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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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I read once that it had more to do with not seeing wealthy women's nipples. For example wealthy women would hire a wet nurse to breast feed their babies. It was a way to show off wealth and social standing. So the hired help in the form of a wet nurse could show her breasts, but her wealthy employer would not because its beneath her.
So not showing breasts, even for the purpose of breast feeding became affiliated with wealth and power, whereas the inverse was true, showing breasts meant you could not afford to keep them covered.
And that's not even including the influence of brothels and prostitution.
Let that cook for however many hundreds of years, mix in religion and you get whatever the fuck we have now.
It was an interesting theory and seemed to make sense to me. I'll have to try to find the article later. I read it maybe 10 years ago so it might take some looking.
The Wikipedia article says historically wet nursing was available to all social classes, so that doesn't really jive.
I wanted to find that article before I responded to you, but like I said it read about 10 years ago and not having much luck finding it.
But yes wetnurses were available to all women because not all women can produce breast milk.
If one poor woman's baby is starving it was not uncommon for a friend or sister to fulfill that role to help them. Women were pregnant more frequently due to no birthcontrol. So a woman lactating was more common. However they weren't hiring a wet nurse in the same way the wealthy were, and if a poor woman could feed her baby she would. A rich woman(almost) always hired a wet nurse regardless of her ability to produce milk.