Usborne publishing has apologised and announced it will revise a puberty guide for boys that states that one of the functions of breasts is “to make the girl look grown-up and attractive”.
Cue much outrage from the usual quarters. However, perhaps they could explain why Homo sapiens is alone among mammals in having permanently enlarged breasts outside of child-bearing? It is, of course, because the male of he species is attracted to them, so Usborne is merely stating a biological fact.
Shrugs.
“This just seemed awful and completely unjustifiable,” Ragnoonanan told the Guardian. “Usborne are serial offenders in peddling gender stereotypes to kids.”
Er, because little girls grow up to be women – with boobies – and little boys grow up to be men who happen to like said boobies.
Reviewers described the book as “sexist”, with one asking: “Surely we can do better than this, in terms of what we teach our sons?”
Such as? Don’t look at the boobies? Or perhaps girls should have them cut off?
But Nicholls said that describing the “other” purpose of breasts – “to make the girl look grown-up and attractive” – was “extremely problematic”, because it “reinforces the sexualisation of breasts which makes girls and women self-conscious”.
They are sexual. And I would suggest that many – most even – women are aware of this and use it to their advantage. And good for them.
A spokesperson from Usborne Publishing told the Guardian: “Usborne apologises for any offence caused by this wording and will be revising the content for reprinting.”
Oh, dear, now you’ve done it. Don’t you realise that appeasement of these people never works? Never justify, never apologise, never explain.
I’m reminded of the aversion therapy scene from Tom Sharpe’s Indecent Exposure in which white South African policeman are shown pictures of black women while having electric shocks applied to their gentians so that they would associate black women with pain and stop lusting after them.
Clearly all young boys will need to be subjected to similar treatment while looking at pictures of breasts.
We are, quite rightly, horrified by stories of shock treatment being applied to gay people to “cure” them, but in the modern world, it is okay to demand that straight men cease to see breasts as sexual objects despite this being the natural response in heterosexual males. To desexualise breasts is contrary to nature. We certainly do not have to teach our sons to view breasts sexually, Mother Nature does that for us.
Tom Sharpe is a lefty fool.
Was a lefty fool. Maybe, but having lived in South Africa during the worst of the Apartheid years, being opposed to the repulsive, racist brutality of the NP did not make you a lefty, simply a human being.
See Desmond Morris’ explanation for the attraction of breasts.
I’ll see your damned singing pig and raise you:
“Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, ‘equality’ is a disaster.”
Boobies are superior. Utterly so.
What’s all this ‘our sons’……..?
There’s my son, your son and everyone else’s son.
The author should stick to deciding what’s best for his son, and leave the rest of us alone. I’ll be the one deciding if I think a book is suitable for my son to read.
Maybe you need some time in a re-education camp?
Titties, erm, boobies, erm, BREASTS, are the human-female equivalent of the Male Peacock’s tail.
As in “COR, lookit them!! … followed by attempts to mate etc.