Mummascribbles – Boobs! – Mummascribbles

I don’t think there is anyone that hasn’t seen the latest breastfeeding scandal in the news this week regarding the lady who was asked by a member of staff in Claridges to cover up while she breastfed her 12 week old baby. I’m sure you’ve all seen the photos that accompanied the article – the one where it looked like she was simply cuddling her baby compared with the one where the poor baby was covered in a napkin making it completely obvious that she was breastfeeding. The public outcry it received was once again wonderful as it always is every time this happens.

I breastfed Zach for 6 months and I covered him when we were out or in the company of Dean’s parents or my brother in law. This wasn’t because I was made to feel that I had to, more that Zach wasn’t great at disguising the fact that I was feeding and I didn’t want my boob flopping around while he found a comfortable position. That said, each time I lifted that cover up once he had finished, he was sweating. He would come out boiling hot and I would feel bad for feeling that was the only way I could feed him because of my personal insecurities. I think there was one time that I sat in public with a fellow breastfeeding mummy who was completely comfortable with whipping her boob out at the dinner table because her baby was hungry, and being with her made me do the same when Zach needed feeding. The only other times I didn’t cover myself was when I was with my family in the comfort of one of our homes and Zach ate in comfort because he wasn’t battling underneath a poxy shawl!

So with the knowledge that the poor baby gets very hot under cover and that it’s 2014 and the equality act has been in place for 4 years, I find it incredibly hard to understand why we are constantly seeing these huge establishments ignoring the rights of breastfeeding mothers everywhere and making mothers feel bad for giving their children the best start in life.

Among the positive backlash of such stories, you also get the absolute idiots who go and agree with these establishments and it was one particular comment I came across on Twitter yesterday that riled me up so much that it made me write this piece.

Maria Fowler, former The Only Way is Essex star, the woman who gets her tits out for a living, wrote the following:

“Why is this woman moaning about having to cover up while breastfeeding in Claridges. I think breast feeding should be done descreetly”

Followed by…

“They didn’t exactly throw her out. They asked her to cover up. I hate to see babies sucking on boobs when I am eating. Discretion is best”

SERIOUSLY!!

SERIOUSLY.

It made me so frickin angry. My blood was boiling when I read it. And then someone responded saying how embarrassing he found it when he spoke to a woman who he then realised was breastfeeding.

WHY?

Why is such a natural thing, such an important thing, something that has been happening since mankind existed, made out to be something that is embarrassing? Would these people have liked for their mothers, grandmothers, aunts or wives to have been discriminated against for doing what is best for her child?

Why is it ok for the media to continuously publish photos of slipped nipples, escaped boobs or of Rihanna regularly going out of the front door naked, but it isn’t ok for a lady to breastfeed her baby when she is showing no actual flesh. And so what if she does show a little flesh when the baby latches or unlatches, or simply dozes off and fall off the boob? How is this little bit of flesh any different to the hundreds of naked women we constantly see on television, films, posters, music videos? Please, someone somewhere tell me what the bloody big deal is with breastfeeding? It’s just a boob!

I wonder, had there have been someone sitting in Claridges on the same day as that woman, who happened to be reading one of the many papers that had Madonna’s naked boobs plastered all over it, whether a member of staff would have politely gone over and asked them to kindly look at said boobs under a napkin because they were offending the other customers.

I highly bloody doubt it.

Tags: boobs, breastfeeding, discrimination