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gosh it made me throw up

in my mind it isn't bad at all but i just felt sick when I hit the f link..

Guess that's what happens when you post quickly without fully engaging your thought processes

Everything I have said squares with my own feelings, but the title literally was parroted from a comment on CBS News "Face the Nation" - not really my feelings about it. I should have put " " marks around it but decided instead to just change the post title altogether to more accurately reflect the blank canvas I intended.

I am genuinely curious of what others think of this issue. I have stated in an earlier post that, although I do not see it as pornography, it IS exploitation - again in my opinion. What the child is doing is not an inappropriate thing per se. Having a picture of it splashed on the cover of a national publication is, however. I believe it exploits both the child and the readership - just my opinion.

If it was an unattractive woman from a poor African country, with a very hungry child, would feel different or have a different opinion ?

No offense taken, but if you read my posts in the thread, you would know I am clearly NOT suggesting this is child pornography. I am only highlighting the fact that the accusation has been leveled on some national news programs.

Keith Ablowone, a psychiatrist, is quoted on one of the news shows as suggesting that we “may have unwittingly captured and been party to a grotesque form of psychological abuse.”

Joani Geltman, a child development expert in Cambridge, went even further, saying, “To some people I think it seems almost pornographic.”

All I know is - when I see the picture - it doesn't ring true to an intimate and natural maternal bond. That alone is discordant. It IS provocative in a very intentional and in-your-face way, even if I may not go so far as to call it CP. I see a mother in tight leotards, posing assertively and seemingly emotionally detached from her son. The child looking almost obediently at the camera, wearing military fatigue trousers. I see just the act - distilled from the appearance of true parent-child love or intimacy. The body language alone is triggering to me.

It is interesting how different societies interpret the same picture. How people on this forum react to it in different ways.

The picture in South Africa started a debate on when a mother should stop breast feeding, none of the other issues have even been brought up in the press or on the radio. Breast feeding is offen done in public places, very few peopl see anything wrong with it.

Breasts have been sexualized in our society. The very nature of covering them up does this, much in the same way that a woman's hair and in some cases even her face does in places like the middle east. Conversely I remember going to a nude beach where everyone was naked and how non-sexual it felt, partly to due to everyone's flaws being exposed, but more because there was nothing left to the imagination that wearing clothes brings.

I don't either. It's almost always the sexually repressed that have a problem with everything. Kid's hungry, she's breastfeeding, OMG, it's a crime! When I saw the cover, I thought, "He's a little old...and she doesn't look happy. Kid, that stool works for the fridge too." Hahaha

Phoenix

You are right and very bright, I never thought about the stool and the fridge LOL

Well I've been having repressed sex since I was 12, so maybe that's my problem.