Outrage?

Two pictures on the cnn website caught my eye. One had a news article on it. The other was an ad. See for yourself.




Familiar? Now this picture or its derivative has been on cnn’s website for a while. No outrage was visible. If anyone wrote in to protest that kids might be looking at cnn’s website and this was not an appropriate picture on the first page, then I definitely missed it. For my part, I have” netnanny” safely installed on my kids’ computer which blocks these pictures so I don’t worry that much.

However, when I saw this news article
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/27/nursing.cover.ap/index.html




and the accompanying picture having caused outrage, I found my mind in the biggest muddle ever. When the spinning stopped, having given rise to sheer amusement at the colossal mix-up, the implication of this hit me between the eyes. Allow me to share some of this here.
The breastfeeding mother is a matter of shame(?) . While I don’t really consider myself a lactivist, and definitely do not remember ever breastfeeding in public, (I put it down to my conservative upbringing in a traditional culture), something made me laugh loudly at the stupidity of all of this. However on reading this article, especially the following lines, I realized something here smacked of a hypocrisy, more on the part of women, than the men who are blamed for being “visual.”

This line specially caught my eye.

"I'm totally supportive of it -- I just don't like the flashing," she said. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

While am all for this point of view, I just don’t see the same reaction at picture of half naked women on big billboards selling underwear. Something is incongruent about the acceptance of the woman’s body as sexual object, but not as a mother. Is it just me who views this inconsistency as something to ponder? What is also very interesting is that it’s the women who “doth protest too much” about the lactating breast, while remaining silent about the other ads, far more ubiquitous than the “Babytalk” magazine. Not to be dismissive, but I doubt the readership of Babytalk exceeds the viewer ship of the “Victoria Secret” ads.
As a follower of the “cult of motherhood,” is it time to take strong objection to this? Mostly tongue in cheek, of course? How is it women don’t figure out they put a foot in their mouth the moment they protest things like this, while the silent men are merely amused at the lack of feminine self identities? All while “enjoying the show” as well as the comedy of collective stupidity.