Celebration or censorship? See ELLE's breastfeeding cover shot

by

Carolyn Robertson

posted in Celebrities

At first glance it seems like a step forward for breastfeeding advocates: A model on the cover of a popular women's fashion magazine openly breastfeeding her baby boy.

The striking image has sparked cries of censorship, though, due to the fact that it never actually made it to the newsstands.

Model and mom Nicole Trunfio graces two separate covers of the June issue of ELLE Australia: The first, sent only to subscribers, shows the 29-year-old holding her four-month-old son Zion to her bare breast. The second, for sale to the general public, shows her fully clothed, her baby sound asleep in her arms.

See the subscribers' cover here. And see the newsstand version here.

Both are gorgeous, but it does spark the obvious question: Why was a separate shot used for the sale version of the issue?

"Shameful that the store issue cover didn't have this image. C'mon Elle!" one disappointed reader wrote on the magazine's Facebook page. "I will never purchase your magazine, a mag pretending to empower women, you have placed us back 20 years by your fear and censorship. How sad you were not brave enough to use the image of a women's body at its most beautiful on all of your mags. Shame on you Elle!" added another.

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Justine Cullen, the editor-in-chief of ELLE Australia, explains that the original intent of the shoot didn't involve breastfeeding at all, saying, "This wasn't a contrived situation. Zion needed a feed, Nicole gave it to him, and when we saw how beautiful they looked we simply moved her onto the set. It was a completely natural moment that resulted in a powerful picture."

Happy with how the photo turned out, they decided to use is as a "beautiful bonus" for their subscribers. "Outside of normalising breastfeeding, it's about not judging women," Cullen adds. "Whether it's for breastfeeding in public, or for not breastfeeding, or not being able to breastfeed."

As for the model at the center of the controversy, Nicole Trunfio wrote on Instagram, "I'm so proud of this cover and for what it's stands for. I obviously don't look like this while I am breastfeeding but this stands for all women out there, whether you breastfeed or not, we gave birth, we are women, we are mothers."

I think it would have been great had ELLE chosen to use the breastfeeding image for both subscribers and newsstands, but the fact that they didn't doesn't seem to me to be a step backwards in the fight to normalize breastfeeding. After all, they could have opted not to use the photo period. Instead, we see a major women's magazine featuring a stunning image of a mother nursing her baby. It may not have reached the grocery stores, but it did reach hundreds of thousands of people, whether subscribers or via ELLE's various social media outlets. And now millions more, thanks to the massive media coverage.

It may not be perfect, but I think we're slowly moving in the right direction.

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What do you think of the ELLE cover controversy?

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Photo: REX USA