Nursing Moms Angry About Facebook Not Letting Them Post Pictures Of Their Boobies

When it comes to mothers nursing in public I usually side with the mothers. Breast feeding is important to many parents (my wife breast feeds), and sometimes the little tykes get hungry in the most inconvenient of places. As long as a mom exercises a bit of discretion (don’t just whip the booby out and attach the kid) I think those critical of public breast feeding can get bent. It’s a perfectly natural thing, you prudes.
But posting pictures of yourself breast feeding online is different altogether.

Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies. The disputes reveal how the sites’ community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members.
Facebook began as a site just for college kids, but now it is an online home for 140 million people from all over the world. Among the new faces of Facebook are women like Kelli Roman, 23, who last year posted a photo of herself nursing one of her two children.
One day, she logged on to find the photo missing. When she pressed Facebook for an explanation, she got form e-mails in return.
Facebook bars people from uploading anything “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit” — a policy that translates into a ban on pictures depicting certain amounts of exposed flesh.
Roman responded by starting a Facebook group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

I agree that breast feeding is neither sexually explicit or obscene, but as a privately-owned company Facebook is free to exercise its own standards when it comes to posted images. If they don’t want breast feeding pictures that’s the way it is, and it’s not the same as saying a woman with a hungry baby can’t find a quiet corner in a shopping mall to nurse her baby under a blanket.
Because posting a picture of yourself breast feeding so that others will see it is not the same as needing to feed your kid while out and about. One circumstance has a level of desired voyeurism the other does not. I don’t know of many mothers (outside of the militant ones who seem to want to walk around with their boobs hanging out daring people to object) who want strangers oggling them while they nurse.

Tags: ,


«
»
  • http://Array jimmypop

    this is another area where the church types piss me off. people should be allowed to look at boobs if they want to look at boobs.

    plus, are not the ‘pubs the ones that say we need to bring personal responsibility into the mix again? so, if you dont want kids looking at girl parts, WATCH YOUR KIDS.

  • NoJelly

    Yet another indication of how much our culture has changed in a very very short time. I can remember a time not long ago at all where a story like this one wouldn’t see the light of day because for one, society wouldn’t have tolerated this kind of exibitionism…

    Sometimes I stand back a little and look at what our once proud nation has been reduced to, in regards to social mores and the slow, determinate desensitization of entire generations.

    Yeah I know, it’s just some fat broad’s flabby, blue-vein covered udder, but in a larger sense it’s part of a disintegrating sense of self discipline on a much larger scale…Civilizations have crumbled in this fashion before…

  • http://insanereindeer.blogspot.com/ Kenny

    yes, but who really rails against boobs and other exposed girl parts? i never seen the ‘atheists for morality’ group picketing the local strip club.

    The owners of Facebook for one. Parents for another.

    The vast majority of Americans, including athiests, don’t want naked people in the public square.

    You took an unneccessary shot at Christians and won’t say “OK, party foul”. Poor form.

    That’s rather ironic given the author of this post.

    Yea. No kidding.

  • http://www.sayanythingblog.com/ electnixon

    Check out this quote:

    …But with a 9-month-old, “it’s almost hard to get a picture of me not nursing,” she said.

    This fall, Farley changed her profile photo to one that showed her breast-feeding…

    I’m sorry, but this sounds a bit hard to believe. We have a 4 month old and we’ve got a plethora of photos – none of which include uncovered boobies. My wife has the decency to use a shawl if anyone is in the room besides me.

  • 11B40

    Greetings:

    Several times (maybe many) back in the joy of my youth, I remember my father telling me, “Boy-o, there’s a difference between a reason and an excuse; an excuse is a bad reason.”

    It seems these ladies were deprived of this lesson.

    There are several fallacies among the assertions being put forth. The most obvious being that if you want to breast feed your child, you have to do it everywhere and every time. I think there may just be alternatives in this, the Age of Obama.

    Another implicit fallacy is that public breast-feeding is not something of a maternal compulsion, along the lines of the panty-less Britney or the Paris Hilton sex tapes. Look at me, I’m breast-feeding in public! Look at me, I’m a loving mommy!

  • Mickey

    yea yea yea, women have breast fed for thousands of years. There’s nothing special about your boobs when you lactate ladies. If nothing else do your share to keep us civilized one notch above aboriginals. If I’m desperate to see nice boobs I’ll go to a titty bar with a fist full of Washingtons.

  • http://insanereindeer.blogspot.com/ Kenny

    Udderly ridiculous

    Moo? Breast feeding will get you compared to a cow?

    this is another area where the church types piss me off. people should be allowed to look at boobs if they want to look at boobs.

    Who says it’s church types?

    If you want to look at boobs, go to a porno site. Facebook has a clear policy, which you know when you sign into it. It’s a friends and family site, not a show naked pictures of yourself site.

    I’m tired of people rejecting to common sense as “church stuff” or “religious zealotry”.

  • http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

    Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies.

    Kill-joys!

  • http://www.willisms.com/ Zsa Zsa

    What an udderly ridiculous thing to complain about. It really sucks! I hope this post will nip this trend right in the bud. Sorry! I am out of control.

  • jack

    I don’t remember which justice said, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” No set of rules and regulation will ever be adequate to idiot-proof any human activity. The problem is our sense of entitlement and our litigious society prevents us from simply employing judgment.

    1. Breastfeeders, the site belongs to Facebook; if you don’t like their policies go somewhere else.

    2. Facebook, grow some cajones. Breastfeeding is not pornography (whether or not areola/nipple is showing) except for the perverted – some of whom are also capable of getting excited at exposed feet. The slippery slope of what someone might find offensive/titillating (sorry, couldn’t resist) is very steep. If someone complains about someone else’s Facebook page, have a drone look at it and make the call (like a referee) then get over it and move on. If you don’t like the drone’s judgment call, see #1 above.

  • di butler

    I breast-fed 2 kids, all4 of the grandkids are breatfed, 1 still is, and all were fed until about the age of one. I just looked through my kid pics and could not find but 1 pic in all that time that was a bf pic, and it was my daughter, and she has nothing showing, except a big old baby head. I think it’s cool if you want to show your titties, if u are into that, but how hard would it be to make, or there probably is one, join a nursing mother site, or club, or whatever? Then you could just have a titapalooza, and no one would care. Facebook I think is right here. Their site,Their rules. Why would these mothers want some little 13 y old boys yanking off to their nursing photos, anyway? Or, at least I hope that that is the only group that would do it.

  • Claude

    If Kelli really needs a place to “express” herself I can provide her with a free web site. Kelli call me!

  • jimmypop

    If you want to look at boobs, go to a porno site. Facebook has a clear policy, which you know when you sign into it. It’s a friends and family site, not a show naked pictures of yourself site.

    i was talking about things like this in general.

    to your point; i agree, if she does not like it, dotn use facebook. nobody has the ‘right’ to use that site.

  • http://www.sayanythingblog.com/ electnixon

    yes, but who really rails against boobs and other exposed girl parts?

    Parents perhaps? (say what you want about parenting, but Facebook is somewhat like television, just because you monitor your children’s viewing habits doesn’t make it OK to put porn on NBC)

    Anyone who desires to stop the downfall of civilization?

    i never seen the ‘atheists for morality’ group picketing the local strip club.

    That’s rather ironic given the author of this post.

  • http://www.bikebubba.blogspot.com/ Bike Bubba

    Now I can attach a name to all of the “exhibitionist” pictures that my wife and I have endured in parenting classes…my wife and I have always shaken our heads and wondered what kind of woman wants to have a picture of her breast shown to the whole world, and now we know.

    A serious exhibitionist named Kelli Roman is one of them, apparently.

  • http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

    Kelli Roman is a fan of:
    Politicians Non-Profits Products

    * Barack Obama
    * No on Prop 8 | Don’t Eliminate Marriage for Anyone
    * Ron Paul
    * Obama Pride
    * Kathleen Sebelius

    * NPR
    * National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers
    * Better World Club

    http://www.facebook.com/people/Kelli-Roman/500087636

    Nope, no agenda there!

  • jimmypop

    I don’t see why the shot was necessary at the religious.

    yes, but who really rails against boobs and other exposed girl parts? i never seen the ‘atheists for morality’ group picketing the local strip club.

  • http://www.sayanythingblog.com/ electnixon

    I think that the rules are actually reasonable. They allow the photos except when they show the areola or nipple. You don’t know what kind of pervs or kids may be viewing.

    I know that breast feeding can have a lot of difficulties and support with examples are helpful, but I don’t know that social websites are the best place to exchange this information.

  • SherryLynn

    Dear Kelli;

    Breastfeeding is like taking a dump. We all do it, but I don’t want to look at your butt or your boob. Could you not have propped your daughter up on your lap for a nice photo that showed the baby’s face? Changing a baby’s sh*tty diaper is also very natural and people do it public restrooms, etc, but you sure don’t see photos of that. Gee Kelly, why don’t you a flash your baby girl’s poopy bottom as you wipe it clean – I mean come ON, looking back, it’s hard for me to remember a time when I wasn’t changing one of my kids’ diapers every hour of the day, but shock, there are no photos of that!!!

    Kelli’s position seems like a trailer-trashy perception of “I’m so proud of me.” Like everything else in this world, if people have a “right” to do something, they interpret it as a right to shove it into everyone else’s faces.

  • http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

    I’m angry about that as well.

  • http://insanereindeer.blogspot.com/ Kenny

    i was talking about things like this in general.
    to your point; i agree, if she does not like it, dotn use facebook. nobody has the ‘right’ to use that site.

    Well, but at the same time, you point to a maligned crowd when a stupid woman disobeys the very obvious rules.

    I don’t see why the shot was neccessary at the religious.

  • http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/homosexuality_is_wrong_-_a_compendium move_zig

    Well, it is called FACEbook, after all.

    It’s not BOOBbook, now is it?

    They are free to start their own website. That’s what the free market is all about.

Create a SAB Readerblog


Recent Comments

Powered by Disqus

Blog Advice and Support
Installs and Upgrades
Theme Modifications
Custom Plugins
Theme Design
Conversions and Relocations
Hacked Site Recovery
Mobile Apps Development