Extended bf pic

[VictorianSqualor]

Don't know if this has been linked before but isn't the picture in this article lovely?

It's a really bad shot, is what I am saying. It's not got any artistic merit at all, it's not a natural pose, it wouldn't win any photography prizes. Rather reminds me of those horrendous family portraits people get donw and teh display above their mantlepiece, unless of course they have put their wide-screen tv up there and then they have to display it at the top of the stairs

Well my German consists of "Guten Tag" so I only looked at the picture.

Wow, that's a powerful, even iconic photograph.

It's certainly thought-provoking - all the best photos are -
because it takes extended breastfeeding, an activity that everyone knows
only frumpy-looking, asexual, mumsy women engage in,
and portrays it in a beautiful, almost glamorous-A3-poster manner.

It's yet another important step towards normalising breastfeeding in the Western world.
Very good.

Lol 'a piece of breastfeeding'

I like the picture, she looks stunning, it is provocative - it's provoked a very mixed reaction. I don't like the venture photography style tinting very much. I want to know if she's called puddles, and what is going on in the garage in the real building, this is bothering me.

OK, one last try (not to make people agree, but to try to explain the thinking):

This is not a 'natural' shot. It might well contain truthful elements, but it is posed and styled.

In the process of taking this promotional shot, the photographer/stylist/whatever has adopted a series of cliched sexualised tropes. So the jeans are not loose, they are tight. The legs are not closed, they are open. The subject is lying prone on a bed. Her hair is long, glossy, styled and artfully arranged.

None of these elements is in any sense 'wrong'. The cumulative effect, however, IMO, is to produce a cliched, sexualised image.

If this is one in a series of images to promote bfing, then great, no problem. If it is the only or the main image, then I think it's a bit of a shame to use an image that unquestioningly reproduces so many aspects of female objectification.

I have no problem with nudity; I have a problem with stylised, cliched objectification.

I have no problem with extended bfing or tandem feeding. I am currently doing the first and very nearly did the second.

And, if I can grant myself the license to speculate wildly that VVVQ and others have granted themselves so freely on here, some of you are deeply uncomfortable with being disagreed with, even in perfectly amiable terms. Maybe it's something to do with your upbringing? Or perhaps it's low blood sugar. Or maybe you're all completely thick. I don't know, but I sure feel entitled to tell you anyway.

I just don't believe the photo would have been taken and published if she were size 24, hairy and spotty, no matter how confident about her body. And let's face it, most of us who have had kids, don't look like very much like her!! It's just another image in that narrow range of how women are endlessly portrayed. Next!!

Thank you policywonk!!

her surname is Poelen which is dutch for Puddles.

policywonk I wish I could type like you!

But isn't this an article about her, rather than about breastfeeding generally and illustrated with a random image? She happens to be a sexy woman, the image is quite powerful because it's very different to shots we are familiar with of a woman bfing.

I think people are having quite instinctive reactions to this shot, none of which are right or wrong at all. I had to look at it for a long time and really think about how it made me feel. And I can't help but like it, it made me smile because i though she looked very proud and very sure of herself and what she was doing, I felt like that, I had a real pleasure in my body and what it could do while bfing, which is very different to sexual, but about sexuality.

OK, lets be realistic, if you airbrushed the two boys out, what you would have is a classic 'come hither' picture of the sort that turns up all over the media. I absolutely agree that the woman is lovely, the boys look very relaxed and more images of breast feeding in the public eye the better, but why does she have to look as if she is just about to finish feeding, send the kids off and slink towards the viewer? Surely one of the major problems with breast feeding in public is at the moment the public at large do not differentiate between breasts as feeding equipment and breasts as sex objects. If people generally made this distinction then getting your boobs out to feed a child would cease to have the whiff of scandal that it still seems to carry in some circumstances. Some people find extended breast feeding distasteful precisely because they feel that the sexuality connected with breasts is inappropriate for older kids. If you breast feed yourself you know that this is ridiculous and that is why i personally find this picture irritating. Things do not have to be sexy to be acceptable. Why not have exactly the same shot but with the woman laughing, looking happy and relaxed rather than smouldering. This picture irritates me because it just misses being a lovely shot and nose dives into some very odd territory. I can hold that opinion without having any preconceptions about breast feeding mums being frumpy and asexual.

Exactly!!!

oh she just looks smug. I think the little boys will be horrified when they are older to see that picture. Blimey whats wrong with cows milk at that age?

It's meant for cows?

so I should still be drinking my mother's breastmilk at my age? Doh! And here's me been drinking cow's milk all these years!

My first thought looking at the photo is that it is taken in a deliberately sexy and provocative way. But I don't think that there is anything necessarily wrong with that. Some women do look sexy breastfeeding. I'm not one of them

Listen you lot, you obviously have 'ishoos'

Don't like the picture, too sexy and too contrived, the bys seem secondary to her being, well yes provocative.

I'm all for normalising breastfeeding but this isn't normal, that's not to say it's not ok but to sexualise the act to make it acceptable to the masses? That doesn't sit easily with me. if she'd been grinning with her hair in a ponytail cuddled up and just looking well relaxed instead of pouting then I think it might come across better.

I personally can't be doing with the "defiant breastfeeding" brigade. Just do it anywhere you like when you need to for as long as you want without getting all "bandwagon" about it. That will be what makes it acceptable in the end, being all strumpety about it is only going to aliente and divide people further.