Breasts: Both sexual and maternal

A "provocative" article in a British parenting magazine claims that breasts are now so sexualized that letting your child feed on them seems "a little creepy." Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?, asks Rowan Pelling in the Daily Telegraph. While it's true that "blue-blooded women" outsourced their breast-feeding to wet nurses for centuries, for fear that nursing would be "unsavoury" or somehow unattractive, haven't we reached a point where the breast can be "simultaneously nurturing and erotic"? Mothers revulsed at the idea of feeding their children are just victims of the "contemporary cult of pneumatic bosoms." An excerpt:

"Seldom, outside the crudest lads' mags, has it been so trumpeted that the breast's real function is as perky showroom ware. The [parenting magazine] article is perturbing evidence of how far Barbie culture has penetrated the mainstream: The surreal Hollywood dream where a gravity-defying bosom is more normal – and more laudable – than offering breast milk to a hungry little baby...

"Modern women have been told so frequently that their breasts are man-magnets that many find it impossible to believe they have any other biological function. The truth is that there's almost nothing creepier than a culture in which breasts are reduced to 'fun-bags.'"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Read the entire article at the Daily Telegraph.