{"id":47573,"date":"2012-05-30T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T16:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=47573"},"modified":"2012-05-31T02:10:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T07:10:14","slug":"controversy-over-times-are-you-mom-enough-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/30\/controversy-over-times-are-you-mom-enough-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversy Re: TIME’s “Are You Mom Enough” Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just before Mother’s Day, TIME<\/em> grabbed America\u2019s attention with a cover image<\/a> accompanying the headline “Are You Mom Enough?”\u00a0 Its photo featured 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet nursing her 3-year-old son.*\u00a0 The image electrified the blogosphere. With 24 hours there were over 18,000 comments<\/a> on one site alone.\u00a0 LA Weekly<\/em><\/a> called her a MILF and reported<\/a> that internet traffic flooding her website caused it to crash.<\/p>\n

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Within no time, spoofs of the cover appeared.\u00a0 Tiger Mom made a reappearance<\/a>.\u00a0 “Are You Phone Enough?” plays on the idea of attachment, but between user and electronic device.\u00a0 One site offered\u00a0“magazine makeovers”<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0generated a “make your own TIME magazine cover”<\/a> template.<\/p>\n

The responses, though, were mostly negative.\u00a0 In a TODAY.com poll<\/a> about the image, more than 131,000 people weighed in; 73% saying they would have preferred not to see the image. \u00a0Saturday Night Live wasted no time in skewering both mother and child<\/a>. Purportedly, some newsstands covered up the image and when it appeared on some news shows,<\/a> Grumet’s breast was blurred.<\/a><\/p>\n

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For those for whom the image was offensive, Grumet’s physical attractiveness and her exposed body conflate feeding with sexiness, hence constructing the image of her suckling son with creepy or incestuous undertones — exactly the kind of one-note misconstrual of the breast (for sexual appeal rather than nutrition) that breastfeeding advocates revile.\u00a0 Objections to the image included revulsion that a child — clearly still not a baby — would be connected to his mother’s body this intimately, alongside a fair share who claimed he would surely later be scarred — if not by the experience of cognitively remembering breastfeeding, then by this image circulating through his future school yards.\u00a0 One commentator claimed<\/a> deep concern that Grumet’s son may “never be better-known for anything than for being a breastfeeding 3-year-old on the cover of a national magazine,” and that the image was one of “psychological abuse,” as well as “an act of media violence against a child” perpetuated by manipulative journalists.<\/p>\n

Breastfeeding advocates (so-called “lactivists”) seemed torn. On the one hand, the image drew attention to their cause: the benefits of long-term breastfeeding<\/a>, including both nutritional benefits and mother\/child bonding.\u00a0 On the other hand, it was clear this was being done for shock value and exploitative purposes.\u00a0 Grumet’s hand-on-hip, defiant stance and her son’s stepladder perch hardly convey the sense of intimacy<\/a> that breastfeeding can offer.\u00a0 Most agreed that TIME<\/em>‘s choice of a 26-year old, blonde, white woman who looks like a model was a deliberate move meant to provoke.\u00a0 In a “Behind the Cover”<\/a> online sidebar photographer Martin Schoeller admits that he posed Grumet and her child upright in order to “underline that this was an uncommon situation” (i.e., to be provocative). The story accompanying the article doesn’t mention Grumet at all; instead, it profiles 72-year-old Dr. William Sears, the “father” of the attachment parenting movement.\u00a0 All this exacerbated the sense that the sensationalistic pose of Grumet’s lithe body and her son’s latch was generated just to move copies of the magazine.<\/p>\n

By capitalizing on shock value and American squeamishness about breastfeeding, there is no doubt the image will continue to generate reaction for a while longer.\u00a0 And it likely sold magazines. \u00a0It inspired a few “print is not dead”<\/a> articles, with one writer calling the cover “a shocking stroke of genius” that serves as a testament that a powerful image can still generate buzz and boost magazine sales.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the image may ultimately harm the cause it represents.\u00a0 The relationship between media and activists is a fraught one.\u00a0 Activists need media attention, but far too often media attention can warp and undermine activist projects<\/a>.\u00a0 It remains to be seen whether the cover will be a net good or bad for lactivists.<\/p>\n

*A few people wondered<\/a> about why <\/em>TIME didn’t feature Grumet’s older, adopted child, who she also breastfeeds. One guess is that bold as the cover image is, even <\/em>TIME‘s editors were afraid to take on the implications of a white woman nursing a black child.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

————————<\/p>\n

Elline Lipkin, PhD, is a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. \u00a0She is the author of Girls’ Studies<\/a>\u00a0and The Errant Thread<\/a>, recipient of the Kore Press First Book Award for Poetry. \u00a0She lives in Los Angeles and has written for the Ms. magazine blog, Salon.com and Girl w\/Pen, as well as other contemporary publications. \u00a0She tweets at @girlsstudies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just before Mother’s Day, TIME grabbed America\u2019s attention with a cover image accompanying the headline “Are You Mom Enough?”\u00a0 Its photo featured 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet nursing her 3-year-old son.*\u00a0 The image electrified the blogosphere. With 24 hours there were over 18,000 comments on one site alone.\u00a0 LA Weekly called her a MILF and reported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,2124,2103,2088,272,129,120],"class_list":["post-47573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-foodagriculture","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-marriagefamily","tag-media","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47573"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47577,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47573\/revisions\/47577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}