On the matter of boobs, and what sort deserves more consideration.

I found this lingering on the spike. Very old news, and yet, likely to erupt again at any moment, because this is an issue that cannot, will not and should not go away.

Breast isn't best: readers tell US parenting magazine - Yahoo! News:

"The picture in Babytalk was aimed at illustrating the controversy surrounding breastfeeding in the United States, where a national survey by the American Dietetic Association found that 57 percent of those polled are opposed to women breastfeeding in public and 72 percent think it is inappropriate to show a woman breastfeeding on television programs.

Babytalk executive editor Lisa Moran said though most of those who responded to the poll about the cover photo gave the magazine a thumbs up, she was surprised that some 25 percent expressed outrage.

'There is a real puritanical streak in America,' Moran told AFP. 'You see celebrities practically baring their breasts all the time and no one seems to mind in this sort of sexual context.

'But in this very natural context of feeding your child, a lot of Americans are very uncomfortable with it.'"

It seems to me that this is such an wholesome and innocent image that taking offense at it amounts to a genuine perversion; a degree of fetishism and outright filthy-mindedness that it needs far more, widespread and consistent mockery.

The idea that a breast is always sexual and never just there is an astonishingly juvenile view. Sometimes breasts are sexy. Sometimes they are nurturing. And sometimes, I've been told, they get in the way. That's a more grown-up way of looking at boobs. Context matters. And the fact that a woman's breast is partially exposed when a baby is attached should not bother you. Why? Because babies are good things, and don't deserve having their feeding disrupted by their prudery, or stuffed under a hot blanket so that you are "spared" the vision of a nipple being used as nature intended.

When a breast is displayed partially covered by a scrap of fabric that manages to be just barely adequate in a legal sense, there is little outcry, even in the same context where people would be upset at this. Lo, the baby covers more than many bikini tops.

I've been long convinced that cultural taboos involving the human body create the very pervesions they are supposedly intended to prevent. While they may serve to spare the delecate sensiblities of a few prudes here and there, I question the legitamacy of that demand, or why rigid, shame based conentions that have the effect of warping our natural sexual behavior into paths that are often compulsive and distructive. It seems to me that a modicum of courtesy would be a far better way of going about not scaring the horse-faced.