Totally Exposed

Are milky breasts sexy breasts?  Can they be both?

Depends on who you ask.  Most women love that their cleavage quotient increases with breastfeeding, and their honeys do too.  There's a lot of crossover between sexy boobs and milky boobs, but this can make the line between breasts for food and breasts for sex blurry and grey.  It's a complicated topic, and all of us bring our own personal stories to said topic.

Flipping through a magazine, advertisements will show women with deep cleavage, heaving bosoms, and glorified busts.  We, as a society, are comfortable with this (well most of us are).  And yet, a photo of a woman breastfeeding gets many members of our society quite uncomfortable and even offended.

In many ways it comes down to exposure (pun intended).  We have been exposed to breasts as a sex symbol for eons.  And in the last 50 years, we have become increasingly comfortable with showing more and more and more in the media.  Hollywood and advertising in particular have pushed this envelope, slowly increasing exposure until we are comfortable with a lot of, well, exposure.

The same can be true of breastfeeding.  By exposing our society more and more (subtle, slow shifts in public, frequent, and extended breastfeeding), we can push the envelope; thereby slowly increasing general society's experience with breastfeeding.

One of my favorite bloggers, "Banned From Baby Showers" has this to say:

"[I]t's OK that breasts are sexual and are capable of feeding a baby.  They are dual purpose.  I have a friend that calls breasts and genitalia "life-giving parts" and explains to her kids that we cover those parts because they are sacred... If someone has not breastfed a baby or been around breastfeeding A LOT, they really only see breasts as sexual.  Everyone knows that breasts produce milk (life-giving), but many have never been exposed to breastfeeding.  Because it is so ingrained, I don't know that their minds can be changed without experience."