies. And very rarely in books.
Speaking of Hooters, I’ve never been to one but I was shocked to learn that women and children go there.
Julinda said,
January 16, 2008 @ 5:31 am
Wanted to add I think the comparison with beards is brilliant. Like breasts they are something that is different between men and women (most of the time anyway - there are women w/beards and men who sort of have breasts), and they can be considered sexy, but they aren’t obscene, We can look at beards and be around them and let our children touch them and no one freaks out.
Love the bearded guy in the corner!
yvetteyasui said,
January 16, 2008 @ 7:05 am
We discuss this all the time, it seems to be OK to show breats in a sexual context, but not in a nurturing (breastfeeding) context. This attitude goes way beyond the porn industry, it’s main stream. Disney portrays all of it’s “girl or princess” characters with breasts. Think the little mermaid and you know what I mean.
As breastfeeding and children advocates I think we need to see these three things happen in a big way:
1. More breast feeding in the media; all those hollywood moms need to start making films and show/indicate breastfeeding when “feeding” the baby, not use of bottle which is how babies are fed on screen now. (ditto for birth at home, not in hospital; co-sleep not in crib, etc.) It’s culturally taboo because we don’t SEE breastfeeding happening everywhere, all the time. Take away the taboo by doing it. There are so many moms in the media industry, if we could help them organize and come together, the goal being onscreen breastfeeding (they’d show less breast than in a sex scene), we can start this process. Television, film, internet (whether we agree with it or not) creates our cultural context.
2. Create alot of support around breastfeeding for all moms, beginning in pregnancy, pre-natal care, at labor and delivery and post-partum. Most women do not get the kind of support available in other countries. We have nurses and doctors handing us formula or saying If it doesn’t work out, you can always supplement with formula”. This education needs to extend to dads and partners, it’s much more difficult to breastfeed in a home where the partner is not 200% supportive. The movements to ban formula give-aways in hospitals is a good place to start.
3. Children everywhere need to see us breastfeeding so that we raise a generation that knows it’s the norm, not the exception. These children are the future advocates and if they all accept breastfeeding then we won’t be facing these same challenges in 20 years.
ps: When I read the title of this comic, I thought you were addressing the relationship between breastfeeding and having sex. My sex drive has been less than what it used to be B.B. (before baby). Hormones? Head trips? Not ready to get pregnant again? There are many factors that come into this discussion.
uberhausfrau said,
January 16, 2008 @ 7:28 am
julinda - you might be even more amazed/disgusted that hooters makes clothing in kids sizes.
when i was 12ish i went to disney world and was disturbed by a family that had their two young girls (the oldest was 7ish, the youngest, 5ish) in the tight shirt and orange hot pants. they were muslim, and the mother was covered from head to toe and i have to think they were foreign because i couldnt imagine if they really knew what hooters was about, allowing their daughters to wear those outfits.
amyphilo said,
January 16, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
This so reminds me of my nephew’s 1st birthday party. All of the other women who were still nursing went into the back bedroom while I nursed Toby in the living room. Everyone avoided me. Even though I wasn’t showing a darn thing (not an inch of breast) my brother said they were all afraid they might see my breast at some point and wanted to know when I was finished nursing so they could come back into the living room. It made me so mad I left the party before he even opened his presents and did not get to see him eat his cake. This is pounded into the brains of people at his church and the entire Southern Baptist convention. My SIL was actually shocked when someone at church nursed in the sanctuary. My sister wrote an email to the pastor and asked him what is their poliy on nursing in the sanctuary and he said they have never had it even come up and that their policy is to discourage it. Our country is freaking insane.
I think it is going to be a long time before we get this confused idea out of anyone’s minds because there is still an entire generation being raised to be ashamed of it. Some kids don’t even know what breastfeeding is. People all around our country think bottle feeding is the norm. It’s a totally uphill battle but we do what we can and stay strong. I think if we moved formula behind the counter like cigarrettes it might help. But I say that knowing someone is going to see that and get mad at me. Oh well. I am a former formula feeder too. So there.
amyphilo said,
January 16, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
By the way, I have a survey about this and a couple of related issues now up on my website, please go take the survey:
http://www.babywhys.org/#survey
or http://www.babywhys.org/breastfeeding%20and%20health%20survey.htm
sewathomemama said,
January 16, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
this reminds me of a movie i watched (a regular movie, not the x-rated variety) in which there is a house party, where everyone is getting drunk & high. a porno-riffic blonde is dancing to some music, while a bunch of nerdy type guys drool from afar. she singles one out & says, “you are so cute. baby want some milk?” then she pulls her top off & he proceeds to suckle to the cheers of his cohorts.
THIS, ladies, does not help our society separate breastfeeding from a sexual act. i was so angry when i saw that. it’s unfortunate, because it was an otherwise very funny movie.
soulgasm said,
January 16, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
“Some kids don’t even know what breastfeeding is. ”
last august, my cousin came to town with her 4 year old daughter. during the vist, i nursed my son, which no one in the family has a problem with.
fast forward to december when the 4 yr old says to her mom, “Mommy! did you know some babies have to eat from their moms’ boobies?!?”
My son and i are the only nursing family she’s ever seen. And it confused her enough that she mulled it over for 4 months before saying anything.
********
We are a culture of absolutes, and of opposites, black/white, good/evil. We don’t like gray areas, and we don’t like duality.
The fact is breasts are sexual. they are erotic, both to men and women, and men are biologically driven towards breasts as a marker that a woman is able to store enough fat to nourish herself and her offspring through pregnancy and childrearing. I think its fine that breasts are sexual. I like ‘em, my husband likes ‘em, thats fine.
We just need to let them ALSO be for feeding our children.
Not to mention the fact that we associate bodily fluids with poop and pee. the word “excrement” is literally just something that is excreted, but we use it to refer to poop. so that gets turned back into “things excreted from our bodies are unclean like poop”.
stupid humans. sometimes i think god shoulda left us as monkeys and quit while she was ahead.
wiffersnapper said,
January 16, 2008 @ 4:57 pm
I think I’ve found the biggest advantage of working at a Renaissance Faire- everyone there is so used to seeing “cleavage” that when I nursed my daughter under a tree, no one said a thing! And I absolutely insisted that, when I was in my own home, I would feed my baby wherever I was. Any of our friends who thought of boobies as purely sexual objects got disillusioned quite quickly when I sat at the dinner table and ate pizza with one hand while nursing her!
There was a lady nursing her baby in our (Lutheran) church one week, and no one said anything to her. She was towards the back and she was discreet (although it is notable to point out that she did NOT use a blanket to cover anything!) and no one bothered her.
My daughter knows what boobies are for, and she knows that when her little sister arrives, she will drink milk from Mommy’s boobies, like she did. She also knows that, when she is all grown-up, she will feed her babies the same way. I’ve even spoken to my middle-schoolers about it when they ask! (They think it’s gross, but they think everything’s gross!)
Have you ever noticed that a movie can show a boob and get an “R” rating… but give even a glance of penis and it goes “X” right away? If boobs are really sexual objects, then movies showing boobs should be “X”, and Hooters should just be closed. OK, Hooters is disgusting and should be closed either way.
ShinaB said,
January 17, 2008 @ 8:13 am
#2 is great. That’s my answer now. Boobs are no more sexual than your mouth. My five year old only just came home with the idea of babies eating from bottles, he learned it at school. Five years knowing that the proper way to eat is from Mommy. I talked to him about how bottles are just for babies who’s mommies can’t make milk. We can talk about the politics later.
Daughter said,
January 17, 2008 @ 8:50 am
Speaking of movies… one scene I did find funny was in the comedy, “Look Who’s Talking.” Kirstie Alley is a single mom, John Travolta is the babysitter, and Bruce Willis voices the “thoughts” of baby Mikey. In one scene, John Travolta takes Mikey to a store or something, where they are attended by a perky, buxom clerk in a low-cut T-shirt. Both man and baby stare at her chest. Travolta says to baby, “I see what you’re looking at. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” And the baby (in his thoughts) responds, “Yeah! Lunch!” Cute scene, because man is thinking sex, but baby is thinking food.
Another funny scene from that movie is when Travolta adds a little of the milk from Mikey’s bottle to his coffee, then spits it out when Kirstie Alley says, “By the way, that’s breastmilk.”
So although no breastfeeding was shown in the movie, those two scenes establish that Mikey was a breastfed baby.
soulgasm said,
January 17, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
Daughter,
that last scene you mewntion also, unfortunately, reiterates the idea that human milk is gross or dirty. *sigh*
oh well, yay breastfeeding in movies!
mamaluxe said,
January 18, 2008 @ 6:04 am
I was pleasantly surprised to see a very clear breastfeeding scene in “Rome.”
Straight men see breasts and they (at least most of them it seems) think s*x. However, fortunately the high brain functions of the more enlightened ones allow them to get past that when they are educated properly.
It always concerns me when people bring up the argument (against public breastfeeding) but there are CHILDREN there–what will I tell my kids if you lift up your shirt? Tell them that the natural way to feed babies is with breasts. I fail to see why this is such an issue. Do you not go to malls because they will walk past Victoria’s Secret? That seems much harder to explain to a five year old than breastfeeding.
crystleyz42 said,
January 18, 2008 @ 6:30 am
There’s a really great academic article about this very issue that I HIGHLY reccomend. It’s highly readable but the book in which it is publish isn’t that common so you’ll probably have to get it via inter-library loan. Do it- it’s worth the wait!
“Beauty and the Breast: The Cultural Context of Breastfeeding in the United States” by Katherine A. Dettwyler. The article is published in: Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, edited by Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, Aldine de Gruyter, October 1995.
Here’s a link to Kathy’s website, which is also full of fantastic info: http://www.kathydettwyler.org/dettwyler.html
janaki said,
January 18, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
HEATHER!!! Were you, by any chance cruising around the CafeMom groups when you came up with the foot one? That’s CRAZY!!!! I was JUST saying that in the Proud Public Breastfeeders group! Wow, goddessy minds think alike!
Julinda said,
January 22, 2008 @ 6:27 am
mamaluxe - I don’t totally avoid malls but we do try to get past Victoria’s Secret in a hurry!
kriekle said,
January 24, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
In regards to the comment about formula being behind the counter like cigarettes, at my local grocery store it is. Yay Woodmans!
Also, Southern Baptists are not the only ones with breastfeeding issues. The pretty progressive United Church of Christ that we used to attend had issues with me breastfeeding in the sanctuary. They thought I should go sit in the lounge, which is populated every Sunday by several older gentlemen. Yeah, right. Eventually my husband and I were invited to a church council meeting to talk about the issue. I found support from people who surprised me and lack of support from others who also surprised me. The biggest thing about the meeting was that I educated them about the differences between the way a breastfed baby reacts versus a bottlefed baby. My kids don’t nurse just for nourishment. They nurse because they’re bored, or happy, or tired, or scared. Nobody spoke to me about the issue after that meeting, although I know it was still a problem for some of the church members, and was one of the reasons we left there. We’re now at a church called The Family Church. During Christmas program rehearsal, I was nursing my 3 year old and another boy kept trying to play. I didn’t know if he realized what I was doing, so I told his mom about the incident later in case he said anything or asked questions. She said that he’d seen her nurse his younger brother, although he might not remember, and it was perfectly natural to do. Boy, did I praise God for that response!