Get your topless photos here!
I’m going to regret that when I see tomorrow’s search terms.
One of the people I follow on Twitter, The RadicaLactivist, posted a link to a collection of breastfeeding in art through the ages today and I absolutely love it. The creators collected several hundred drawings, paintings, sculptures and photos of mothers nursing their babies from the ancient times to now. I especially love the photos of women in full Victorian dress with a baby attached to their boob. I imagine their intention was just a classic family photo but after holding still for the old-timey camera so long their babies got fussy and needed to be fed.
It’s an amazing collection of nursing depicted as natural and beautiful through time and across the globe. Wouldn’t it be nice if breastfeeding was still seen that way?
Tags: art, babies, breastfeeding, nursing, photos
Glad that you liked it. Art history provides a unique perspective to us because the Herstory of Women’s daily lives wasn’t recorded for the most part. We do have the odd snapshot here and there through some literature such as the Canterbury Tales but Art often provides us with the only true understanding of daily life as women knew it. We see images of women breastfeeding everywhere and it becomes obvious that it was ubiquitous, assumed as the norm and certainly not indecent.
It was when studying Art history that I learned how different perspectives on bodily exposure have previously been. Through most of History, breasts were essentially a public body part. Since they were exposed for breastfeeding and considered a part of a woman’s beauty as integral as her face, they were often uncovered. Friends who were knowledgeable about clothing in different historical periods pointed out that necklines were so low that part or most of a nipple would often show. this was not a big deal.
LEGS! however!!! those are SEXY. A ankle showing was considered risque and if a woman allowed her calf to be seen she was a slut. Anything approaching, never mind PAST the knee was sure proof that you were a whore advertising for business.
Which, when you think about it makes a hell of a lot more sense! The further up the leg, the closer you get to the Holy Grail. Sex is about genitalia, not breasts. Breasts are sensual, yes, but not sexual. You can have sex with a complete double mastectomy. A man can have implants, but it doesn’t mean you can f*** him like a woman. Breasts are for babies first and foremost, they’re advertising the fact that you are a good candidate for maternity and so in that way are linked to sex and attractiveness, but not a required element of sex.
The idea that the exposure of breasts is indecent is a social construct, and one unique to modern society. People have so little knowledge of History anymore that they can’t imagine how their perspective is not universal, perpetual and beyond question. We really need to pull our heads out of our own asses and realise how much of what we assume is wrong.