You're making a classic mistake there. Children don't sexualise breasts like adults do. For them a breast is just a body part, like an arm. Any inhibitions they get about breasts later is learned from adults telling them that they shouldn't be seen.
You're also making a classic mistake. Children may not sexualize things, but by the time they're school-aged certain body parts have been "naughty-ized" to a point where they already have the inhibitions even if they don't have the sexual feelings to go along with them (but let's not make another classic mistake and pretend that none of them do). People naturally object to having their children raised one way and being led contrariwise by media images they can't control. Of course the image is natural and not disgusting, but there is a legitimate point of view in which *the publication of it* in mass media can be seen as offensive. There is a difference between offensive and gross. Also, apart from the children thing, there are plenty of folks who would prefer more discretion in mass media, whether it's nonsexual nudity like this or any other kind of public indecency. There's a time and place for everything, but must that time and place always be at the supermarket checkout where everyone can see it? (then again, if this were an exclusively subscription magazine, I don't really see a problem with it -- they should know what they're subscribing to for pete's sake)
MrSmith said:
This is from the nation that finds the word 'toilet' disgusting and has to ask for the 'bathroom' in a restaurant
K, you do get the fact that not every difference between American and British culture is some deliberate attempt by us to distance ourselves from you and fulfill your stereotypes? We don't say "bathroom" because we're consciously trying to avoid using the foreignism, "toilet". We say it because that's what it's called in our language. Who knows which came first, our languages have been diverging for 400 years. In any case, for us, the toilet is
not the room, it is the actual physical object -- by the same token, we don't say "go to the sink" if we need to wash our hands. Calling the
room a toilet isn't merely "disgusting", it's also
improper use of the language and sounds strange to our ears. The only alternative in our language to referring to the room would be to refer to the
act occurring in the bathroom, (e.g., I need to take a shower, wash my hands, towel off, etc), which, if the object is a toilet, I should hope would be considered at best crude even in "enlightened" Europe.
