June 7, 2010

Breastfeeding: Nurturing or Sexual?

Julie Bowen of Modern Family recently shared a picture with George Lopez of her breastfeeding her twins in a move called the “double football hold.” Unsurprisingly, that photo, seen below, created a public outcry and claimed that the picture was offensive and shocking.


The squeamish response is unsurprising given previous outcries in recent years. In 2006, Babytalk, a free parenting magazine consumed mostly by mothers, received a backlash from offended parties when they featured a cover of a nursing baby in profile. The magazine received over 700 letters, comments included:

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.

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.”

“Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob,” wrote Lauren, a mother of a 4-month-old.

Here is the “controversial” cover:

Angelina Jolie created a similar uproar in November, 2008 when she appeared on the cover of W Magazine nursing one of her newborn twins. Along with general discomfort, people responded to the breastfeeding image as something inherently sexual and claimed that the cover photo “sexualized” the act of nursing.

(more…)

February 13, 2010

Stop dissin' the vagina

I don’t know where to start.

Robert Pattinson, of Twilight fame, is featured in the March issue of Details Magazine fully clothed while surrounded by a slew of naked or near-naked women.

Typical (see my post from April 2009).

That, in itself, is worthy of a blog post but what riled me up even more was the asinine quote from the interview.

I really hate vaginas. I’m allergic to vagina. But I can’t say I had no idea, because it was a 12-hour shoot, so you kind of get the picture that these women are going to stay naked after, like, five or six hours. But I wasn’t exactly prepared. I had no idea what to say to these girls. Thank God I was hungover.

I hate vaginas! Really? He says this while lounging among tons of vagina. In the same week that John Mayer’s interview with Playboy revealed that his

dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock.

What is more pathetic and disheartening is the fact that these misogynistic losers will still continue to date scores of women that aren’t completely outraged by these statements and what it says about these guys.

pattinson3_ssh