Imagine if former chief executive Carly Fiorina had addressed HP stockholders while wearing a filmy negligee. Would that normalize women chief executives? No.
How about if Serena Williams took the court at Wimbledon topless? Would that normalize women in sports? I doubt it.
What if Hillary Clinton chose to campaign in a bra and G-string? Would that normalize women Presidents? Of course not.
[pullquote align=”right” color=””]What if Hillary Clinton chose to campaign in a bra and G-string? Would that normalize women Presidents?[/pullquote]
Each of these stunts would do the opposite. Instead of promoting an image of strength and capability, they’d promote the sexist image of women as flighty and irresponsible.
So how do breastfeeding stunts like Dil Wickremasinghe breastfeeding her son while being interviewed on live TV and Jessica Colletti breastfeeding her toddler and his friend normalize breastfeeding? They don’t. Instead of promoting an image of breastfeeding as an excellent way to nourish a child, perfectly compatible with running corporations, competing in elite athletic events, or becoming President, they promote an image of breastfeeding as a stunt designed to offend as many people as possible.
Don’t tell me that breastfeeding is beautiful and deserves to be visible in public. Sex is beautiful but that doesn’t mean that women (or men) should be having sex during business conferences. Don’t tell me that the female body is beautiful. That doesn’t mean that women should show up for athletic events with menstrual blood running down their legs. Don’t tell me that nature is beautiful. That doesn’t mean that we want to see our politicians urinate on TV.
The photos above have nothing to do with normalizing breastfeeding and everything to do with normalizing exhibitionism.
It’s harder than ever to get the public’s attention by shocking it. Homebirth advocates will tell you that tweeting your homebirth, live-blogging it or even live streaming video of the birth is so 2014. To get attention now you have to perform a birth stunt, like giving birth outdoors in a Alaska in a blizzard, or in an Amazonian stream filled with microscopic parasites.
So it stands to reason that if you want to get attention for breastfeeding, you have to do in someplace unusual or with children other than your own. Breastfeeding while ostensibly performing your job on live TV qualifies as unusual. Breastfeeding a child for whom you provide daycare is unusual. Unusual is what it’s all about when you are a narcissist promoting yourself and your baby (or someone else’s baby) is merely a prop for your exhibitionism.
Wickremasinghe claims to be normalizing breastfeeding for working women, but she’s doing exactly the opposite. Her smug exhibitionism in the face of her co-worker’s obvious discomfort is a betrayal of legions of women (including myself) who have fought for the space, time and right to pump while at high pressure, high profile jobs like medicine, law and business. We’ve spent decades showing that breastfeeding is completely compatible with a career and does not mean flaunting our breasts in the workplace or embarrassing our professional colleagues.
How does Wickremasinghe’s behavior, the behavior of a privileged media celebrity, help her less fortunate sisters who only wish to be able to combine breastfeeding with a blue collar, secretarial or service industry job? It doesn’t. Indeed it harms their chances of convincing employers that breastfeeding and working are fully compatible. It’s hard to imagine a gesture more contemptuous of the “little people” and their real world breastfeeding difficulties than a celebrity pretending to normalize breastfeeding by exploiting her celebrity status on air.
Colletti claims to be normalizing breastfeeding, but she’s doing exactly the opposite. Her smug exhibitionism in the face of at least one of the toddlers looking anything but happy at being used as a prop is a betrayal of the legions of women who have fought for the right for women to breastfeed discreetly anytime and anyplace where our babies are hungry. We’ve spent decades showing that breastfeeding is about nourishing our babies, not flaunting our breasts in public or using public breastfeeding to produce shock and distaste.
How does Colletti’s behavior help normalize breastfeeding, public or otherwise. It doesn’t. It makes breastfeeding look like the choice of crazy, breast-baring self-promoters, not loving mothers who merely want to nourish their babies in the way they think is best anytime or anyplace where those babies need to eat. It’s hard to imagine a gesture more contemptuous to women who struggle for the right to breastfeed discreetly in public than an exhibitionist pretending to normalize breastfeeding by posting pictures of herself breastfeeding another woman’s child.
Breastfeeding stunts don’t normalize breastfeeding; they normalize exhibitionism. But then that was the point all along.
