The following article was printed in our local newspaper in response to
the above referenced photo.

"Warning: The following column is not intended for those who are faint of
heart when it comes to public discussion of women's bodies, or for my
children and their friends.

Some kids are gathered around, thumbing throught an issue of National
Geographic. There's a picture that one child wants to show the others.

I can only imagine what that photo might be. It's only been three decades
or so since I was a juvenile, rifling through the pages of National
Geographic hoping to find a picture of:
a) A woman naked from the waist up
b) A man nearly naked from the waist down
c) All of the above

No matter the content of the story. That maybe some ancient tribe had
been discovered. Or that it is, as I see later in this case, an update on
the plight of refugees. To a kid thumbing throught the National
Geographic, the articles can be irrelevant.

So I ask what it is the picture shows. The answer? A woman breastfeeding,
and it looks like a banana.

I ask for the magazine. Yes, a woman is breastfeeding. The baby is
suckling off a fold of skin that is, if you are inclined to think that
way, somewhat shaped like a banana. Thankfully they both look healthy.

Remembering similar photos I have seen over the years of women who have
nursed maybe10 or 12 kids, plus the babies of a few other tribeswomen and
some orphans from the next town over, I tell them  "That's what can
happen after a women has breastfed children."

Not that anyone ever told me that before it was too late. I think if
people knew going into it exactly what toll childbirth takes on the
female body, the world's population would be about half what it is now.

Breastfeeding offered some of the calmest, closest times I had with my
babies. But I remember going in for a check-up the year after my first
child wasborn. Months had passed since we'd gone to bottle feedings. My
stomach had flattened some, but where I was looking for a hint of
perkiness, I was instead reminded of those cartoons of grandmas with
severe cases of the droop. And I was only 29. So that was the first
question I had for the doctor.

"When are they going to go back to being themselves ?" I asked him, as
you might inquire about a relative who has undergone shock treatment.

"Uh," he said, "they aren't." The moment of truth. I'll never forget it.

I breastfed the next one because, after all, what difference would it
make?  The damage was done. But it did make a difference.

You come to accept it. And realize that as you get older, it doesn't get
any better. You don't even mind when you go to buy nasty birthday cards
for people who are turning 40 or 50 and see that they are half devoted to
cracks about the impact gravity has on womens' aging chests.

It doesn't mean we like it. On the other hand, those of us who have come
to terms with the certainty that we will never be asked to pose for
Playboy can take heart in the words of the Mother Superior  in "The Sound
of Music," who advised a young Maria that "When God closes one door, he
opens another."

Looking at it that way, there's always National Geographic."

Author:
Kathy Gibbons
[log in to unmask]

For anyone wishing to comment:
Record-Eagle Letters to the Editor
Box 632
Traverse City, MI 49685-0632
www.record-eagle.com

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