Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Much Aboob About Nothing?

I've said it before, and apparently, I have to say it again: "Nothing inspires controversy faster than a leaky boob."

Generally I like being right. It suits my Type-A personality. But when it comes to the topic of breastfeeding, I simply wish the milky tide would turn once and for all and prove my above statement wrong.

But don't worry - I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. I like conciousness too much...

It seems that breastfeeding, in all it's engorged splendor, is once again front and center - literally.

BabyTalk Magazine, a free parenting rag - you know the kind that hover in between the automatic doors of your local grocery stores and on the tables of your pediatrician - chose a picture of a nursing baby to grace its latest cover.

As you can see, the boob is equal in size to the head doing the suckling, no nipple is present, no identities revealed.

Yet the vocal backlash from both readers and nonreaders alike has been so swift, you would think the cover showed Suri Cruise, sporting a milk moustache, wedged between the leaky naked breasts of Katie Holmes, with the GOT MILK caption printed across the top.

One mother, Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, didn't like the cover, explaining she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it. "I shredded it. A breast is a breast - it's a sexual thing. He didn't need to see that."

Um, Gayle. I daresay your 13 year old son knows what a boob looks like, and in his wet dreams, none of them have babies attached to them.

Oddly, Ash nursed all three of her children. "I'm totally supportive of it - I just don't like the flashing," she says. "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

Oh the boobmanity!  They might accidentally see a baby being fed?!?!  Horrors! 

Another mother, Kellie Wheatley, of Amarilla, Texas, echoed Ash's sentiment, "Men are very visual. When they see a woman's breast, they see a breast - regardless of what it's being used for."

Listen, I'm the last one on this planet to give men much credit for anything, but even I grant them this much: there's a world of psychological difference and turn-on factor, even in the shallowest testosterone bearers of this world, between a Playboy pic and a mom feeding her baby.

Maybe if it were a Playboy pic of Pamela Anderson breastfeeding Kid Rock, but even then, I'm not so sure. When males are thinking turn-on, they envision breasts that have purely recreational status, not Borden Dairy qualities.

Personally, I nursed all three of my children. And no, I did not run and hide every time I was in public and they needed to eat. I was, as are 99% of nursing mothers, discreet, opting for a blanket and a quiet spot to sit. I certainly didn't seek out the main stage in the food court of the mall, but I also did not hide in a fitting room or clothing rack.

I endured more impolite stares, disapproving glances and puritanical grunts from passers-by than I care to recount. And quite frankly, my one thought was always that they could all suck my leaky boobs. It was none of their business, and I was completely covered up, however, you would have thought I was buck naked doing performance art with a goat, three chickens and a strap-on.

The bottom line is this: Breastfeeding is normal, it is natural. It is how Mother Nature set up the human body. Woman gets pregnant (due to boobs' recreational status), woman has baby, woman's breasts fill up with milk so she may feed her infant, if that is how she so chooses.

It's not dirty, and it's certainly not sexual. Seriously, anyone who has ever actually seen a leaky, engorged breast up close knows there is nothing even remotely Penthouse about it.

So, do I see anything wrong with the BabyTalk cover? No, I do not. It is sweet, it is nurturing, it is a Baby magazine for God's sake.

As for Gayle and her shredder? If BabyTalk Magazine is the best thing your 13 year old son and husband can find to wack off to, I feel really sorry for them both.

And I think your marriage problems go a bit deeper than a boob on a magazine cover.

News Unworthy

OK, let me get this straight....

The Middle East is about to implode, the Taliban has taken control of two whole cities in Afghanistan, 53 people were pureed to death outside another mosque in Iraq today, and 340 people (so far) have been killed in the tsunami that struck Indonesia, right?

But those headlines - headlines that actually portend real human suffering, drama and impact - are somehow competing for space and attention with the fact that George Bush used the "S" word in a conversation with Tony Blair, Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro are splitting, and - GASP! - Oprah Winfrey is not gay.

Scuse me waiter, I'd like to order a plate of perspective with a side helping of reality, please. Oh, and could you bring lots of spoons? I need to share this with several billion people.

Seriously, I would like to know why the overheard word "Shit" from Bush has been a top headline for two days, and now, why anyone, even Oprah, should care whether she is gay or not.

And believe me, if she was, she would have already dedicated an entire self-serving issue of "O Magazine" to the topic...

So Bush, overheard on a microphone that had not been turned off, uttered the word "Shit" while discussing Hezbollah with Tony Blair? Try bugging my house for ten minutes - your virgin ears will melt off your head if I get going about the subject.

Quite frankly, I like catching candid moments like that. At the very least, it comforts me to know the man still has some measure of spine supporting his body.

As for professional sex-kitten, Carmen Insert-Stupidist-Made-Up-Last-Name-Ever, and professional tatoo canvas, Dave Navarro? Pardon me whilst I bogart something from President Bush, but who really gives a "shit"?

Hollywood marriages have the longevity of a carton of milk, curdling up and expiring on a regular basis. Why this revelation deserves coverage alongside the deaths of 53 innocent people in Iraq, is beyond me.

But the biggee in terms of How-did-this-get-deemed-news? has to be the coverage of Oprah coming out and stating she is not gay (wait, I guess that would be not coming out?), I repeat not gay..

So she has a longtime best friend in Gayle King? Oooooooooooo!!!! So she has never married Stedman Graham? Whoooooooooooa!!!!!!

Again: How is this, in any way, shape or form, news?

You know, I could maybe see it being a strictly Entertainment related piece - albeit a small one - on a slow news day when nothing much is happening, but for the love of God, Allah, Mohammed, Buddha, whoever you pray to, we are not lacking for real, serious, global impacting news right now!

AIDS is orphaning thousands of children daily in Africa, thousands more are actively being slaughtered in Dafur, no one has seen Suri Cruise yet, and bombs are flying back and forth between Israel and Lebanon, like some maniacal game of ping pong, and we are supposed to care if Oprah prefers pie or sausage?

Wait! Maybe she likes both! Maybe she's actually a man, therefore liking Gayle that way is normal (cross dressing aside)!  Maybe she, Gayle, and Stedman like to swing!

That's still not news. And quire frankly, none of my business.

Or yours.

For those of you who have actually wasted time over some of these superfluous "news" stories the past couple days, do yourself a favor - check out some of the current events that may actually impact your lives.

Because I guarantee you, Carmen won't be ringing your doorbell to cry on your shoulder, Oprah isn't asking for your input anytime soon, and George? Well, he just doesn't give a shit.

And neither should we.

"Piece" In The Middle East?: Hit and Missile

I just returned from finally seeing Johnny Depp eat up the screen again as Captain Jack Sparrow in the new Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. Critics be damned, me hearties, it was a rollicking good time.

I only wish I had enjoyed it more.

In truth, while Jack and Will and Elizabeth faced down new menaces and battled in new adventures, my mind was half a world away where people are actually in peril - and not the CGI-blue screen kind.

No, what I'm referring to is carnage and devastation that Industrial Light and Magic may be able to replicate in pixels, but could never come close to capturing in emotion: The current bombings between Lebanon and Israel.

Unlike most Americans, who will continue to go about their busy lives, attending movies, soccer camps, doing the grocery shopping, and worrying about the latest electric bill, I happen to know someone who lives in Israel. A young girl named May, barely 18, who can hear the rockets flying overhead.

She can see the damage, she can feel the fear, she can smell the death.

I have never met May in person. For years, we have only existed in one another's email inboxes, but she has also existed in my heart for an equal amount of time. Having "met" her when she was 15, we have shared so much, so openly, about what goes on in her part of the world.

And I always come away humbled.

I live in relative peace, calm, quiet. She lives in a place where to go out for milk may mean you never come back again. She has lost friends who had merely gone out for dinner only to have their own bodies be turned into hamburger and strewn across the bombed out restaurant.

She has lived each of her young years knowing that she may not see her next.

Beside her, I am an ignorant, spoiled, take-it-all-for-granted American.

In her latest email she spoke of how much everyone around her has just "gotten used" to the sound, the turmoil. There was a weary acceptance of a life that should not be "gotten used" to no matter how old a body grows. I remember two years back when she was studying for finals and pondered the futility of the act.

NO CHILD SHOULD VIEW HER LIFE IN THAT WAY.

We have grown up with the words Israel and Palestine, but for the most part, that is all they are to us - words. Words for an abstract portion of the globe we don't have to acknowledge, simply because it is so far away. If anything, most Americans have a parking lot mentality when the subject comes up - "Parking lot", as in, "turn the Middle East into one and get it over with."

She has grown up with the blood and the hatred the words Israel and Palestine actually carry. They live, they breathe, they kill.

Now, she is facing danger from another direction - Lebanon and Hezbollah, an organization of terrorists voted into the active parliament of that country.

Brilliant move.  Aces.

I hope that the citizens who have died in Lebanon the past couple days questioned the intelligence of their vote before they took their last breaths.

But bombs are bombs. Rockets are rockets. It doesn't matter the direction they fly into your country from. What matters is that you duck in time and hope they hit somewhere else.

The reality is that regardless of the words spoken by politicians and world leaders, no lofty "road map" is ever going to create a super highway with on-ramps to peace and brotherhood. The terrorism knows no borders, the hatred acknowledges no power but its own, and Death is an equal opportunity employer - simply taking all comers.

I do not pretend to completely understand all that has gone before and contributed to generations of people bent on the destruction of one another. And I certainly do not profess to have anything even remotely resembling an answer. What I do have is the friendship of a young girl, who at barely 18 deserves a life that includes peace, not the weary acceptance of watching her future shatter into pieces.

Now, as Captain Jack would say, "Where's the rum?", because I really need a drink while I wait for her next email telling me she is still alive.

Obese or Not Obese? That Is The Question

It’s no secret - a simple walk through any of our nation’s WalMarts will prove me out - we are a nation of ever increasing girth. With nearly 25% of the adult population falling into the clinically obese category, it’s only natural that their children are drafting right behind them.

I see them everyday. Overweight, overindulged, under-exercised children, waddling to and fro behind their own porcine parental figures.

It’s sad. It’s preventable.

But what it truly is? Sad that it is preventable.

Just as no adult needs to consume an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s., no child has ever died from being denied a third Twinkie.

What’s that?

They whine, cry, beg, and plead? So you give in?

Grow a spine under all that fleshy Jell-o and just say NO. Hell, NO, in fact.

I really am tired of parents abdicating all responsibility for how their children are turning out. Acting as if there is nothing at all they can do to stem the flow of fats and sugars streaming daily into their children’s bodies. Shrugging their own chubby shoulders when Jr. can’t pass a simple physical fitness test in PE.

And now comes the debate over whether doctors should continue to follow the government’s politically correct, warm-n-fuzzy description of the nation’s fat children: "at risk of overweight" or call them what they are “obese”.

The concern?

Hurting their itty bitty feewings.

Give me a big, fat break.

These kids, and more directly, their parents, need the truth shoved right into their pudgy faces. “Feewings” be damned. These kids are at risk, and not just of being the big butt of jokes on the playground. Rather, their health, their very existence is being jeopardized by the parents who allow them to over consume and under move.

Just ask Dr. Reginald Washington, a Denver pediatrician and co-chair of an American Academy of Pediatrics obesity task force, “Labeling a child obese might run the risk of making them angry, making the family angry, but it addresses a serious issue head-on. If that same person came into your office and had cancer, or was anemic, or had an ear infection, would we be having the same conversation? There are a thousand reasons why this obesity epidemic is so out of control, and one of them is no one wants to talk about it."

Amen.

I often joke about the mirror blight in this country - that obviously the vast majority of people don’t own one, ergo cannot see what they really look like.

I’m only half joking.

People are also not told the truth, not forced to face their rotten choices, the rotten choices they are teaching to their children - and this denial is present when they do bother to look in a mirror.

My favorite example is a recent mother-daughter pair who both dropped over 100 pounds a piece. A great accomplishment, no doubt.  But they never realized how hefty they were until looking through some family vacation snaps and seeing themselves in all their wet, hefty glory. 

They didn't know.  How is that possible?

Obese "sounds mean. It doesn't sound good," said Trisha Leu, 17, who thinks the proposed change is a bad idea. The Wheeling, Ill., teen has shed 60 pounds since March as part of an adolescent obesity surgery study at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"When you're young, you don't understand what obese means," Leu said. "I still don't understand it."

Bull and shit.

Telling the truth is not “mean”. Pussy footing around a serious issue and allowing kids to die - that’s mean. And pardon me Trisha, but if you are 17 and don’t understand the word “obese”, get your ass back in the classroom and pick up a Webster’s.

The show Honey, We’re Killing The Kids is part of the reality TV pantheon, but this is one show worth watching. It takes a family of overweight, under motivated people, computer generates for the parents what their children will look like at 40 should they be allowed to continue on their current slovenly, unhealthy path, and then rocks their world for three weeks. A doctor/nutritionist works with them on menus, exercise, motivation and self control.

For most of the parents, the shock of being forced to face what they are doing to their children is enough to keep things moving in the right direction. For the children involved, although they are, across-the-board, resistant to the changes initially, they come to embrace them.

As will any obese child. They simply need shown a better way. And they need to be led by the example of the grown ups in their lives making healthy choices.

I am friends with the N.Y. casting director for Honey, We’re Killing The Kids, and what is most disturbing to us both is that there is no difficulty in finding families to film. Their applications flood his office daily.

Yes, there are physiological issues contributing to body weight faced by some obese people, but the majority of these folks choose their current status. Make no mistake, the decision to stay overweight is every bit as real as the decision to cut back and exercise.

It’s all about facing the truth and making the choice.

Children can handle to truth. Children deserve the truth. Only then can they feel empowered to grab their lives back and get moving in the right, healthy direction.

Obese is not a dirty word.  It's an honest, clinical term to describe a serious health issue.

And as distasteful as having that truth finally shoved down their throats may be, in the end, it is much more palatable that what all that food going down their throats will bring them.