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Health & Fitness

What Is More Offensive to You: Public Breastfeeding or Porn at the Gas Station?

What is the bigger threat to society—public breastfeeding or pornography? Why do we care so much about the first one, and so little about the second?

WCCO News recently aired a Good Question segment about breastfeeding in public as a result of a Texas woman's nation-wide call for a "nurse-in" at Target stores after she said she was humiliated by Target employees for not breastfeeding her baby in a fittingroom. 

The segment reminded me of a blog post I wrote in July 2006 (Pornography yes - Breastfeeding no - Are We Serious?) on the hypocrisy and idiocy of the fact that our nation accepts and in some cases even promotes the normalcy and legitimacy of pornography, and yet demands nursing mothers sit in dirty bathrooms and cramped closet spaces to feed their infants just so passers-by aren't exposed to the slightest uncomfortableness of potentially seeing a sliver of a breast performing its most natural function.  

Here's a quote from the post:

Get this, the August 2006 edition of Baby Talk magazine recently raised some eyebrows by putting a close-up picture of a nursing baby on its cover (no nipple and some breast could be seen). Inside the magazine one article reported: 
A national survey of public beliefs about breastfeeding published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that 57 percent of those polled said that women should not have a right to breastfeed in public. And a whopping 72 percent said that it's inappropriate to show a woman breastfeeding on TV programs. 
Are we as a nation serious? We have no problem with sexually laced language and sexual behavior displayed on television, but we can't handle it if a mother needs to fed her infant in public?  57% polled say a woman doesn't have the right to breastfeed in public - I wonder how many men think that it should be a woman's right to walk around with no shirt or bra on if she wants to?

It is infuriating that no one is willing to say, "Leave nursing mothers alone and STOP sending Victoria Secret catalogs in the mail for my first grader to find."

I think with Maxim and Playboy on magazine racks at the Holiday gas station down the street, Abercrombie selling push-up swim suits for tween girls, and sexual violence and crime rampant, our businesses and government leaders should be concerned about different things than breastfeeding in public. 

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