Some of you may have heard about the recent controversy involving the online social site Facebook and its refusal to post photos of members breastfeeding their babies. The reason given has to do with the site's overall policy on nudity. Apparently, some women who nurse their babies have a need to not only let it all hang out when they do, but to broadcast it to those who visit their Facebook page.
Who ARE these women, and why are they spending so much energy protesting something that is, in my opinion, a non-issue.
Full disclosure (no pun intended): I am currently breastfeeding my fourth child who is now 16 mos. old. My other three nursed to the ripe old ages of 22 mos., 2 years, and 2 years 3 mos, respectively.
Do the math. That's a whole lotta nursing and not once have I felt compelled to stay home to do it. I've nursed in church, in the tax appraiser's office, the dentist's office, the library, a wedding, a funeral home, a funeral service, numerous restaurants, parks, homeschool association meetings and field trips, an amusement park, grocery stores, malls, and once in front of a fireworks stand on a road through East Texas.
I have never exposed myself in public. That's right, no nipple, no areola, no cleavage, no nothing. And I did all this without those fancy so-called nursing tops with slits or flaps or whatever other folderol supposedly designed to keep mom discreet and baby happy. And for the record, I'm not what you'd call minimally endowed, so exposure prevention has been more of a challenge for me than it might be otherwise.
So why, I ask, do some women have a need to shout to the world, "Hey, look at me, I'm nursing a baby!" And who are the woman who offend others by exposing their breasts in the process?
Just get on with it, ladies. If it's truly no big deal (and it truly is NO big deal) and if it's supremely natural (and it IS supremely natural), and if it's merely exercising the purpose for which breasts were made (yep, that, too) then why are these Facebook mothers making such a fuss about it? Why do they even want their nursing photos online?
Seems to me that things that are no big deal don't deserve the sort of publicity that this is receiving. Regular everyday events like putting gas in the car, going to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, doing laundry, shaving our legs, and whatnot are really quite unremarkable events.
If we want to normalize breastfeeding in our upside-down and backwards culture that still sees women's breasts as nothing but sexual objects then the first step would be to simply nurse our babies in peace and quiet, confidently, regularly and discreetly but with no sense of shame, and leave the time and energy for protesting to things that oughta be protested.
Some people will do anything to pick a fight and the moms of Facebook with their demand to be seen nursing their babies are a case in point.
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