Nipplephobia

Potentially offensive content ahead.

 Definition: irrational fear, fascination, attraction, repulsion, guilt, and confusion provoked by seeing an adult female nipple (or even the illusion that one is seeing one).  (266)

I'll be the first to say that I love the female figure.  We're so curvy and that makes us pleasant to look at (for me).  An essential part of the female figure is breasts, big or small.  They are an important part of being a woman and raising a child.

I've always seen breasts in a sexual way; they're fun to look at, to touch.  For this reason breastfeeding raises awkward feelings.  Here is this part of me that I've been practically trained to view as a sexual thing, and I'm supposed to use it to nurture my baby.  I don't know about you, but I don't view feeding a child as sexual, and I sometimes have trouble imagining exactly how breastfeeding is going to make me feel.
I am the product of what Ina May Gaskin calls American Puritanism.  I tend to agree with her terminology (though I couldn't find on which page of the book she states this) and I continue to be amazed at people who react in such a volatile way to mothers who breastfeed their children outside of the home, or at all.  On some level I can understand: breastfeeding is a rare thing to see in our society.  We've been trained to view it as indecent, something you should only do in private.  I had an emotional reaction to it myself when I first saw a friend feed her baby.  I can't recall having seen it prior to that, although I feel like I must have come across it somewhere and just forgotten.  The point is, seeing it made me feel awkward, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.  If it produced this (pretty strong) reaction in me, I can only imagine what someone else would think/feel given similar circumstances.
Now I see breastfeeding on a regular basis and my emotional weirdness is falling away.  A lot of this is because I'm very soon going to be doing the same thing so my awkwardness is replaced with curiosity.  Even so, some of the stigma around breasts remains in me and I'm left to wonder if my open fondness of them is a subconscious cover-up of a deeper discomfort surrounding breasts as a food source.  It makes sense I suppose.

Image found on page 259, or here.

I think that this kind of view is rather ridiculous.  To be put on edge, or even angered, by such a vital natural function can only be a product of some kind of conditioning.  I might argue that the infant formula industry started it (because I'm on a huge anti-corporation kick right now) but that would be false, unless infant formula dates back to the Civil War period (258). 
In 1910 the pictured device was patented which, frankly, looks to be stupidly uncomfortable not to mention unsanitary.  Apparently we'll go to an awful lot of trouble to make sure we aren't being "indecent." 
According to Wikipedia the first commercial infant formula was introduced in 1912, so I can't blame aggressive marketing for the breastfeeding stigma that exists so prevalently in our society.  The pictured product says that it existed long before commercial industry started manufacturing formula.

This stigma is so ingrained in us that we were the only country to vote against the WHO/UNICEF Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes which recommended that member governments restrict the advertising and sales promotions of breast-milk substitutes as a "minimum requirement" to protecting infant health. (249)  Effectively we decided that infant formula companies are more important to us than the health of our children and, one might argue, the self-esteem of our women.

The whole reason Nipplephobia irritates me so much is because it promotes the view that our bodies are not good enough.  We, as women, are flawed and we need the help of corporations and the medical industry to even function.


All citations are from Chapter 15 of Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding by Ina May Gaskin.