Model Nicole Trunfio Breastfeeds Son on Elle Australia Cover: I Don’t Want to Be Controversial

Australian model Nicole Trunfio is no stranger to high-fashion magazine covers. But she’s sharing the spotlight on her latest one for Elle Australia with an industry newbie — her four-month-old son, Zion Clark! The June issue celebrates the 29-year-old’s foray into motherhood with gorgeous shots of the pair, including a subscriber cover picturing Trunfio breastfeeding, which (not surprisingly) is causing a stir on the Internet.

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“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,” Elle‘s editor-in-chief Justine Cullen says. “It was a completely natural moment that resulted in a powerful picture.” (And that’s not all that happened at the shoot. According to the mag, Zion answered “nature’s call on the selection of international and local designer” clothes while on set.)

Trunfio spoke out about the strong photo, explaining she hopes to empower moms.

“There is nothing more powerful and beautiful than motherhood,” she shared on Instagram. “The last thing I want to do is be controversial, so please take this for what it is, let us #normalizebreastfeeding there is nothing worse than a mother that is judged for feeding her hungry child in public. #weareonlyhuman 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. Thank you to ELLE for being so bold and making such an encouraging, positive and healthy statement. #womenunite.”

This isn’t the first breastfeeding cover to spark a debate. TIME famously incited controversy with its May 2012 cover showing a woman breastfeeding her 3-year-old son.

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More recently, Gisele Bündchen posted a snap of herself breastfeeding her daughter while getting glam, and Olivia Wilde posed for Glamour while feeding her son Otis (it ran inside the magazine, not on the cover).

“You can be someone who is at once maternal and professional and sexy and self-possessed. [But] I mean, I certainly don’t really look like that when I’m [typically] breastfeeding. And there’s usually a diaper involved,” Wilde told the magazine.

What do you think of Trunfio’s Elle cover? Powerful? TMI? Sound off below.

–Brittany Talarico

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