Friday, May 11, 2012

Are You Gullible Enough?

{Image Credit}
I sat back the past couple days to see all the swirling comments about yet another conversation started about breastfeeding. As a mom with a major in psychology and professional career in advertising I am unfazed by this cover.

Let me break down for you exactly what's going on here:
  • First, with the print industry dying, this is a ploy to sell at the newsstand; shock value sells and in a society where breastfeeding is unfortunately sexualized Time Magazine's staff knew exactly what it was doing; choosing a mom for the cover who fits the dominant culture's standard of beauty plus placing her son in an awkward nursing position on a chair is no accident. {You can see a slideshow here of the other mothers/children featured for extended breastfeeding - too bad they couldn't diversify.}
  • Most importantly, it's a DISTRACTION and I'm not going to be gullible enough to fall for it! In an election year where there are so many important issues at stake in regards to women and families mass media's recent and undying focus on ways to cause divisiveness between mothers/women and capitalize on the stereotypical cattiness that exists between us is a way to keep us from uniting on important issues. 
As I said in my post about Beyonce, with the lack of breastfeeding in the black community especially, while I'm glad to see that attention is being brought to breastfeeding,  it's not exactly the way I'd ideally want to see the conversation happen - via celebrity and sensationalism - but of course in the end it's all about eyeball$. 

What is your take on the cover? 



{P.S. I showed Nia the cover and asked, "What's he doing?" She said, "He's eating boob!"}