Written and Media by Baylen Whitfield.
Women’s breasts and bodies are used in media all the time to promote and sell things from burgers and beer to certain clothes and magazines. Many of the commercials, billboards, magazines, music videos, and other advertisements, used for marketing and to promote sales by objectifying the female anatomy, have utilized female’s bodies, breasts in particular, so much to the point in which it has become the norm. This systematic form of brainwashing has led to many problems that are associated with more than just marketing in media. Aside from females breasts being overly used and promoted in media for all the things that they are really supposed to be used for, problems, such as the promotion of rape culture, the assigning of gender roles, sexism, and misogyny, just to list a few, are additional problems uprooted or associated with the female body overly exposed and marketed in media.
As many may assume, those additional problems uprooted and associated with the usage of a woman’s breast in mass media may very well become deep topics, and respectfully, deserve their own post. Society has grown to view it as abnormal for a female to wear a tank top or sleeveless shirt to school on a 95-degree day and will be forced to change because “boys will be distracted” and is normal for all of society to watch a woman, nearly completely nude, wash a car while advertising a burger for a Hardee’s commercial. Keep in mind, no one eats food while washing vehicles. But even a more realistic approach still displays close-ups of a woman’s breast in a Hardee’s commercial. Kate Upton’s Hardee’s commercial is a prime example.
It seems that society accepts seeing breasts in media for everything they are not naturally intended for, and uproars about any form of media or platform displaying women using their breast to perform a task with them that is completely normal, such as breastfeeding.
Society has become so accustom to viewing breasts, and women in general, as nothing more than things to be associated with beauty and sexual romance that the average person no longer sees the real beauty in the female anatomy, and instead society is so quick to judge or bash a woman for using their breast for a real purpose like breastfeeding, especially when that person is displayed in the media and everyone can safely target that person from the comfort of their home. Time Magazine is an example of this situation when several years ago they released an issue with a mother breastfeeding of the cover. The argument presented with this particular situation, as well as many other breastfeeding situations, is that it’s either performed in public or is allowed for public eyes to see, and that child is too old to breastfeed so now it’s considered a “sick” act by between the mother and child. According to research, a child’s most substantial brain development occurs between the ages of the time the child is born until the child around the age of five years old and breast milk supplies all the good fats for that essential brain development for a child. So breastfeeding well into toddler years, as well as into the time the child is around five or six is actually not too old for the child to breastfed. As far as breastfeeding beings a “sick” act and something that should only be perform in the privacy of a home, well, that’s something I believe society has been conditioned into believing simply because of how society has been taught to view women as only sexy and romantic symbols and nothing more over the years of the abuse and over usage of the female anatomy in media to only represent those things. There are tons of benefits to breastfeeding for the child and mother and if you’re not aware I highly suggest you check out the benefits here!
