5 minute read
Maternal Nourishment
It goes without saying that in nature, one of the most beautiful bonds is that between mothers and their offspring. Most humans, when confronted with the sweet and intimate bond between animals and their offspring, respond with strong positive emotions and affection for the sight. One prominent example of this phenomenon is the stream of videos and compilations of cats nursing their kittens that us humans have collected online. The most popular video on YouTube of a mother cat feeding her kittens has nearly 5 million views and the average compilation, thousands. This is of course an understandable reaction to seeing the mother-infant bond in action and I am certain this is something many of us animal lovers can relate to.
Contrastingly, the sight of a woman publicly breast-feeding her child is often deemed as indecent, sexual and even dirty to name just a few of the common reactions our generation has to this innocent act. How have we as humans managed to compartmentalise the phenomenon of nursing into opposing categories of good and beautiful when another species does it, but dirty and indecent when our own kind does? There is an obvious and disconcerting explanation for this that our society refuses to confront. The explanation is that women’s breasts have been sexualised to such an extent that we are no longer willing to accept them for their natural purpose. A simple google search will lead you to countless articles online that question why the UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Yet, most articles fail to mention or perhaps intentionally omit the fact that arguably, the UK is one of the worst places in the world for sexualising women's breasts. Mainstream newspapers like The Sun and The Daily Star had a 50 year, yes, a 50-year ‘tradition’ of sexualising women’s bodies by displaying topless women on both the front cover and following pages of the paper. It was only last year that the Daily Star stopped this disgusting, degrading and perverted practice, much to the dismay of the misogynists that relished in it. The Sun even featured 16-year-old girls topless, in degrading positions, multiple times. Of course, they received little to no backlash for this. At every corner of the internet, you can find women's breasts being sexualised, whether that be in pornography, advertisements, movies or in social media content uploaded by female users who self-objectify. In real life, passersby (including children) will be familiar with the sight of lingerie shops that display pictures of half-naked women and sell an array of adornments designed to further sexualise breasts. Standard women's clothing is by no means exempt from this problem, with a large proportion of women’s tops being fashioned in a way that specifically aims to accentuate the bust. Finally, we can’t ignore the existence bikinis which exist to conceal breasts, as they are viewed by the public as too sexual to display on beaches. Paradoxically, male chests, nipple and all, are fully permitted.
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Anyone with decent enough perception should be able to see that the objectification of women’s bodies has permeated most parts of society. However, I would argue that University campuses provide one of the most silently toxic breeding grounds for this form of sexism. University confession pages on Facebook have sprung up across the UK. These pages are essentially gossip sites where students can submit anonymous confessions. This can range from innocent confessions regarding student complaints, all the way to confessions from men about how much they want a woman’s breasts on their face. Here is a post taken from Aberdeen’s resident confession page, Abercrush, which has well over 2000 ‘likes’, ‘‘******* ****** (name blurred for anonymity) who I danced with in ATIK last night, your tits drive me wild and all I want is to feel that nipple piercing against my face.’’ This is just one of the many examples of sexual harassment regarding women's breasts that are posted on these pages. During my own investigation, I found many more examples of this, some of which were too explicit to state in this article. These campus confession sites not only encourage sexual harassment, but they also contribute to making campus and society in general, an unwelcoming and potentially unsafe place for mothers to breast-feed their children. It is almost ironic to me that many public places, including our own university, have signs and stickers encouraging women to breast-feed. We must stop and ask, with how prevalent pornography and the casual sexualisation of women's bodies are in our society, how many women would feel comfortable openly breastfeeding their children?
You might be thinking at this point, ‘‘But breasts are sexual if they weren't why do men feel so aroused by looking at them?’’ The idea that breasts are inherently sexual is prevalent, yet a total myth. Breasts have not been viewed as sexual throughout all of history nor are they viewed sexually in all cultures. Take for example the anthropological perspective offered by cultural anthropologist Katherine Dettwyle. Katherine recounted telling friends in Mali about sexual foreplay involving breasts. The women regarded this as ‘‘unnatural, perverted behaviour, and found it difficult to believe that men would become sexually aroused by women’s breasts, or that women would find such activities pleasurable’’. The only constant attitude or fact about breasts throughout history and across all cultures is that breasts exist to feed babies. To reiterate, breasts exist to feed babies, not to gratify male sexual desire. Women’s breast and the labour of breast-feeding have played one of the largest roles in the continuation of humanity. Absolutely everyone has benefitted from the nourishment a mother’s breasts provide in some capacity and we ought to all be grateful. With breast-feeding playing such a central role in all our lives, it is that much more alarming that there exists such a pervasive stigma surrounding it.
Perhaps, if women weren't being fed the false narrative that their breasts are sexually exciting ornaments that exist to excite men, then we would see higher levels of openness to breastfeeding. If men weren't being socialised via the likes of pornography into perving and luring at women's breasts, women could breast-feed openly without shame, embarrassment or fear that men will call the police on them (this happens more often than you would think). I have even heard comments from young men and women who think that breastfeeding is disgusting and perverted. Just shows how bent reality has become when a beautiful, nurturing and loving act between mother and child has been warped into what some think is a dirty act of paedophilia.
