Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Breasts: Allure and Utility

Breasts constitute not just part of women’s anatomy but part of their sexuality — one reason why porn stars get silicone implants, why fashionable clothes showcase a bit of cleavage, why young girls see their training bras as an entrée to womanhood.

Sexuality provokes an array of passions. The constraints of modesty dictate that women cover up those seductive orbs: religious fiats clad women in breast-concealing garments, as though the titillating shapes could evoke men’s lascivious natures. Although the tale of original sin begins with Eve eating the apple, it might just as easily have started with the naked Eve.

Yet those estrogen-fed orbs have a real function: they nurture the babies that women birth. Women, the sirens who lure men to wanton lust, are also nurturers, in the very physical sense of producing milk. Breast-feeding mothers may joke that at times they feel like cows, as their babies latch on to suck ferociously. The analogy is apt. Women’s breasts are gushing forth the nutrients to make their babies thrive, if not to survive.

We hide that nurture-role of breasts. Women cannot easily breast-feed in public: they are cautioned to cover up completely, or retreat to bathrooms. Hospitals often give free formula “starter-kits” to new mothers. The woman who wants to pump breast milk will need time off from work, a convenient refrigerator, and understanding colleagues. Even though Renaissance artists painted women, including Madonnas, in low-cut gowns, those women rarely were shown suckling babies.

We obscure the physical role of breasts, concentrating on the aesthetic as well as sexual roles. Yet physicians, public health officials, and mothers themselves all understand the crucial physical role. Babies thrive on breast milk. Formulas approximate the makeup of human milk, but do not duplicate it. The benefits of breast milk include immunity from diseases, protection against gastrointestinal infections, and calories. It promotes bonding. It is always sterile. And while mothers must maintain a minimum quality diet (a help for mothers), breast milk costs nothing.

The developing world faces a crisis. The United Nations World Health Organization and UNICEF recently issued a report: only three in five newborns globally were fed with breast milk during the first hours of life.) The report highlighted low breast-feeding rates in lower and middle-income countries — the countries where women may lack sterile water, much less the fuel to sterilize bottles, where formula costs strain family budgets, and where babies risk a host of communicable diseases.

So, not surprisingly, the World Health Organization at a May conference was poised to adopt a resolution proposed by Ecuador: to protect promote and support breast feeding. Moreover, the resolution called on countries to offer technical support to stop the misleading marketing of formula.

Our president understands the sexual allure of breasts. As a multi-married groper and adulterer, he is doubtless an experienced judge. In fact, he owned the Miss Universe Organization from 1996 to 2015. But either he doesn’t understand the physical role of breasts, or doesn’t care.

At any rate, the United States marshaled its State Department arsenal: Ecuador risked retaliation (loss of military aid and trade penalties) if it didn’t back down. The big-gun approach worked. Ecuador backed down. Russia took up the gauntlet, introducing the same resolution. Under American pressure, reportedly several African and Latin American countries declined to support the proposal.

The resolution passed, but the US succeeding at watering it down. The WHO deleted the admonition against the “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants.” The watered-down stance gives formula companies a green light to spread their message. Imagine the billboards on Kenyan highways, the formula stocked in village bodegas. Those companies can expect to expand their markets.

Admittedly, some women, particularly those suffering from HIV and alcoholism, should not breast feed; nor should women taking specific medications. The vast majority of women, though, should try, especially in their newborns’ first few vulnerable months, especially in places with high infant mortality.

Our president has schemed against our allies, against the environment, against women, against minorities, against the disabled. Now he turns the bully pulpit against babies.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2018

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