28 January 2009

Eye-catching campaign promotes public breastfeeding


This is quite possibly the coolest breastfeeding campaign I've seen in a long time. The Marin Breastfeeding Coalition (MBC) is putting up life-size cardboard cutouts of women breastfeeding around the North Bay in order to promote and encourage the acceptance of mothers feeding their babies in public. Each of the cut-outs has a sign that reads, "When breastfeeding is accepted, it won’t be noticed."

Now, I think this is a fantastic way to draw attention to the benefits of breast milk. On the other hand, the statement on the sign is a little problematic for me. I can appreciate that the MBC is trying to make people give a second-thought to preconceptions about public breastfeeding. But will it ever be possible to stop people from gawking at exposed breasts? Can we ever subtract associations with sex from breasts? Or can we reasonably expect that other people will not be genuinely interested and curious to look at a woman feeding a child?

Sources:
http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/hh/main/hs/CHPS/BF/MBC.cfm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28811794/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There *are* no exposed breasts in those pictures! Breastfeeding in public does not have to mean exposing your breast to the world.

 
Creative Commons License
The Baby Bump Project by Meredith Nash is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.