It’s Not That Our Milk Engorged Breasts Aren’t ‘Sexy’ – We Just Don’t Appreciate You Using Them For Your Creepy Dating Website

On Monday, a new billboard was released on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles for a website that’s called Cougar Life. This website is for older women to connect with younger men interested in dating them, and what better way to illustrate the beginning of a romantic relationship with what you hope will be your life-partner than by using a photograph of a mom breastfeeding an infant. Because older women are moms! BOOBS! MILFs! BOOBS!

To make matters worse, the headline to the billboard reads “Jealous?”

Now, I suppose whatever brilliant mind conceived (See what I did thaaaaar?) this flash of advertising genius (Yes, I know, I have sarcasm dripping down my chin) thought that dudes who wanna date older ladies would be jealous of the idea of a newborn suckling at his mama’s teat (This whole concept makes me wanna talk like some old-timey farmer) and would sign up for this wonderful dating service that would connect him to such a woman. But the word “jealous” in itself is sort of unintentionally funny, because as any mom with a pair of flesh-toned nursing pads shoved in her utilitarian white nursing bra can tell you, there ain’t a whole hell of a lot to be jealous of. Jealous of….. what?

Our engorged breasts that start leaking every time we hear our newborn cry or we are stuck in traffic and three minutes late to a feeding?

Jealous of the fabulous chance that we may get mastitis at any moment?

Jealous of the fact that when we are trying to feed our baby in public some pinchy-faced lady is going to give us the stink eye or some leering dude is going to spend an extra minute gawking at us giving our baby lunch?

Or jealous of the fact that to this day so many people still view something as normal and nonsexual as feeding a baby as a sexual act?

Dudes who wanna register at  the Cougar Life dating service are totes jealous of breastfeeding babies because they want some of that hot milk action that includes a lot of moms being exhausted while they are nursing and demanding gigantic glasses of ice water and DVR’d episodes of Scandal to watch while they are doing it. My apologies to all the nursing fetishists out there, but the act of breastfeeding just isn’t that sexy. The people who thought up this Cougar Life breastfeeding billboard have obviously never been around a nursing mom in an utter panic because her breasts are engorged and her milk flow is coming out too fast and her baby is almost choking while she is trying to feed him. The Cougar Life breastfeeding billboard people have never been with a mom in tears at her pediatricians office when her doctor tells her she isn’t producing enough and she should think about supplementing with formula. The Cougar Life breastfeeding billboard people have never been around a new mother with an infant with a ferocious latch-on who is making her nipples bleed. And I’m pretty sure the Cougar life breastfeeding billboard people have obviously never been to a La Leche league meeting.

That being said, moms are hot! They are! And after giving birth a lot of moms feel sexy. There is something about having a baby that in some cases sort of connects you to the feminine aspects of your being and at times you feel sexy. This is not to disparage women who never have children or women who adopt or women who are infertile, and in this case I’m just talking about the sexuality aspects of women who have given birth. I know for me that becoming a mom made me feel sexy. My breasts looked fantastic. They did what they were supposed to do in this case, which was feed my babies, but they also looked really good in low-cut blouses. For me it was just an aesthetic thing, because while nursing my breasts were never used for “sexual purposes” because they leaked almost constantly and it was uncomfortable and messy and nothing turns a new mom off more than messes because between a baby that needs changing constantly and a house that is gathering dust because breastfeeding can be a full-time job, well, another mess just isn’t that hot.

I get that some men (and women)  find the idea of a lactating women sexy. There are thousands of porno movies devoted to just this topic, with titles like MILFs I’d Like To Milk and Dairy Farm Girls (See? there’s that farm thing again) but what’s so stupid and offensive about this billboard is that is takes the nonsexual act of feeding a baby and appropriates it to hooking up on a dating website. And it further sexualizes the nonsexual act of breastfeeding by blurring out the image of the breast being used to nurse the infant. I may be the only person who finds this billboard stupid and lame, because according to The Daily Mail:

But the advertisement seems to have appealed to some spectators. Registrations for CougarLife.com, which boasts more than four million members, have already seen a sharp increase.