Breasts

Everybody knows that there are some places where women go topless as a matter of custom, and that it's No Big Deal. Guys who've spent time in topless bars and nude beaches report that after a while you don't even notice it. You have to admit that at least some of the titillation, so to speak, comes from the fact of the taboo itself, the social norm of keeping the breasts covered. Maybe that's the whole thrill, I couldn't say. The art of lingerie supports the hypothesis.

On the other hand, all species of mammals are characterized by the presence of mammary glands, the means of nurturance of the offspring by the mother. You've got to agree, this is one of the most beautiful devices that nature has invented. It seems that more than milk is involved, there is also closeness and warmth and love.

This month, the magazine BabyTalk had this picture on the cover:

and seven hundred people wrote in to complain.

"I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine," one person wrote. "I immediately turned the magazine face down," wrote another. "Gross," said a third.

These readers weren't complaining about a sexually explicit cover, but rather one of a baby nursing, on a wholesome parenting magazine -- yet another sign that Americans are squeamish over the sight of a nursing breast, even as breast-feeding itself gains more support from the government and medical community.

Babytalk is a free magazine whose readership is overwhelmingly mothers of babies. Yet in a poll of more than 4,000 readers, a quarter of responses to the cover were negative, calling the photo -- a baby and part of a woman's breast, in profile -- inappropriate. Lactivists: Where is it OK to breastfeed?

I can see, y'know, if it was Pamela Anderson on a bearskin rug or something, It's dumb but I understand that's how people are, we form norms and we treat those norms as if they were realities. In our society, women use the revealing of the breasts as a way to attenuate sexuality; décolletage makes a statement that all members of our society understand.

That is speaking of the breast as secondary sex organ, which is also its secondary function. The primary function is to provide nourishment to offspring.

Some people don't seem to make the distinction.

One mother who didn't like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son 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."

It's the same reason that Ash, 41, who nursed all three of her children, is cautious about breast-feeding in public -- a subject of enormous debate among women, which has even spawned a new term: "lactivists," meaning those who advocate for a woman's right to nurse wherever she needs to.

"I'm totally supportive of it -- I just don't like the flashing," she said. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

Listen, speaking strictly as a guy here, breast-feeding has very little to do with flashing. A lady may get a second glance out of surprise or even curiosity, but ... it's no thrill, OK?

Oh. I was just at the grocery store, and there was a picture of Britney Spears naked on the cover of a women's magazine, I forget which one. Cosmo and all of that genre typically have cover photos of women with more than the usual amount of skin showing -- women seem to find it at least as irresistible as men do. There's some strange chemistry going on there -- I guess it sells magazines, whether I understand it or not.

Another mother, Kelly Wheatley, wrote Babytalk to applaud the cover, precisely because, she said, it helps educate people that breasts are more than sex objects. And yet Wheatley, 40, who's still nursing her 3-year-old daughter, rarely breast-feeds in public, partly because it's more comfortable in the car, and partly because her husband is uncomfortable with other men seeing her breast.

"Men are very visual," said Wheatley, of Amarillo, Texas. "When they see a woman's breast, they see a breast -- regardless of what it's being used for."

No, I don't think that's right. I have never heard any guy talking about how sexy breastfeeding is. Yes, the subject of breasts has come up, more than once, you might say. But not breastfeeding.

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 said, "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 added. "Mostly, they are trying to be discreet."

Kane said that since the August issue came out last week, the magazine has received more than 700 letters -- more than for any article in years.

Is this amazing to anybody else, or just me? This, of all the problems in the world, is what motivates people to write letters to the editor?

The evidence of public discomfort isn't just anecdotal. In a survey published in 2004 by the American Dietetic Association, less than half -- 43 percent -- of 3,719 respondents said women should have the right to breast-feed in public places.

Hmm, it would be fun to do a survey to find out just how much of their breasts women should be allowed to reveal. Like, what would people say if you asked them to agree or disagree with the statement: "Women should have the right to display their cleavage in public places"? Really -- what would you say?

I think I agree with this lady:

Ultimately, it seems to be a highly personal matter. Caly Wood said she's "all for breast-feeding in public." She recalls with a shudder the time she sat nursing in a restaurant booth, and another woman walked by, glanced over and said, "Ugh, gross."

"My kid needed to eat," said the 29-year-old from South Abingdon, Massachusetts. And she wasn't going to go hide in a not-so-clean restroom: "I don't send people to the bathroom when they want to eat," she said.