Breasts can’t be sexual if there is a baby in the picture.

Facebook has received quite a bit of criticism the last few years over their policy on pictures involving breastfeeding.  I’m not a fan of either Facebook or Zuckerberg, but there is an absurd yet common argument that breastfeeding pictures are never part of the online arms race for sexual attention, and public displays of breastfeeding are never done to garner sexual attention.  As Salon explained in their article Facebook’s hypocritical breast-feeding controversy:

…a person whose photo is deemed by Facebook to have an unacceptable degree of nipple will not just find the picture removed, but often her account temporarily deleted on a vague “breach of terms of use” charge. Treating women like petty criminals for posting what are obviously not sexually explicit images is just stupid business.

…

[Facebook’s Policy] illuminates the depressing reality that breast-feeding, after all this time, is still deemed inappropriate, unproductive and just plain icky. And that a nipple, even one with a hungry baby nearby, is just darn scandalous.

Blogger Dena makes the same basic argument with even greater force about women breastfeeding in public:

There is no such thing as indiscreet nursing. Mothers do not walk around topless, flash the general public on purpose, or shake their tatas in passerby’s faces in an effort to feed their babies. All nursing is discreet nursing. You expose your breast, your child latches on, and nursing begins. Period.

With this argument in mind I present today’s “intimate” photo-shoot at The Daily Mail, which of course cannot possibly be intended to present Tamara Ecclestone as an object of sexual desire.  After all, there is a baby in the first picture.  Sure she is only wearing a towel in this picture, but I can only assume the photographer showed up without notice and didn’t give her time to get dressed.  Besides, after seeing the first picture (with a baby), we already know we aren’t supposed to see her in a sexual light.  That would be absurd.  Likewise, since there is a baby carriage in this picture, it is clearly all about motherhood, not an attempt to out compete other women for sexual attention on the internet.