Bold piece on the the case AGAINST breastfeeding in The Atlantic this month:
"In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. Is breast-feeding right for every family? Or is it this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down?"
Don't agree with this woman's argument at all but she's ballsy for putting it out there and acknowledging that breastfeeding is not easy and does not come 'naturally' to all women....
Thoughts?
Showing posts with label breasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breasts. Show all posts
Ulrika Jonsson hates her post-baby boobs
It was only a few weeks ago that Swedish mother of 5, Ulrika Jonsson was railing against the skinny post-baby bodies of her fellow celebritiy mums. She claimed she was not going to worry about losing weight and was proud of her stretch marks. Today she written that she hates her huge post-pregnancy breasts and is planning to have them reduced:
"In my first pregnancy in 1994 when I was 27, I went from a D up to an FF-cup. When I moaned about this to my dear friend Vic Reeves, his eyes lit up and he asked whether the double F stood for ' F***** g Fantastic'.
I set a record this time when I was pregnant, though - I eclipsed all physical possibilities, I thought, when I had to order an I-cup over the internet. Marks & Spencer goes up to a J-cup but its best seller is a 36C.
I was truly repulsed by my breasts and I think my husband, Brian Monet, was stunned into a nine-month silence. I likened myself to a fat, ageing porn star.
Standing in the shower, I could not see the rest of my body when looking down. And don't even get me started on the backache and the painful red grooves the bra straps left on my shoulders.Which brings me to the post-pregnancy bust. If anything could be less desirable than bloated, humongous 'mummy bags', it's a deflated pair.
You see, I know what's coming over the next few months. Not unlike a tyre with a slow puncture, they will gradually diminish and I will, before you can say the word 'mammoplasty', be left with what can be described only as two ping-pong balls in bin liners."
I've conflicted about this. I think women should be able to make choices about what they do with their bodies. One person's decision to have plastic surgery has nothing to do with me. But, at the same time, it makes me uncomfortable that she frames her justification for wanting a reduction around whether or not her husband would approve. She also says she is not doing the surgery for 'self-esteem' reasons like other women who want to have bigger breasts so they can feel more 'womanly'. Well, of course she is?! If she is uncomfortable with having large breasts and is constantly trying to hide them, I'm not sure how that isn't a matter of self-esteem.Source: http://tinyurl.com/5z872p
Is breastfeeding sexy?
Breastfeeding, for all intents and purposes, is a public issue. In the UK recently, women's groups have been lobbying to have laws changed that allow mothers to breastfeed in any public place regardless of how old the baby is. The prohibition on breastfeeding, it seems, has come from the long-standing view in the West that breasts are solely objects for sex and not for babies (or at least in public). Perhaps it's no surprise that a man has written in to the Times revealing his fascination with breastfeeding. He says that when he sees his wife feeding his son he has fantasies about being breastfed himself. I don't think this is necessarily uncommon; revealing a desire for your partner's lactating breasts, however, is clearly still taboo.
I started to wonder how it is that breasts somehow became culturally divorced from sexuality particularly in the context of breastfeeding. The funny thing about this taboo about breastfeeding being sexy or sexual is that as much as we would like to deny it, breasts aren't just arbitrary objects stuck on our bodies. From an evolutionary perspective, breasts perform an important function. As soon as we could walk upright, breasts became a primary symbol for sexual attraction.
Suggesting that breastfeeding isn't sexy or that it's gross, for example, that a man is turned on by lactation is actual quite ironic considering maternity is completely sexualised in pop culture. As pregnant celebrities have come to epitomise the meaning of 'yummy mummy' and in light of the naked pregnant portrait, it only follows that breastfeeding should be viewed as 'sexy' too. But for the most part, it is not.
Isn't it bizarre then, that we keep suggesting that breastfeeding isn't sexy, that a mother's breasts are 'tools' serving only a functional purpose, and yet quite often the bans on public breastfeeding are premised on the fact that it is a sensual activity! The interesting thing is that even though Sheila Kitzinger wrote back in the 1970s that women should feel free to experience orgasms from breastfeeding, the idea that women can derive pleasure from lactation is also majorly taboo. The only 'appropriate' context in which women should derive pleasure in lactation is when there is a man involved. Breastfeeding is supposed to be 'maternal' behaviour, not 'sexual' behaviour. Women who breastfeed for children until they are 5 are positioned as freaks and child abusers, yet a woman who allows her husband to breastfeed as part of a sexual fantasy, is only fulfilling his desire. There is, after all, such a thing as 'lactation porn'. I'll let you work that one out for yourself. As Alison Bartlett, an Australian feminist scholar has written in her extensive work on the meaning of breastfeeding:
"If lactating breasts were considered sexy, maybe the value of mothers would increase in our cultural economy."
As she says, I think it's worth considering. What do you think?
Alison Bartlet, 'Maternal sexuality and breastfeeding', Sex Education, vol. 5, no.1, 2005, 67-77.
Fiona Giles, Fresh milk: the secret life of breasts, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2003
Nicole not a fan of her improved bust
Any woman that has been pregnant is familiar with 'pregnancy boobs'; the much enhanced cleavage that is so often a blessing for a man in a pregnant woman's life but not always so welcome for the woman who feels like her chest is growing almost as fast as her baby bump.
Nicole Richie and Christina Aguilera have received quite a bit of attention for their post-baby breasts. In fact, as soon as Christina and Nicole made their post-baby debuts, the media interest centred right around their new bust friends.
Nicole has opened up about her post-baby breasts:
"He (Joel) likes it! It doesn't really fit with my wardrobe, it's not who I am. I am not someone who is used to wearing a bra or having to wear a bra, I really don't like it.
"I like wearing vintage hippy see-through shirts that aren't slutty on me because there is nothing to look at. Now I have boobs so I can't really wear it because it sends out a different message."
An honest and interesting comment. For someone like Nicole who has had much smaller breasts pre-pregnancy it is easy to see why having a cultural gaze focused on her much larger breasts as a mother is uncomfortable. This is also fascinating because for most women that I've spoken to in my study, breasts become extremely un-erotic post-birth, meaning that some women feel like their breasts feel like tools to feed a baby and not necessarily the sexual objects they were pre-pregnancy. Breasts are for the baby and not for the partner. However, to the public spectator, calling on sexualised images of women in pop culture, large breasts = sexy. Clearly a sort of bodily contradiction for post-baby mums who have fantastic cleavage but aren't feeling like having the world stare at their boobs.
Nicole's body does clearly look different but not being able to wear her normal clothes is less an issue of fashion and more a realisation that her identity has changed. She is a mother and her body has changed as well to support a baby.
Wet-nursing: is your own breast best?
Apparently wet-nursing, the age old practice of paying women to feed other women's babies, is back and Americans have been talking about it (alot). News obviously doesn't travel as fast this far down under so this is the first I've heard of this borrowed boob revival. Not only are everyday mothers sharing their milk (known as cross-nursing) but celebrities are also hiring wet nurses from a few agencies who make their profit in the 'outsourcing' of milk, a side effect of stars being too rich, too busy and having one too many breast augmentations.
See http://www.certifiedhouseholdstaffing.com/
So what is the problem? If a mother is unable to feed her child, is it wrong to have a friend feed the baby for her? Some sociologists suggest that the reason people are so weirded out by sharing around breasts is the idea that breasts are culturally erotic and somehow feeding someone else's child is tantamount to paedophilia or even child abuse. Some critics argue that breastfeeding is solely the responsibility of the birth mother and if she can't feed she is missing that essential bonding time with her baby.
I do have a problem with the fact that the Australian Marie Claire article (link below) suggests that a wet nurse is the latest celebrity 'accessory' on par with elective caesars, drivers or dog walkers. Sure celebrities have alot of people that are paid to run their lives but I think the suggestion that the modern day wet nurse is as frivolous as a dog walker is irresponsible. I think there are plenty of women in the world who are unable to feed and have finally found a plausible solution to avoid formula. There are also plenty of women who want to go back to work and probably can't be bothered to feed for very long (and I'm not here to pass judgment). On a totally different level, wet nursing carries alot of historical weight particularly in America during slavery when black women were co-opted into feeding white women's babies pretty much by force or out of necessity. As slaves, black women had to abandon their own children to feed white babies. Really, when it comes down to it, wet nursing isn't 'new' at all and in fact, women have been engaged in the practice of feeding other women's babies for hundreds of years. Why should we stop now?
Further reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,1983360,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612710,00.html
http://au.blogs.yahoo.com/marie-claire/1839/wet-nurses-the-latest-a-list-accessory/
See http://www.certifiedhouseholdstaffing.com/
So what is the problem? If a mother is unable to feed her child, is it wrong to have a friend feed the baby for her? Some sociologists suggest that the reason people are so weirded out by sharing around breasts is the idea that breasts are culturally erotic and somehow feeding someone else's child is tantamount to paedophilia or even child abuse. Some critics argue that breastfeeding is solely the responsibility of the birth mother and if she can't feed she is missing that essential bonding time with her baby.
I do have a problem with the fact that the Australian Marie Claire article (link below) suggests that a wet nurse is the latest celebrity 'accessory' on par with elective caesars, drivers or dog walkers. Sure celebrities have alot of people that are paid to run their lives but I think the suggestion that the modern day wet nurse is as frivolous as a dog walker is irresponsible. I think there are plenty of women in the world who are unable to feed and have finally found a plausible solution to avoid formula. There are also plenty of women who want to go back to work and probably can't be bothered to feed for very long (and I'm not here to pass judgment). On a totally different level, wet nursing carries alot of historical weight particularly in America during slavery when black women were co-opted into feeding white women's babies pretty much by force or out of necessity. As slaves, black women had to abandon their own children to feed white babies. Really, when it comes down to it, wet nursing isn't 'new' at all and in fact, women have been engaged in the practice of feeding other women's babies for hundreds of years. Why should we stop now?
Further reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,1983360,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612710,00.html
http://au.blogs.yahoo.com/marie-claire/1839/wet-nurses-the-latest-a-list-accessory/
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