Public Breast Feeding

I just read an article about a magazine, Baby Talk that featured a baby breast feeding on its cover. Needless to say, people were outraged as though someone put a photo of a woman giving a blow job on the cover of a magazine. If you ask me, I think this is a issue that makes absolutely no sense. If you have a problem looking at breasts in public, that's a personal problem. I don't think a poor, hungry baby should suffer because you're uncomfortable looking at breasts. One lady in the article stated "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see." I got news for you lady, there ain't many breasts that men don't want to see either by accident or on purpose! In fact, the best breast views occur when you're walking down the street, minding your own business, and BAM! a breasts pops out at you and you say to yourself, "Where the hell did that come from?!!

Admittedly I have to say that I'm not totally comfortable with seeing a woman breastfeed in public. HOWEVER, the world should not conform to only what I am comfortable with. There are like 5,999,999,999 other people here on the planet and even if most of them agree with me, why should we impose our views on the rest? I don't always believe that majority should rule.

I was at the community swimming pool with my two kids the other day and our neighbor was sitting out with her husband and baby and decided to whip out a breast and begin to feed. Immediately I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know if I should avoid looking at her, our would a casual glance be considered perverted or if she cared at all. Then there was her husband, how would he feel if he caught me looking in her general direction and thought that I was gawking at his wife? Eventually I got up and left. Disappointed, the kids crawled out of the pool and complained about leaving early. I don't blame my neighbor for my uncomfortable feelings. I feel she has a right to do what she did and it is up to me to decide how to deal with those emotions. This time I decided to just walk away. Perhaps next time I'll have a discussion with them about it, I don't know. What I do know was the easiest way to deal with my discomfort was to get up and walk away. Not to curse them, or make a public scene (to which I had absolutely no right to do), but just walk away.

I think that if women begin to breast feed more often in public, most of us will simply grow accustomed to it. It would be like my first time at a nude beach. For about 15 minutes every neuron in my body was firing off at once and my face was all hot and flush. 15 minutes later I'd forgotten I was at a nude beach and that the couple next me was engaged in 69. Okay, I'm kidding about the couple 69ing-she was just blowing him. KIDDING!

The fact of the matter is, we can't just eliminate everything that causes us discomfort. A little discomfort sometimes is good. Do you think the rest of the world is comfortable with how the U.S. behaves globally? No, but they tolerate us. Sure, there are factions out there that would like to see us wiped off the face of the earth, but the majority of the globe just puts up with us and wave us off as crazy Americans. My point is, we can go around the world busting out all of the light bulbs, or we can just close our eyes-either way the effect is the same, but the latter just saves so much energy.

Ciao!