The other day I stumbled across a little blog where a mother was protesting that Facebook had just removed a photo of her breastfeeding her baby.  Breastfeeding photos have been controversial across the web for years.

From parenting forums to the ‘mainstream’ social web, reactions to breastfeeding photos bring social taboos to the surface.          

At the centre of all this to-do is something very small. The nipple.  The female nipple and areola that is.

Online there are a myriad of breastfeeding resources– the wonderful Australian Breastfeeding Association for one.  For all intents and purposes, these websites are breastfeeding tucked away in very important but discreet little corners.

When breastfeeding traipses into general areas of the net, women and their nipples can suddenly become suspect.

Facebook has a policy whereby no female nipple or part of the areola can be shown.

Breastfeeding photos on Facebook

Facebook Policy: Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate [Facebook's policy on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material] and may be removed.

Now, I understand that Facebook and other mainstream social websites need to ensure that things don’t slide into outright pornography– because if that happens, people will leave in droves. 

But a normal, natural photo of a baby having a meal of milk from a breast– that’s no different to a baby having a feed from a bottle.

During international breastfeeding week– August 1-7,  a Facebook protest against the policy was held, attracting a huge number of participants.

The Mothers for Womens Lib website posted a very insightful piece on the Facebook policy of banning breastfeeding photos: Wimminz disgusting milky nipples! Teh areola! Teh b00bize! Oh noes! (or, Facebook, grow up!)

(Gotta love that for the title of an article!)

The economics of breasts

What is going on beneath the surface of the breastfeeding photos controversy?

Women’s breasts are seen and worshipped as sexual objects in our society. In very male-centred advertising, breasts are a commodity used to sell everything from cars to fishing rods. Breasts are hot content– filling the pages of men’s magazines and spicing up B-grade movies. Breasts are also used to sell fashion and accessories to women. We expect to see breasts used in this way, because we see it every day.

Breastfeeding is something we don’t see. Breastfeeding is not on TV, not in movies, not in shopping centres, not in magazines, and not even in your child’s picture books. There are tiny pockets of it– in private homes, in parenting rooms, in breastfeeding centres, in online parenting forums, in ‘earthy’ children’s books.

Breasts as feeding devices are not used to sell anything, with the exception of breastfeeding-related merchandise. Breasts as sexual devices are used to sell everything.

Taking a look at Facebook, is it just about keeping ’sexually explicit material’ out of user’s content, or is it also to do with social taboos? 

It’s difficult to counterbalance the ‘explicit material’ argument when Facebook readily allows the framework for such content:

The sex groups and applications on Facebook are mind-boggling.  A quick snapshot:

Sex Pages & Groups:      Over 1000 in total, including: Morning Sex: 126,355+ fans   Sex (student groups): 2,409 members    You had sex where?: 366 members

Sex Applications:     389 applications in total, including:  Sex Games: 459,633+ monthly active users   What’s your sex style?: 142,345 monthly active users   Would you have sex with someone here?: 1,929 monthly active users

There are also sex events to tickle the fancy of Facebookers.

Looking at the main pages of the above (and not delving any further) I saw one pair of naked breasts, two naked penises, one male bottom, lots of girls in skimpy clothing, and images of sex acts.  There were some pretty lurid descriptions of sex exploits and body parts in the discussions.

Girls drunk & disorderly on Facebook? – also okey dokey.  

Almost anyone with a large list of friends and acquaintances on Facebook will have had some pretty racy stuff pushed into their view– whether they wanted to see it or not.

Breasts and online gaming

Chicks in medieval adventure games almost invariably have large breasts popping out of barely-there armour. 

(’Barely-there armour’ – I can’t see that having been a hit at any time in history!)

World of Warcraft is popular with both men and women, though women make up a much smaller membership than men.

GameDaily runs a Babes of the Week spot. This week they featured women in skimpy gear from World Of Warcraft. (pictured left)

Gamers enjoy the fantasy and escape from real life– and there’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s also true that with gaming evolving from a male-dominated arena, it’s no surprise that any female characters in war games are likely to display distinct sex-appeal.

‘Breast-jiggle’ when a female character walks or runs is  a functionality that was long-wished for in gaming, as I recall from my days of playing/designing NeverWinter Nights games. (NeverWinter Nights had a function whereby you could create your own campaigns and adventures, using their game engine and graphics.)

Where the depiction of highly sexualised images of women in gaming becomes a problem is when it is marketed to children, or used by children.

Many people will have seen the Evony adventure game advertised around the web.  Due to contextual advertising, the ads show up on some children’s games websites and on some websites where children frequent, as well as many general websites. The actual game looks pretty tame, but the advertisements depict women on their knees, with breasts flowing out of undone garments… at times with the text, “Come play, My Lord” displayed.  You can see the evolution of the depiction of ’boobs’ on Evony advertisements here and here.

Such depictions set up an expectation that women’s breasts are entertainment. Okay for adults. Not okay for kids.

Why don’t we want to see breastfeeding photos? 

It’s difficult to gauge the percentages, but there may be as many women as men who don’t want see any displays of breastfeeding in public. It’s changing, but slowly.

Incredibly, shopping centres and department stores often did not have breastfeeding facilities until recent years. With women the major customers of shopping centres, why and how did this happen? Why were women forced to feed their babies while sitting on toilets for goodness sakes?  Who are the people responsible for designing shopping centres that did not provide for the essential feeding requirements of babies? It also makes economic sense to keep breastfeeding women at the shops for longer, so why were parenting rooms not implemented earlier?

It’s more than a disgrace. It’s telling.

Breastfeeding was an invisible act, much like childbirth. Something tied into the mysteries of life yadda yadda but with enough yuck-factor that it should be kept behind closed doors and away from people in general.

Breastfeeding on parenting forums

Breastfeeding on parenting forums is an accepted and celebrated thing. There are the occasional heated discussions between breastfeeding advocates and women who have/are feeding their babies formula– but mostly that’s to do with formula-feeders simply seeking respect for their decision to use forumla (which can sometimes be not so much a decision as a medical necessity.)

But still, amongst both breastfeeders and formula-feeders, there are women who dislike other women ‘flashing their breasts’ while breastfeeding. Breastfeeding photos, commonly displayed in signatures, can spark criticism if they show the nipple and areola, or if they display ‘too much breast’.

Very few people, however, would ring up a TV station to complain if they see a naked breast in a movie they are watching.

I have to admit– through many years of breastfeeding my four children, mostly people didn’t notice when I was actually breastfeeding– I was so painfully discreet. I’ve been uncomfortable at the sight of a woman breastfeeding who had both breasts bare.

These things are my own issues. I’m not uncomfortable with the sight of women’s bare breasts in a movie (except to question why they’re actually there in the first place.)  I have to be careful not to project my own social conditioning onto my values.

The ownership of breasts needs to change. It seems advertising, movies and magazines have too many rights to breasts, and women  themselves too few…

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Carin

Around the internet, if you keep finding yourself mentioning the cold, you could be Posting Under the Influence of Winter. (PUIW)

If you’ve been around internet discussion sites for a while, you probably would have heard of PUI, or Posting Under the Influence.
According to the Urban Dictionary, PUI is:

Posting on a forum or message board while under the influence of intoxicants. Condition often results in strange and incoherent rants and ramblings peppered with misspelled words.

PUI is otherwise known as having a couple of wines and posting happy thoughts all over discussion forums, twitter, your blog…

PUIW on the other hand, is being darned cold and posting unhappy, wintry thoughts everywhere…

Winter means different things to different people. For some people, winter means heading for the ski slopes, a chance to wear scarves and boots, or just a reason to snuggle up with a blankie and hot chocolate.

But for others, winter  is a dismal season– the winter blues start the day the last leaf falls from the (deciduous) trees.

To check if you have been Posting Under The Influence of Winter, complete this small test: 

•  
  • You talk about chocolate as though it has become one of your four food groups.
  • Your posts are filled with weird typos (Your fingers have been numb and stiff for weeks now.)
  • You constantly find yourself posting or tweeting weather updates & analysing wind chill factors.
  • You post photos of the sixth pair of boots you’ve bought yourself this winter & you realise you’ve been consoling yourself with boot purchases.
  • You post snarky remarks at anyone who dare posts that they don’t really have a winter where they live.
  • You post photos of your cat in scarves and beanies at icanhascheezburger.com
  • You post about how energised you feel after weeding the vegie patch/walking the dog/running with the kids on the beach/cycling to work… and you wonder why you didn’t do this last winter.
  • You post and tweet sad goodbyes to winter as the weather starts warming. And look forward to next winter.

If you answered ‘yes’ to at least four of the first six points, you have the Posting Under the Influence of Winter (PUIW) condition. For relief, grab yourself a hot chocolate and remember the pesky flies of the Australian summer!

This post is part of the Blog Chicks weekly topic. This week was: Winter

Here are two websites tracking cycles for different reasons– one to assist any women needing help to follow her cycle from month to month, and the other for… well… men.

www.monthlyinfo.com

 
This is a website where women can record the start of each monthly menstrual cycle– and MonthlyInfo will “generate predictions and statistics about your cycles.”
It’s for any women to use who wants to keep track of her cycle – for fertility reasons or managing your lifestyle better.  From this website you can also find a link to set up a monthly self breast examination reminder.

From the monthlyinfo.com website: My name is Heather Rivers and by day, I am a computational lexicographer. Basically, you record each time your period starts, and MonthlyInfo uses your history to . You can then create and customize reminders which can be sent to your email address or text messaged to your phone.

www.pmsbuddy.com

Now for something completely different. Menstrual cycle tracking for men. The rationale this time is that men can have a monthly reminder of when their wife’s/partner’s/sister’s period is due– so that they can be armed and ready for the PMS onslaught.

Yes, much of  PMS Buddy is tongue-in-cheek. Although, one one hand you have the National Alert Levels and Overall Threat Index, and on the other you have PMS tips and even a forum.  A strange marriage indeed.

The creator of pmsbuddy.com, Eisenberg, told news.com.au, “It’s hard for guys to know if they did something to piss off their lady and hard to remember when PMS is, and always awkward to confront and ask the question without coming off like a jerk.”

At the Ban Comic Sans website, hate for this unassuming little font is gaining momentum. Comic Sans began its fateful life in 1995 when Microsoft released the font for use in comic-style speech bubbles – for instruction manuals and the like.

We’ve seen it on school newsletters, church billboards and our children’s science projects. But when it rears its unattractive, inappropriate head in business and other arenas where you’d expect a dash of professionalism – anti-comic-sans campaigners are there.

The website calls on “…..the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance. We believe in the gospel message “ban comic sans.” It shall be salvation to all who are literate. By banding together to eradicate this font from the face of the earth we strive to ensure that future generations will be liberated from this epidemic and never suffer this scourge that is the plague of our time.”

The owners of Ban Comic Sans, Indianapolis couple Dave and Holly Comb, encourage you to send in photographs of gloriously inappropriate Comic Sans use.

So beware, if you use this font on your business cards, shopfront promotions or website – the anti Comic Sans campaigners are coming for you!

(Of course, if you happen to be fond of this cutesy little font, you could always start your own save Comic Sans campaign!)