Those were the days….
My focus in the earlier post regarding Time Magazine’s borderline kiddy porn cover, showing a young woman with one breast exposed as a three-year-old child simultaneously sucks on it and eyes the camera, was the sleazy professional ethics behind such a flagrant attempt to attract sales through titillation. It never occurred to me that the photograph was real, and that the model had dragooned her own toddler son into the public eye as the world’s most-viewed breast-feeder. It never occurred to me because it seemed obvious that doing this would be spectacularly irresponsible and wrong, indeed a form of child abuse and as well as an abuse of parental power.
Ironically, I was a sucker.
For a model named Jamie Lynn Grumet indeed posed for the photo using her own son as a convenient prop. He could not possibly understand the long-term import of his act, the photograph of it or the publicity it would generate; he could not know that the image of him as a toddler suckling at his attractive mother’s exposed breast would follow him to high school and college, and would make him the subject of “Where Are They Now?” website features and VH1 specials as long as such diversions exists. Never mind: his mother wanted the paycheck, the exposure, and the celebrity, and if it meant her son would be on a psychiatrist’s couch for the rest of his days, well, that’s show biz!
Meanwhile, Time’s editors saw no ethical problem with their inducing a mother to inflict this experience on her son. I doubt that she required much, but nonetheless: the same photo could have been created without actually photographing a recognizable child in the act of sucking on his mother’s, or anyone’s, breast. Since a child could not give informed consent to being used in this provocative manner, there was no excuse for Time’s proactively encouraging Grumet to abuse or exploit her son.
One of the weird experiences in blogging is finding similar opinions and posts from others after you have published your own. Some make you wonder if the writers had been shadowing you; some make you doubt your own opinion because of the identity of the less-than-great mind that on this occasion was “thinking alike.” As I was finishing this post, I discovered the commentary of Dr. Keith Ablow regarding the Time cover, and was struck by how closely his analysis tracked with my own. I had never heard of the good doctor, but he appears to have legitimate credentials, and the fact that he is Fox News’ house expert on psychiatric matters shouldn’t be held too much against him. A portion of his commentary is especially worth noting:
“See, Grumet loves being photographed. And she apparently loves having her son breastfeed. And she loves attention. And she’s happy enough to get naked in front of other people (which there may be nothing wrong with—for her). But that may or may not be the case for her 3-year-old boy, which seems not to have mattered to her—at all. And if his will was bent to hers in order to have him suck his mother’s nipple in front of a photographer and makeup artist and art director and all of America, then it stands to reason that his will may be being bent to hers in all sorts of ways—including protracted breastfeeding.
“The truth is that what Time magazine may have unwittingly captured and been party to was a grotesque form of psychological abuse—the parading into public of an intimate moment (intimate for mother and child) at the sole direction of that child’s mother, who didn’t stop to think that her child may not be able at the age of three to know what he thinks about the whole thing, much less to stop it, if he wanted to.”
Grumet’s son is going to pay a high price for his mother’s fifteen minutes of fame, but I’m sure Time Magazine thinks it is worth it.
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Pointer: Tim Levier
Source:
Graphic: Ed Hird
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
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Well, don’t forget that the photographer visited with and photographed 4 different families. She just was the lucky one to win the cover lottery. (I wonder if she knew the cover was an option…perhaps she thought it would be an “inside” story.)
Great! So now my takeaway is that Time Magazine is precisely four times as unethical as we first thought, and that there are at least three other child abusing model-moms out there whose names we don’t know.
–Dwayne
If you don’t know their names, it’s only due to your desire not to know them. Time has a site, a lightbox of the photographer’s photos from the shoot and a little “behind the scenes” article of the photo shoot. I’m intentionally not linking it, but it is readily available through a search engine.
I don’t really want to know their names, myself, or see the shoot, since I think every person who sees one of those kids is aiding and abusing their abuse. It is an example of your favorite, moral luck, that Grumet is perceived as worse than the rest.because she happened to be chosen, but their existence doesn’t make her any less unethical, either.
The child’s image from the front cover picture has already been superimposed on several medieval pictures of nudes on the web, sucking at their breasts. This mother’s selfish, self centered act will cause problems and harrassment for her son for years to come. These pictures will be on the web forever.
<> There. I hope that’s as close as I ever get to Grumet.
Oh, wow, I guess I did a computer no-no. That was supposed to be “BELLLLCH!” (for a big, stinking, breathy burp) between those signs.
I thought what you posted was subtle and understated!
She claimed in the piece I read to also be a lactation consultant who wanted to start something about extended breastfeeding, attachment parenting and public nursing. She just used the kid to further her own agenda. Sadly, too many parents think political stuff is fodder for their toddlers.
Children are not props. Why is that so hard for people to grasp?
Probably because it’s become so common in the popular culture. Borderline kiddie porn is so common, in fact, that it’s virtually rampant. Nor is it confined to movies, TV and the internet. The only thing that makes this noteworthy is that it shows up here in a previously uncommon venue. I submit that it was only a matter of “Time”.
People, you have no idea what you are talking about. First she is not a model; next she is not getting paid. And you really do not know her or the rest of the story.
Why don’t you enlighten us, Dennis? She is fact IS a mode, by definition, whether she has modeled before or not. Are you suggesting that photo wasn’t posed? Whether or not she was paid is irrelevant to the ethical issue of what she imposed on her child. What could we possibly have to know about her that could justify using her child in this way? What “rest of the story”? Unless you can show me proof that he suffers from a bizarre malady that requires him to be fed breast milk until he is 40 AND has to be displayed to millions while doing so, I can’t imagine what “rest of the story” could change the ethical verdict here.
When someone suggests special knowledge of a matter but reveals nothing to confirm it, my assumption is that the commenter is bluffing. Put up or shut up, please.
The made the three year old look ten. By putting him on the step ladder and clothing him in big boy clothes they made it look really bad. He is only three. That is not too old to be nursing.