I knew that Bill Maher decided to publicly mock breastfeeding mothers, but, not being one myself, I wasn’t aware of Facebook and MySpace deciding that such photos were obscene until I took a look at this post by David over at It’s Not A Lecture.

It seems like everybody’s out for the breasts these days and not in a good way.

The message that’s being sent is clear and it’s not a good one — breasts in their natural state must not be seen in public, but breasts for entertainment, especially “enhanced” ones — AWESOME!

So the issue that’s been unspoken for years is finally out there — men’s entertainment vs. the health of women and children. Boob jobs vs. natural mammaries.

The occasional inadvertent “wardrobe malfunction” brings a half million dollar fine. On the flip side, who knows how much the photographers of Britney’s formerly private parts got paid to share them with us.

As adults, we can sift through the hypocrisy and make our own judgments. We can ignore the photos or choose one social networking site over another. But as for our children, especially our daughters, the messages that are being sent in the media they frequent are the worst possible.

If I tried to post the image above of Picasso’s work Maternite on Facebook, it would get removed. Wasn’t there a time when images of breastfeeding mothers were celebrated?

Clearly those days are gone, and we’ll be stuck with images like this:

as “art” unless we do something about it.

Boycott, anyone?