Breasts are one of the most culturally loaded body parts. The media bombards us with images and headlines about breasts: Breast augmentation, breast reductions, breast cancer, public breastfeeding, bra-burning, free the nip! The cultural obsession with breasts stems from their complex and contradictory status. Breasts are both maternal and sexual; a symbol of both nourishment and seduction.

Breastfeeding is one of the more controversial issues in the politics surrounding the female body. Cindy A. Sterns writes, “To the extent that breastfeeding occurs in the presence of others and/or symbolizes good mothering, it is also a visual performance of mothering with the maternal body at center stage” (Sterns 308-309). This performance is complicated by the American cultural view that breasts are objects of sexuality. The “good maternal body” according to Sterns, is not supposed to be simultaneously sexual. (Sterns 309) Iris Marion Young notes this contradiction in her book, Breasted Experience, “Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality” (132-133). This scandal causes the American public a tremendous amount of discomfort and anxiety.

Anxiety about breastfeeding was not always present in the American ideology. High infant mortality rates caused maternal breastfeeding to be considered a high priority. Medical journals and midwives alike were praising the benefits of breastfeeding. Nora Doyle in her article, "The Highest Pleasure of Which Woman's Nature is Capable": Breast-feeding and the Sentimental Maternal Ideal in America, 1750-1860," argues that maternal advice manuals began to shift rhetorically in the 19th century, their language about breastfeeding emphasizing "maternal pleasure and the affective bonds of motherhood" rather than simply acknowledging the health benefits. In 1809 Mary Watkins published a treatise on motherhood that said any woman who forgoes breastfeeding would be "deprived of a very high source of pleasure, of the most tender and endearing kind." According to Doyle, this type of language help to shape the sentimental ideal of motherhood that dominated the 19th century. Breastfeeding became inextricably linked with being a good mother, excluding women who were unable to breastfeed. These manuals on motherhood largely targeted middle class women.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, doctors recommended women who chose not to or could not breastfeed should turn to wet nurses. Jacqueline H. Wolf, in her article "'Mercenary Hirelings" or "A Great Blessing"?: Doctors' and Mothers' Conflicted Perceptions of Wet Nurses and the Ramifications for Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1871-1961"writes that the next best thing to breast milk was cows milk," however a doctor notes, "The difference between mother's milk and cow's milk is abysmal. The first is at once a perfect food and an efficient medicine while the second is a very unsatisfactory food and no medicine at all." Thus, women sought out sources of human milk.

There is a fraught racial history of wet-nursing. Slave women and later, wage earning black women were often required to act as wet-nurses. They were expected to sleep in the house in order to be readily available for feedings. This often resulted in the death of the wet-nurses' own children. Because the wet nurses could rarely leave the house, their babies often starved to death. In "More Slavery in the South By a Negro Nurse", a slave woman shares her account of her experience as a wet-nurse. She writes, "Perhaps a million of us are introduced daily to the privacy of a million chambers throughout the South, and hold in our arms a million white children, thousands of whom, as infants, are suckled at our breasts--during my lifetime I myself have served as 'wet nurse' to more than a dozen white children." Unwed mothers also often turned to nursing as a means of survival. Upper class women were uncomfortable with the class difference between themselves and their wet-nurses causing tense relations between wet-nurses and mothers.  

Wet nursing was almost entirely eradicated with the invention of the bottle and formula feeding in 1910, which largely displaced the breast. Claude S. Fischer writes in his Breastfeeding History that bottle feeding arrived with a shift in maternal priorities. Bottle-feeding was convenient, and as more mothers found roles outside the home, this became a necessity. With the popularity of the bottle, breastfeeding became old fashioned and outmoded. By the mid-20th century an estimated 80 percent of women were bottle-feeding their babies. 

The 21st century has exhibited a shift in the other direction. Almost 75 percent of women breastfeed today. While women are no less busy than the mid-20th century, the concern with what is "natural" prompted a return to breastfeeding. And yet despite the regained popularity of breastfeeding, the comfort level with the process has changed significantly. 

Joey Salads, a YouTube star who specializes in pranks and social experiments made a video highlighting the anxiety surrounding public breastfeeding. He asks one woman in a sexy top to sit on a bench at the mall, and another woman, who is breastfeeding her baby to do the same. No one says anything to the women dressed in a sexy top, however the woman who is breastfeeding endures several people telling her how “disgusting” breastfeeding is. A woman who is sexy does not elicit a negative reaction, while breastfeeding, the act of a woman feeing her child, does. This unlikely reaction can be explained by Young’s theory: A breastfeeding woman embodies the maternal and the sexual. That makes people uncomfortable.

Ivette Evans, a photographer, has written a book, Breastfeeding Goddesses that attempts to normalize breastfeeding. She photographs women in beautiful settings, breastfeeding their babies. She writes in her description of the book, “Breastfeeding can be messy, uncomfortable, and even painful at times, but the mother’s inner consciousness tells another story. The images in this book depict the way each woman feels while nursing: pure, beautiful, saintly, celestial.” Evans does not ignore the sexual connotations connected with breastfeeding; rather she embraces them, producing images that are both alluring and maternal.

American fascination with the breast is also evidenced in the activism surrounding breast cancer. More money has been raised for breast cancer than any other disease. This is fascinating, especially since breast cancer is not the most deadly form of cancer in the US; lung cancer is (Erickson 206). Lisa Belkin in the New York Times Sunday Magazine argues that public concern with breast cancer has to do with the implications of the disease itself. She writes, "To women, it is not only about mortality, it is about intimacy, femininity, sexuality and sense of self. Since the single greatest risk factor for breast cancer is not family history or environment or behavior, but simply being female, it makes women feel as if they are under attack just because they are women." While the breast in American culture may causes confusion and anxiety as both a sexual and maternal object, America’s focus on the fight against breast cancer reveals the importance of the breast as a symbol of femininity.

Conceptions about the breast have been inextricably linked with the feminist movement. At the 1968 Miss America Pageant, a group of feminist protested the event, throwing bras, girdles, and other objects they deemed patriarchal into a freedom trash can. They planned to burn these items, but due to fire regulations, they were not allowed to (Fields 272). Media outlets still refereed to these women as “bra-burners” a moniker that has survived through the twenty-first century. This association of feminism with undergarments is not coincidental. Undergarments sexualize and shape the female body (Fields 273). In this gallery, I include a visual history of the bra that shows the various social and physical effects of undergarments.

In 2014, Lina Esco released her film Free the Nipple. The film focuses on a group of female activists that aim to raise awareness about gender equality by highlighting the acceptability of male toplessness and the transgressive connotations surrounding female toplessness. The film sparked a social media movement, the #freethenipple hashtag going viral. (Tsjeng) Celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Scout Willis, and Cara Delevigne began sharing picture on Instagram and Twitter supporting the movement. Famously, Instagram censored these images causing a controversy (Friedman). The conversation about the breast in relation to gender equality is still an ongoing process due to America's complex relationship the breast. 

This gallery aims to present various entry points into the complex, contradictory, and controversial conversations surrounding the breast in America. These objects range from nineteenth century newspaper articles to YouTube videos.