Breast isn't best: readers tell US parenting magazine - Yahoo! News UK
This reminds me of directing a play called Spitting Image some years ago. It was written just after the legalisation of homosexuality in the 60s and concerned a gay couple, one of which falls pregnant. Demi Moore just having done her Vanity Fair cover I decided to pastiche it for our promotional posters and had a photo of one of the leads re-touched to make him appear pregnant. The outrage caused by this astounded me. Many places refused to display it and of those which did many were deluged with demands to remove it.
All the complaints were from women, so I think in that case it was about somehow feeling threatened by it, as if we were somehow infringing on a personal and strictly feminine area. Indeed, the few who bothered to articulate their hatred of the poster mentioned just such feelings amidst words like 'disgusting', 'obscene' and 'filth'.
So I understand the antipathy so many women feel towards the sight or images of breast-feeding even less. Especially in connection to this cover, which is a natural, beautiful and entirely non-sexual image. My own wife feels uncomfortable if another woman breast-feeds near her and she can't explain why.
I believe that in the West we've so ingrained the image of breast as sexual rather than nurturing object that it now subconciously triggers unnatural associations when we see one being used for its 'designed' purpose. Put a bit more bluntly, we see breast-feeding as a sexual act and the existence of strands of pornography dedicated to lactating tends to back this theory up. So when we see images of breast-feeding or -heaven forfend!- an actual act of public breast-feeding we are made uncomfortable by our own subconcious associations and guilt.
When I say we, though, I don't include myself in this. I see it as a natural, nurturing and beautiful thing. It should never be hidden or made shameful by the kind of 'puritans' mentioned in this article. That kind of mindset is anything but 'pure'. It's the kind of person whose sexual map is so screwed up by guilt and shame that they can turn even the most innoccuous phrase into a double entendre and will turn their protests against it into a misguided crusade to protect children. Few ever ask why children would get some of the more obscure double-entendres the likes of Irn-Bru campaigns have used, for example. Think about it, why do their children understand these jokes? Why would children be 'confused' or 'upset' by a traditional pantomime dame as the politically correct lobby would have us believe they are?
The answer is, as it is with the breast-feeding issue, that they wouldn't. It is the adult's skewed perception that sees these threats where they don't exist. Indeed, it's that very oerception that twists sex itself into something disgusting, unnatural and shameful.
This reminds me of directing a play called Spitting Image some years ago. It was written just after the legalisation of homosexuality in the 60s and concerned a gay couple, one of which falls pregnant. Demi Moore just having done her Vanity Fair cover I decided to pastiche it for our promotional posters and had a photo of one of the leads re-touched to make him appear pregnant. The outrage caused by this astounded me. Many places refused to display it and of those which did many were deluged with demands to remove it.
All the complaints were from women, so I think in that case it was about somehow feeling threatened by it, as if we were somehow infringing on a personal and strictly feminine area. Indeed, the few who bothered to articulate their hatred of the poster mentioned just such feelings amidst words like 'disgusting', 'obscene' and 'filth'.
So I understand the antipathy so many women feel towards the sight or images of breast-feeding even less. Especially in connection to this cover, which is a natural, beautiful and entirely non-sexual image. My own wife feels uncomfortable if another woman breast-feeds near her and she can't explain why.
I believe that in the West we've so ingrained the image of breast as sexual rather than nurturing object that it now subconciously triggers unnatural associations when we see one being used for its 'designed' purpose. Put a bit more bluntly, we see breast-feeding as a sexual act and the existence of strands of pornography dedicated to lactating tends to back this theory up. So when we see images of breast-feeding or -heaven forfend!- an actual act of public breast-feeding we are made uncomfortable by our own subconcious associations and guilt.
When I say we, though, I don't include myself in this. I see it as a natural, nurturing and beautiful thing. It should never be hidden or made shameful by the kind of 'puritans' mentioned in this article. That kind of mindset is anything but 'pure'. It's the kind of person whose sexual map is so screwed up by guilt and shame that they can turn even the most innoccuous phrase into a double entendre and will turn their protests against it into a misguided crusade to protect children. Few ever ask why children would get some of the more obscure double-entendres the likes of Irn-Bru campaigns have used, for example. Think about it, why do their children understand these jokes? Why would children be 'confused' or 'upset' by a traditional pantomime dame as the politically correct lobby would have us believe they are?
The answer is, as it is with the breast-feeding issue, that they wouldn't. It is the adult's skewed perception that sees these threats where they don't exist. Indeed, it's that very oerception that twists sex itself into something disgusting, unnatural and shameful.
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