What the hell is happening to us as a nation?
I can’t decide whether this story surprises me or not, but it is an outrageous example of how the United States is becoming more and more puritanical since this administration has taken over and religious zealots are enjoying unprecedented influence both socially and politically.
Here is the magazine cover that has sparked outrage among many readers.
One mother felt the need to protect her 13-year old son from seeing it.
“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast – it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.”
Um, okaaay. But chances are, at 13, her son has probably seen a breast, or even two, on TV or in one of the magazines he and his friends page through when she thinks they’re simply playing “M” rated video games.
Apparently it’s the “accidental” sighting of a breast that bothers her.
“I don’t want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn’t want to see.”
Now those are the kind of breasts her husband and son want to see – not that subtle, nippleless hint of a side view of an almost unrecognizable breast of that slutty woman feeding her infant.
Personally I find the sight of a mother nursing her infant to be one of the most beautiful things imaginable – but maybe that’s just me. I breastfed all four of my children until they were about a year old and usually it was in the comfort of my own home, but sometimes the baby would be hungry when I was out and I would discreetly feed them wherever I happened to be. A nursing child pretty much obscures the breast anyway so you have to work really hard to accidentally see a breast that you didn’t want to see. A lot of people think that women should go to the restroom to feed their child. I would like to tell them to eat their cheeseburger and fries in the bathroom of Hooters.
What did surprise me about this story is that the offended people were just as likely to be women as men, and many of the women had nursed their own children but still found the cover of that magazine, which BTW is only available in the waiting rooms of OB/GYNs, to be highly offensive.
What the hell?!
Have we really come no further in our view of the female breast?