Part of This Nutritious Breakfast

Ok, so I kept telling myself that it was none of my business, but I’ve been asked to weigh in directly at least 4 times. Here it is. The Time magazine cover with the breast feeding three year old creeps me the hell out. I understand the point. I really do, but in its haste to get people’s attention, they have crossed the border into vigilante mom land and no one but other vigilante moms can tolerate being there for even a miniscule amount of time without breaking into seizures of eye rolling that persist until you spontaneously and repeatedly yell, “Shut the F@#$ up!” like some crazed Tourette’s soaked mental patient.

Now, admittedly, I have to turn on my cerebral brain when I witness anyone breastfeeding an infant. Frankly, my emotional self is just uncomfortable with it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I don’t have children. Maybe it’s because I have never viewed breasts as meal receptacles. What I do know is that this is my problem and no matter how weirded out I am by it, there’s nothing wrong with it. I do have issues with people that glare at a restaurant full of customers as if they are daring someone to say something as they plop their engorged boobie on the dinner table. I know it’s natural, but if there wasn’t a baby attached to it, that same woman would go to jail.  Have a little class. Throw a blanket over your shoulder. Or better yet, don’t schedule dinner at the same time as your baby’s next feeding. We get it. You’re all maternal and what not.

The specific problem I have with the magazine cover is the age of the child and the pose of the mother. If that very same woman was wearing a hooters uniform, those same vigilante moms would have already organized a posse to hunt the responsible party down like a scared animal. I’m not buying the whole “nutritional value” crap either. That kid probably spent the morning playing Xbox followed by a lunch of Crustables and cheese doodles. If your kids eat three meals a week at McDonald’s you don’t give a rat’s ass about his nutrition. This leaves one of two possible scenarios. Either the mother refuses to admit that the child is no longer an infant (he probably also drinks out of a sippy cup and has a pacifier in his mouth while he stomps hookers to death playing Grand Theft Auto) or she is getting some sort of emotional fulfillment out of it. Either way, it has nothing to do with the kid or what’s best for him. Call me old fashioned or anti-woman or whatever, but a kid shouldn’t have to run in from recess to breastfeed.