Many readers took issue with the cover art. One mother was concerned
about her 13-year-son seeing it. "I shredded it," says Gayle Ash of
Belton, Texas. "A breast is a breast - it's a sexual thing. He didn't
need to see that." Amen, Gayle. God, if he'd seen that, the next thing
you know, he'd be robbing convenience stores for the Playboys and Penthouses.
While you're at it, Gayle, you'd better take away his computer and any
other device that could connect him to the outside world. Oh, and
forget cable, as well as any NFL halftime show.
Babytalk editor Susan Kane says the mixed response to the cover clearly
echoes the larger debate over breast-feeding in public. "There's a huge
Puritanical streak in Americans," she says, "and there's a
squeamishness about seeing a body part - even part of a body part." "It's not like women are whipping them out with tassels on them!" she adds. "Mostly, they are trying to be discreet." Kane says that since the August issue came out last week, the magazine
has received more than 700 letters - more than for any article in years.
The editors of Babytalk
tell MSNBC they were surprised at all the fuss. Not sure I believe
that. More likely they figured, put a bare tit on a magazine cover, and
it's going to get noticed. Smart thinking. Better than showing a mother
cradling her bundle of joy with circles under her eyes the size of
doughnuts from four months of midnight and 3 a.m. feedings. I remember
asking my wife why she stopped doing it after what seemed like a
relatively short time, and she said something like, "If the critter was
chomping at your breast five times a day every day, you'd know why, you
idiot. It hurts!" Not a pretty picture.
Via The Consumerist, who have their own complaint: that the breast isn't big enough. The religious right is at it again. I believe that they mentioned that
it is a breast, and all references to breasts are sexual in nature.
Really? I'm sorry that whenever you (Christian Republican prude) see a
child breast-feeding, you (Christian Republican prude) assume that both
the mother and the child are getting sexual satisfaction out of it.
Just because you (Christian Republican prude) somehow get moist
thinking about a child suckling at your (Christian Republican prude)
breast doesn't mean that the rest of the country feels the same way.
I find it absolutely disgusting that our culture is SO detached from
the true nature of the human being that we now find cutting open
breasts and putting in saline packets to make them look larger
acceptable, yet using and showing them for their intended purpose is
wrong....I just don't get it. Are women that self-loathing? Do they
think those sacs of flesh are there to be boxed around, or stuffed into
cute sweaters?
You know what? Even if it WAS a nipple showing - so what? The milk
can't come out without an OUTLET, aka "The Nipple." It is not your
personal erotic object with no other meaning. It is simply a valve, a
physical means to keep the human race alive, to keep the human child fed, to be as proud of as your nose, or your lithe and nimble quality, or your hair, or your leg. Why is everyone so afraid of themselves? And of human sexuality, to boot?
The only boobs that offend this family are the ones that are running our country.
This just in: 
