Mayim Bialik is ready to break the stigma around nipples for women and men.
“It’s a funny word, and it’s also a very serious word, and it’s a completely legitimate part of our anatomy, both male and female,” Bialik exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the release of her Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory documentary. “But I do think that especially in the community that [director Justin Johnson is] showing, which is a very conservative, Midwestern, and traditional family.”
Bialik served as an executive producer on Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory which follows Johnson’s conservative parents, John and Randi after they secretly started a prosthetic nipple company. The pair got the idea to get involved in the nipple industry after Randi was diagnosed with breast cancer and ultimately decided to keep it secret, including from their kids, at first.
While John and Randi’s business was initially kept on the down low, they ultimately decided to go public which Bialik found admirable.
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“I don’t think, and I think that the documentary discusses this, I don’t think that there’s any notion that nipples should not be talked about, and especially Randi, who’s a nurse, she talks about it’s part of the anatomy. Men have them too,” she told Us. “We need to have comfort talking about it. And the fact is, people should be uncomfortable with the fact that we’re not comfortable talking about it. And so that is one of the things that this film is really addressing.”
While breast cancer is mainly seen as a women’s health issue, men can be diagnosed with breast cancer as well. John and Randi currently make prosthetics for both women and men.
With the documentary dropping, Bialik is hopeful that the conversation towards breast cancer and early detection screenings become less taboo subjects for all gender identities. Bialik admitted that the title of the doc “shocked” her at first. Despite being “startled,” she ultimately came around after being “open minded enough to learn more.”
“The themes of this documentary are a lot about what pulls us apart as a family and what keeps us together,” she told Us. “I think especially in the times we’re all living in now, we can use any examples of unity. So that really was touching to me.”
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Bialik added she was able to relate to the documentary’s message even more since she is a big advocate for women’s health in addition to being a certified lactation educator counselor.
“I’ve never seen breast cancer dealt with quite this way, and it’s just such a beautiful collection of footage,” she gushed. “The documentarian was filming his family since he was quite young, and his dad was always filming them. So there’s so much footage of learning about this couple, and in particular, the mom, Randi, so it was just a breast cancer story unlike any I’ve ever heard.”
Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory is now available to watch by Video on Demand.
With reporting by Sarah Jones
