From:
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/a-good-time-to-ponder-the-mixed-messages-we-get-about-breasts_2010-11-06.htmlYARMOUTH - Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We are awash in a sea of
pink solidarity, of ribbons showing our support, of fundraising
efforts. We worry, we pray, we drive our friends to chemo, we bake
them pies -- and not just in October. So why, oh why, is it so hard to
talk about -- breasts?
A review of my latest book for children states, "the sketch of the
plaster breast that hangs on the family's living-room wall may provoke
more than giggles." Apparently, the reviewer was right.
The breast has elsewhere been called offensive, which I in turn find
shocking.
The sculpture is a tribute to bravery, the equivalent of a belly cast
of a pregnant woman. In the book, it's there on the wall to honor the
one lost to cancer by the mom of the title character, India. Even
India's fourth-grade buddy Colby understands. It's art. It's supposed
to make you think!
India knows that some people stare a bit too long at it. She wonders
why breasts make people act funny. What if mom put a plaster cast of
her nose or her foot on the wall? Would it be different?
The answer, it seems, is yes. We are uncomfortable as a society
talking about a part of our body that everyone has -- men, women, and
children.
Like noses and most other things, breasts come in all different shapes
and sizes. Pretty much the first thing any of us sees is our mother's
breast. But after that, where do breasts go? Under cover, under wraps?
Plastically jutting out of Barbies, displayed on prime time TV,
revealed cartoonishly at halftime during the Super Bowl?
The mixed message unsettles.
For an early picture book of mine, the publisher asked that I change
the nursing picture to one of a bottle-fed baby. This astonished me, a
Swede by birth. Nursing is risque? Well, the editor explained, they'd
otherwise not be able to sell the book in the South. I grumbled but
redrew the picture. Here in Maine, it didn't seem to be much of an
issue.
I published a series of small books about the seasons. The spring one
featured a new baby brother, nursing, laundry, mud. Nobody said
anything.
It wasn't that I was crusading for the La Leche League, but it was my
reality, and that of most toddlers I knew. Moms nursed babies. Big
sisters played and sulked in the quince bush pretending to be
princesses. Breasts were not an issue.
I suppose I should have understood that I really wasn't in Sweden
anymore when youthful strangers passing by our hedge saw my toddler
daughter frolicking naked in her tiny pool, and loudly proclaimed,
"Gross."
Anna didn't hear them (she was too busy being a dinosaur), but I did,
and my heart sank.
Poor teenagers -- to think a 2-year-old's naked dancing was
disgusting.
What did they think of their own bodies, I wondered.
Bodies way up in sun-starved Scandinavia are not considered gross, or
necessarily sexual. Even breasts! Children in particular are allowed
the freedom to feel air on bare skin.Later, I lived in Hong Kong where nudity was not casual at all. I
understood: Practices were different depending on where you were.
Moving to Maine at the end of the hippie era, there was an open
feeling. Nylons? Fine. Unshaved legs? Fine. Both at once? (Maybe not
so much.) But still I was unprepared for what happened recently.
The line drawing of the plaster cast of the breast on the wall
elicited the word "offensive" -- from a New England librarian, no
less. Librarians are my heroes -- champions of liberties. I'm thinking
that this was a "rogue" librarian.
But her comment made me think: Why is it OK for our kids to see
endless violence, but not breasts?
If the breast on the wall in the book were an entire body, would that
have been OK with the annoyed librarian?
Does the fact that the character's father is gay play into the
supposed offense?
Maybe it's time to rethink what our norms are. Families come in all
forms, and some hero mothers fight breast cancer. India's mother
triumphs, and celebrates.
I wish this outcome for each and every woman facing a breast cancer
diagnosis.
Let's hear it for breasts!