Breastfeeding is sexy. And before you start dripping with anger, I don’t mean sexual. If you don’t know the difference than you’re probably the type who has to shut all the lights and put a sign on your door during Halloween because you are a pervert. It’s sexy because it’s a beautiful act. And there’s something about it that makes me feel so womanly. In a way, it makes me feel empowered. That I have food to feed my twins in my very being.
And when I saw this image, breastfeeding got even sexier.
Photographer Mario Sorrenti got together with model Natasha Poly for a photo shoot for V magazine. And the 1973 movie The Holy Mountain by director Alejandro Jodorowsky was the inspiration. It was a cult film with a lot of kooky imagery that got people all up in a tizzy.
And this image does, too.
I think it’s beautiful. Sexy. In a totally different way. It’s empowering. The milk coming from her breasts are really coming through two tiger teddy bear heads. Perhaps a nod to “I am woman; hear me roar”. Man is weak in her presence, seems to almost be begging for her food. She is a goddess.
Very different than a mother feeding her child, yes. But I love the provocation. Though I’m not sure how other nursing moms feel about it.
Does this image offend you? If so, why?
There’s even a video from this photo shoot. But if you are offended by this image, have a fear of breasts, and get upset when crucifixes aren’t used for their proper purpose, you probably shouldn’t watch.
I wish I could see the image a bit bigger, but it seems very sexy to me, too.
I made it bigger for your viewing pleasure.
I think this pic is crap!!! It def. upsets me. I am sorry but breastmilk is meant for baby’s and this dosen’t make it seem like it. This is just sick. Stupid!!!
And I am a Breastfeeding mom who has had my pic’s removed off facebook for just showing less sking than bikini’s and given greef over NIP.
Sorry you don’t like the pic. It’s not for everyone. But it does outrage me about Facebook removing photos of nursing moms.
See it’s attitudes like this that make so many moms hide in bathroom stalls to breastfeed! My milk is NOT just for my baby. It’s for my 3 year old and also my husband. YES I SAID THAT! When he was sick with strep throat he drank my milk. From the tap! I am proud of my milk’s power, and realise that my breasts serve more than our culture recognises as their purpose. Breastmilk is no more just for babies ANYMORE THAN COWS MILK IS JUST FOR BABY COWS! We as a culture are perfectly accepting of our babies consuming cows milk but our husbands are refused the wonderful properties of our life-giving milk. That’s wrong. It’s high time that we stopped being grossed out by our bodies and accept the fact that mama’s milk is amazing and not just for babies.
I love this picture, to me it represents feminine empowerment.
Awesome! Well said! makes sense!
At first glance, it grossed me out, but I continued to read just in case I was missing something. I was, the artistic perspective. Man, I think I need to get back in a class!
After reading what you’ve wrote, I can understand why you find it sexy. Maybe it’s a questionable picture because a woman is in a different form. Usually we are timid, fragile, and passive. This time we are strong, empowered and yet, still maternal.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t like degrading pictures of men OR women either. This picture however is good at provoking thought and comment, so it’s valuable to put out there even if there may be better ways of showing woman power (without degrading others). woman as goddess of life needs to have sex to make the babies to make the milk, and yes, if someone needs to heal a bit of flu, pass on the milk regardless of milk, why not – healing is part of the goddess-of-life complex too. And why not put it in your coffee? I agree, why should it only be one OR the other?
Sexual breasts can be milkgiving breasts, yes, Tara V, it’s all interwoven. this doesnt mean you are feeling sexual while breastfeeding, but there’s no need to withhold milky breasts from the father who helped bring that kid into being. It’s all about feeling good in what your body can do. Birth and breastfeeding has linked me to, what, the power of the universe – what do you want to call it? – like nothing else ever has. The power to give life.
Indeed, Stephanie – I am WOMAN, hear me roar!
And apple, Suchada and others – I do see the comedy too, in the way the photo is overdrawing the point.
And Jennifer Cox, you sum it up beautifully: >>It is beautiful to me that my breasts are at their most erotic when they are also at their most useful and primal. <>Just today, I was reveling in all the natural gifts that come with being a mother such as birth, breastfeeding and being a nurturer.
All in my opinion are sexy.
I also find that all three have helped me to tap into my spiritually. Women have this connection to the divine/nature<> [men] dont want us to feel too powerful. We might get upitty or something. <<
Oh, the milk of life…
I think it’s funny. It reminds me of nursing my 1st and getting into an argument with DH and chasing him around the house shooting him with breast milk from 8′away. Sometimes we forget that there was a time that we were the more powerful sex BECAUSE we held the power of life inside us. Giving birth and nursing SHOULD make us feel like Goddesses. Instead we give our baby’s bottles so DHs can feed them.
Cause, ya know, dont want us to feel too powerful. We might get upitty or something. 
Interesting view on bottle feeding Joy! I have not heard anyone put it that way before. I think that women should be celebrated for their ability to make life and the sacrafices that they make for it. It’s not like we can take of our belly/breats and put them aside when we are not in the mood.
I like the picture, from an artistic point of view, it does have a very powerful message. I see it more as being “empowering” vs. sexy, but I don’t find it offensive by any means.
I love it! Breastfeeding is sexy, I’m normally small chested and during pregnancy and breastfeeding I get to enjoy having overly abundant and very sexed breasts (by my husband). It is beautiful to me that my breasts are at their most erotic when they are also at their most useful and primal.
Absolutely agree. It’s a fab picture and I don’t understand why it could be offensive?!
I love it.
Just today, I was reveling in all the natural gifts that come with being a mother such as birth, breastfeeding and being a nurturer.
All in my opinion are sexy.
I also find that all three have helped me to tap into my spiritually. Women have this connection to the divine/nature that men will never get a chance to experience. It definitely is something that I am thankful for.
Twitter: RanaAurora
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Huh. I don’t get your description of sexual vs. sexy (I swear I’m not a pervert, LOL), but I am not offended or even bothered by this in the slightest.
I actually find it kind of cool, and neat that someone still sees lactating women as beautiful and powerful and desirable, since so few women feel like lactating breasts can’t be sexy… and this is the total opposite.
Don’t lie, you pervert! My thought on the difference is that sexy can be sexual, but it doesn’t have to be. Sexy can be more slang for “hot”. Like when someone says that car is hot or that car is sexy, it’s not that they want to have sex with the car (at least I hope not — yikes!) but oh I just lost my train of thought. Maybe I explained … sort of?
Twitter: RanaAurora
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Okay, I can see it from that perspective, for sure!
I swear I’m not a perv. Only a couple things in my drawer have batteries or flavors.
This picture is incredibly provacative and sexy. The artist rendered this picture to be something much more than first glance. At first glance it is hard to grasp what is happening but after examination it is speaking of the POWER of a woman and BREASTMILK. Breast milk is God’s Nectar to our children and should make man weak and yearning. We are given an amazing gift to feed and nourish our children and the power of that should be exhaulted not hidden.
I love it. And I agree with Joy; I also think it’s hilarious. Sexy, provocative, beautiful, but also just FUN. Brilliant.
At first I found the image made me think of some odd fetish.
But after reading the description I am more impressed by the artistic message within.
I see the never ending struggle over women being EITHER the Madonna, the Mother, the Nurturer OR the slut, the dirty girl, the sexy temptress. Why can’t we be both? Isn’t that where our real beauty lies after all? That we CAN BE and ARE both.
It doesn’t bother me at all! lol! I definitely don’t think there is anything sexual about breastfeeding, but images like this don’t freak me out, either.
It seems rather fetish-y to me. Overtly sexual to the point of skin crawling dark comedy if that makes any sense.
This photo just screams female power to me. She is dressed he is naked. She stands tall while he kneels begging for the food that only she can give. It’s a very modern portrayal of woman as earth goddess to me. I like it as art and I like it just to see something in the media that doesn’t dehumanize and objectify women. It’s time for us to take back our role as the mother goddess figure. Mothers are sexy and shouldn’t have to be ashamed or concerned with the changes we go through in order to bring life into the world. A mature man will appreciate the ripe womanly figure of the mother of his children. I love it. I am woman hear me roar! Lol. =)
I do not have a problem with this picture. I think it is a powerful image. Art comes in many forms and there are may layers to feelings intertwined with breasts, milk, sex. Things don’t need to be black or white, there’s plenty of room for gray. There’s a fabulous book called, “Fresh Milk; The Secret Life of Breasts” by Fiona Giles that I highly recommend.
I’m not feeling it. Call me crazy but uh, we wouldn’t be producing milk if it weren’t for the men who impregnated us in the first place, no? I’m thinking we need each other to have the gift of nursing our little ones in the first place. My husband is one of my best breastfeeding advocates and I just don’t like what this image is implying. That and I don’t like to see a butt if I don’t have to. Lol
I think this image is making fun of breastfeeding. I´m very pro breastfeeding and think it´s the most natural thing in the world! I´m breastfeeding my 1 year old baby and don´t mind doing it in public. But I don´t see the ponit with this picure at all!
I don’t like pictures where women are naked and submissive to men.
Why on earth do I want to see men being degraded? I am happy to be a woman. I like people men and women.
I have seen enough things degrading to women, it doesn’t make it better or right to degrade men.
i love it! i would hang it in my living room and pull people off the street to come in and view it!
I love it! I think it might be a bit over the top for some people, but it’s like breastfeeding meets high fashion in photography. I definitely agree with those that say she looks like a goddess. That’s very empowering and wonderful to me.
Nobody has anything to say about the tiger teddy bear heads? How could you even see them? I could barely see the security code to post this comment.
Okay, about the picture. Really, why use the stuffed animals? I don’t get that part. I don’t like the portrayal of the guy, either. If you were going to show him needing to be fed by her, squirting the milk at like a kitten on a farm is not very effective. Show her expressing it into a glass or something. I wouldn’t like to see a picture of him suckling like an infant because that’s emasculating, so yeah, a glass, I guess. It’s not the fact that milk comes from her breasts that bugs me, partially because, like I said, they inserted the toys there, somehow.
Maybe I am getting a totally different vibe. This seems not beautiful, but more like a parody. Milk squirting from a woman’s breasts across a space is always a comical thing when you see it and the naked man shown in that pose from the view of his butt seems the same way to me. Remember the mental image of the kitty in the milking barn? That’s always comedic. I swear this was meant to be funny. The big discussion over the scene being all profound and wonderful makes me feel like I’m in the parade in the story about the naked emperor. I always wanted to be the little kid in that story.
Twitter: RanaAurora
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The animal heads… yeah, I couldn’t even really see them, hence why I didn’t really comment on them.
The guy seems to be the most disliked part of this photo across the board, though, which I found really interesting.
Does it seem like a humor piece to you?
Twitter: RanaAurora
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Humor? Can’t say that it does, in particular.
I don’t really like this picture. I think it’s kind of demeaning to men. I’m glad she has power and yes, breastfeeding is awesome (umm…I’ve been asked to cover up/leave the room before because I don’t even pay any attention to what I’m doing sometimes lol!) but I don’t think THIS is the picture to represent it. It’s TOO extreme. I don’t think that people who are worried about breastfeeding would see this picture and really get an idea of what it’s like; I think they would be turned off by it too.
That said I agree that toddlers/children should breastfeed (mine does at almost 3) and there’s nothing wrong with husbands either, mine has tried (when I had a plugged duct to try to help me). I actually wonder how some figure out how to do it? So I am technically an “extreme breastfeeder” lol.
Jenny and Cindy, totally agree with y’all! I HATE how this makes it seem like, “man in his proper place”… no human deserves to be degraded or seen as inferior to another. It saddens me that many in our culture today think this is okay, that men need to bow to women, etc.
I also agree with you, Kate, that I don’t see how this helps the cause of nursing…this picture very much portrays it as “sexual” in addition to “sexy”.
Back in the olden days when I was a nursing mother…I would squirt breastmilk on my husband when he said things I didn’t like. Weirdly, my husband and my milk are gone. I miss my milk.
Twitter: RanaAurora
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I just about spit my coffee on the laptop. That was hilarious.