Lactivism
Now here's a good word. Though I've heard of the Starbucks scandal that inspired www.nurseatstarbucks.com and encountered many a weird look while nursing in the U.S., I had never heard the word "Lactivism" until yesterday while at a going-away-party for a friend. About two-thirds of the women present were lactating, which obviously means we were discussing breasts, breast milk, nipple shape, nipple elasticity, breast size before and after nursing, etc., etc. Then someone started talking about lactivism, and of course we all bought the idea and immediately joined the ranks of lactivists around the world (though only in the U.S. would this be an issue anyways).
It was an appropriate brunch conversation to have after my walk there, when I noticed that I had two circle-shaped milk stains on my shirt - one over each breast. I thought of running home to change, but then I decided that a.) no one where I was going would notice, and if they did, they wouldn't care because they probably had them too and b.) the number of lactating women in this district must be simply staggering. If we were to have a city-wide crisis and there was suddenly no food, then we'd all be in good shape for awhile. But I am sure that those of you reading don't want to think about things like that.
For those of you who are curious, however, I will venture off on one more little tangent in that direction. I once read a news story about a group of people trying to get from Mexico to Florida in a boat. Something went wrong and they were lost at sea for a very long time. No one died, however, because one woman on the boat was lactating and gave everyone a couple of drops each day. Good vitamins, I tell you.
Anyways, back to Lactivism. I found this article in the New York Times;
'Lactivists' Taking Their Cause, and Their Babies, to the Streets
By AMY HARMON
Published: June 7, 2005
The calls for a "nurse-in" began on the Internet mere moments after Barbara Walters uttered a negative remark about public breast-feeding on her ABC talk show, "The View."
The protest, inspired by similar events organized by a growing group of unlikely activists nationwide in the last year, brought about 200 women to ABC's headquarters yesterday. They stood nursing their babies in the unmistakably public venue of Columbus Avenue and West 67th Street. They held signs reading, "Shame on View," and "Babies are born to be breastfed." Ms. Walters, who remarked a few weeks ago on the show that the sight of a woman breast-feeding on an airplane next to her had made her uncomfortable, said through a spokesman that "it was a particular circumstance and we are surprised that it warrants a protest."
But the rally at ABC is only the most visible example of a recent wave of "lactivism." Prodded by mothers who say they are tired of being asked to adjourn to the bathroom while nursing in a public space, six states have recently passed laws giving a woman the right to breast-feed wherever she "is otherwise authorized to be."
An Ohio bill saying a woman is "entitled to breast-feed her baby in any place of public accommodation" passed last month over the objection of one representative who wanted to exempt businesses from liability for accidents caused by "spillage."
"I really don't know any women who 'spill,' " said Lisa Wilson, the mother of a 4-month-old in Fairview Park, Ohio, who helped organize a nurse-in at a local deli to support the bill.
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, held a nurse-in on the Capitol's Cannon Terrace last month as she reintroduced federal legislation to amend the Civil Rights Act to protect women from employment discrimination for using a breast pump or feeding their babies during breaks.
Nursing mothers are pressuring businesses, too. Burger King has declared that mothers are welcome to nurse. Starbucks - the target of a letter-writing campaign that asked "What's more natural than coffee and milk?" - has, too.
The moves come as the number of American mothers who choose to breast-feed has climbed to about 70 percent in 2003, the last year for which information was available, from about 50 percent in 1990. Many otherwise apolitical women say they found themselves unexpectedly transformed into lactivists after fielding a nasty comment or being asked to stop nursing in public.
"We're all told that breast-feeding is the best, healthiest thing you can do for your child," said Lorig Charkoudian, 32, who started the Web site www.nurseatstarbucks.com after being asked to use the bathroom to nurse at her local Starbucks. "And then we're made to feel ashamed to do it without being locked in our homes."
But Ms. Walters is not the only one who might prefer not to be confronted with breast-feeding at close quarters. Legislators, business owners and family members are debating how to reconcile the health benefits of nursing with the prevailing cultural squeamishness toward nursing in public.
In interviews and Internet discussions, hundreds of women recount being asked to stop nursing in public spots, including the Children's Museum in Huntsville, Ala.; a knitting store in the East Village; a Radisson Hotel lobby in Virginia; a public bus in Los Angeles; and a city commission meeting in Miami Beach.
"It's nothing against breast-feeding, it's about exposing yourself for people who don't want to see it," said Scotty Stroup, the owner of a restaurant in Round Rock, Tex., where a nursing mother was refused service last fall.
But the new generation of lactivists compare discomfort with seeing breast-feeding in public to discomfort with seeing interracial couples or gays holding hands.
"It's like any other prejudice. They have to get used to it," said Rebecca Odes, co-founder of "The New Mom" blog, who attended the ABC protest. "People don't want to see it because they feel uncomfortable with it, and they feel uncomfortable with it because they don't see it."
Whether to breast-feed in public, many nursing mothers say, is not simply a matter of being respectful of another person's sensibilities. They cite research by the Food and Drug Administration showing that the degree of embarrassment a mother feels about breast-feeding plays a bigger role in determining whether she is likely to do so than household income, length of maternity leave or employment status.
The American Academy of Pediatrics urges women to feed their babies only breast milk for the first six months, and continue breast-feeding for at least an additional six months. If its recommendations were followed, the group estimates that Americans would save $3.6 billion in annual health care costs because breast-fed babies tend to require less medical care. But while more women are breast-feeding for the first few weeks, fewer than one-third are still nursing after six months. Some doctors attribute the decline to self-consciousness and the difficulties of finding spaces where nursing seems acceptable.
"To many mothers, breast-feeding runs up against sexual attitudes toward the breast," said Dr. Lawrence Gartner, who leads the academy's research on breast-feeding. "That reduces the prevalence of breast-feeding, which is a bad situation because duration of breast-feeding is an important factor in children's health."
Even mothers who are committed to nursing say they are shaken when confronted with the hostility or consternation of strangers observing them.
"People make you feel like you're doing something dirty, almost," said Rene Harrell, 26, of Chantilly, Va., who said she was recently asked to leave a Delta airport lounge in Atlanta as she nursed her 8-month-old son, Elijah.
Once on the plane awaiting takeoff, she said, a man across the aisle complained loudly about her into his cellphone as she continued to nurse.
The scene, said Ms. Harrell, reminded her of the one Ms. Walters described, which she read about on an Internet discussion board.
"It's just, where would you like me to go so I don't bother you by being here?" Ms. Harrell said. "He was not on solids. It's not like I could have given him something to tide him over. He needed to eat."
Marilyn Yalom, the author of "History of the Breast," says Americans' views of the breast has changed over time, and could change again. More than in other countries, she said, the breast is seen here as a sexual object.
"We live in a very mechanistic society and almost anything that doesn't come out of a package is somehow suspect," Ms. Yalom said. "So milk that comes out of a real human breast, we're not very comfortable with, it brings us too close to our animal nature."
The nurse-in at ABC was perhaps the largest of the dozen or so held around the country over the last year.
"I have the right to breast-feed my child without getting nasty looks," said Patricia Lechuga, 32, who said she watches "The View" every morning while breast-feeding her 10-month-old daughter before her nap. "So many people watch the show, I was just so disappointed in them."
On the Upper West Side, it was hard to find anyone to disagree with her.
"Are there people who are against breast-feeding?" asked Rich Flisher, 39, a neighborhood resident passing by the nurse-in. "I do prefer it if you're discreet, but hey, I'm behind you. Go go go."
Crazy stuff, eh? But here is one area in which I truly appreciate Germany. I have never had a problem or felt weird about breastfeeding in public here. In the states, however (and my German friends are always shocked by this), it always seems to be an issue. Feeling like you have to go into hiding to nurse your child is incredibly degrading. I repect that some people are just not into seeing big breasts hanging out of a woman's shirt, but, hey, its nature man. We gotta feed our babies. And if a woman is being discreet and not letting her breasts actually get in anyone's way, then what's the problem here?
A little side note to the nursing mamas though: Don't forget to put your breast away after nursing. Nursing women are often so oblivious to any sexualization of their breasts that this is actually easier to do than one would think. I was once at a dinner party when my little one was only a couple of weeks old. Now this is a time of life when I think one's breasts are actually bigger than one's brain. Thank god it doesn't stay that way (or does it?). Anyways, I was nursing my little miracle on the couch and after she was finished I held her up high and oogled at her for a minute before striking up a conversation with a man on the adjacent couch. Well, unbenownst to me, my breast was staring the poor guy right in the face. I was just having a conversation, very polite and interested, until I noticed what he noticed. I acted all calm and cool like it happens all the time, and tucked my little friend back into her hiding place.
It was an appropriate brunch conversation to have after my walk there, when I noticed that I had two circle-shaped milk stains on my shirt - one over each breast. I thought of running home to change, but then I decided that a.) no one where I was going would notice, and if they did, they wouldn't care because they probably had them too and b.) the number of lactating women in this district must be simply staggering. If we were to have a city-wide crisis and there was suddenly no food, then we'd all be in good shape for awhile. But I am sure that those of you reading don't want to think about things like that.
For those of you who are curious, however, I will venture off on one more little tangent in that direction. I once read a news story about a group of people trying to get from Mexico to Florida in a boat. Something went wrong and they were lost at sea for a very long time. No one died, however, because one woman on the boat was lactating and gave everyone a couple of drops each day. Good vitamins, I tell you.
Anyways, back to Lactivism. I found this article in the New York Times;
'Lactivists' Taking Their Cause, and Their Babies, to the Streets
By AMY HARMON
Published: June 7, 2005
The calls for a "nurse-in" began on the Internet mere moments after Barbara Walters uttered a negative remark about public breast-feeding on her ABC talk show, "The View."
The protest, inspired by similar events organized by a growing group of unlikely activists nationwide in the last year, brought about 200 women to ABC's headquarters yesterday. They stood nursing their babies in the unmistakably public venue of Columbus Avenue and West 67th Street. They held signs reading, "Shame on View," and "Babies are born to be breastfed." Ms. Walters, who remarked a few weeks ago on the show that the sight of a woman breast-feeding on an airplane next to her had made her uncomfortable, said through a spokesman that "it was a particular circumstance and we are surprised that it warrants a protest."
But the rally at ABC is only the most visible example of a recent wave of "lactivism." Prodded by mothers who say they are tired of being asked to adjourn to the bathroom while nursing in a public space, six states have recently passed laws giving a woman the right to breast-feed wherever she "is otherwise authorized to be."
An Ohio bill saying a woman is "entitled to breast-feed her baby in any place of public accommodation" passed last month over the objection of one representative who wanted to exempt businesses from liability for accidents caused by "spillage."
"I really don't know any women who 'spill,' " said Lisa Wilson, the mother of a 4-month-old in Fairview Park, Ohio, who helped organize a nurse-in at a local deli to support the bill.
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, held a nurse-in on the Capitol's Cannon Terrace last month as she reintroduced federal legislation to amend the Civil Rights Act to protect women from employment discrimination for using a breast pump or feeding their babies during breaks.
Nursing mothers are pressuring businesses, too. Burger King has declared that mothers are welcome to nurse. Starbucks - the target of a letter-writing campaign that asked "What's more natural than coffee and milk?" - has, too.
The moves come as the number of American mothers who choose to breast-feed has climbed to about 70 percent in 2003, the last year for which information was available, from about 50 percent in 1990. Many otherwise apolitical women say they found themselves unexpectedly transformed into lactivists after fielding a nasty comment or being asked to stop nursing in public.
"We're all told that breast-feeding is the best, healthiest thing you can do for your child," said Lorig Charkoudian, 32, who started the Web site www.nurseatstarbucks.com after being asked to use the bathroom to nurse at her local Starbucks. "And then we're made to feel ashamed to do it without being locked in our homes."
But Ms. Walters is not the only one who might prefer not to be confronted with breast-feeding at close quarters. Legislators, business owners and family members are debating how to reconcile the health benefits of nursing with the prevailing cultural squeamishness toward nursing in public.
In interviews and Internet discussions, hundreds of women recount being asked to stop nursing in public spots, including the Children's Museum in Huntsville, Ala.; a knitting store in the East Village; a Radisson Hotel lobby in Virginia; a public bus in Los Angeles; and a city commission meeting in Miami Beach.
"It's nothing against breast-feeding, it's about exposing yourself for people who don't want to see it," said Scotty Stroup, the owner of a restaurant in Round Rock, Tex., where a nursing mother was refused service last fall.
But the new generation of lactivists compare discomfort with seeing breast-feeding in public to discomfort with seeing interracial couples or gays holding hands.
"It's like any other prejudice. They have to get used to it," said Rebecca Odes, co-founder of "The New Mom" blog, who attended the ABC protest. "People don't want to see it because they feel uncomfortable with it, and they feel uncomfortable with it because they don't see it."
Whether to breast-feed in public, many nursing mothers say, is not simply a matter of being respectful of another person's sensibilities. They cite research by the Food and Drug Administration showing that the degree of embarrassment a mother feels about breast-feeding plays a bigger role in determining whether she is likely to do so than household income, length of maternity leave or employment status.
The American Academy of Pediatrics urges women to feed their babies only breast milk for the first six months, and continue breast-feeding for at least an additional six months. If its recommendations were followed, the group estimates that Americans would save $3.6 billion in annual health care costs because breast-fed babies tend to require less medical care. But while more women are breast-feeding for the first few weeks, fewer than one-third are still nursing after six months. Some doctors attribute the decline to self-consciousness and the difficulties of finding spaces where nursing seems acceptable.
"To many mothers, breast-feeding runs up against sexual attitudes toward the breast," said Dr. Lawrence Gartner, who leads the academy's research on breast-feeding. "That reduces the prevalence of breast-feeding, which is a bad situation because duration of breast-feeding is an important factor in children's health."
Even mothers who are committed to nursing say they are shaken when confronted with the hostility or consternation of strangers observing them.
"People make you feel like you're doing something dirty, almost," said Rene Harrell, 26, of Chantilly, Va., who said she was recently asked to leave a Delta airport lounge in Atlanta as she nursed her 8-month-old son, Elijah.
Once on the plane awaiting takeoff, she said, a man across the aisle complained loudly about her into his cellphone as she continued to nurse.
The scene, said Ms. Harrell, reminded her of the one Ms. Walters described, which she read about on an Internet discussion board.
"It's just, where would you like me to go so I don't bother you by being here?" Ms. Harrell said. "He was not on solids. It's not like I could have given him something to tide him over. He needed to eat."
Marilyn Yalom, the author of "History of the Breast," says Americans' views of the breast has changed over time, and could change again. More than in other countries, she said, the breast is seen here as a sexual object.
"We live in a very mechanistic society and almost anything that doesn't come out of a package is somehow suspect," Ms. Yalom said. "So milk that comes out of a real human breast, we're not very comfortable with, it brings us too close to our animal nature."
The nurse-in at ABC was perhaps the largest of the dozen or so held around the country over the last year.
"I have the right to breast-feed my child without getting nasty looks," said Patricia Lechuga, 32, who said she watches "The View" every morning while breast-feeding her 10-month-old daughter before her nap. "So many people watch the show, I was just so disappointed in them."
On the Upper West Side, it was hard to find anyone to disagree with her.
"Are there people who are against breast-feeding?" asked Rich Flisher, 39, a neighborhood resident passing by the nurse-in. "I do prefer it if you're discreet, but hey, I'm behind you. Go go go."
Crazy stuff, eh? But here is one area in which I truly appreciate Germany. I have never had a problem or felt weird about breastfeeding in public here. In the states, however (and my German friends are always shocked by this), it always seems to be an issue. Feeling like you have to go into hiding to nurse your child is incredibly degrading. I repect that some people are just not into seeing big breasts hanging out of a woman's shirt, but, hey, its nature man. We gotta feed our babies. And if a woman is being discreet and not letting her breasts actually get in anyone's way, then what's the problem here?
A little side note to the nursing mamas though: Don't forget to put your breast away after nursing. Nursing women are often so oblivious to any sexualization of their breasts that this is actually easier to do than one would think. I was once at a dinner party when my little one was only a couple of weeks old. Now this is a time of life when I think one's breasts are actually bigger than one's brain. Thank god it doesn't stay that way (or does it?). Anyways, I was nursing my little miracle on the couch and after she was finished I held her up high and oogled at her for a minute before striking up a conversation with a man on the adjacent couch. Well, unbenownst to me, my breast was staring the poor guy right in the face. I was just having a conversation, very polite and interested, until I noticed what he noticed. I acted all calm and cool like it happens all the time, and tucked my little friend back into her hiding place.
posted by mama jens at 9:55 AM
1 Comments:
I'm sure he was probably less than offended.
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