I Can See Your Dirty Pillows
Hurry and check out this post over at One-of-Those-Women (thanks Dawn). If my telling you to go look at it isn’t enough to make you do it (don’t you trust me?), here’s a quote from it:
As I signalled in an earlier post, the Male Gaze is problematic for mothers of breastfeeding babies: they use their body in a way that’s culturally challenging: they feed their hungry babies in daylight, not hidden in the shadows! One element I’ve always felt caused more reaction than not, was that mothers in photos of with their breastfeeding babies, always tend to look to the baby, excluding the onlooker. None of these sparky mothers are looking at the baby! Some are looking directly at you, is a powerful and obvious challenge. This is totally not the scenario of weakness and ‘being looked at’ in most glamour and fashion photography (and soft core pornography).
There are lots of interesting things in the post, what with the whole feminists with make-up on?!? (*gasp*) thing, but what I love the most is that she pointed out that these mothers are not looking at the nurslings. There they are, looking fashionable and gorgeous, nursing their babies, and they’re all staring right at you pervy onlookers like, “Yeah, I’m nursing a baby. With my breasts. Grow up you idiot.”
Indeed, I have lots of pictures of me breastfeeding and I could only find one where I’m looking at the camera. It was taken when Lena and Liberty were 5 months old and I’m nursing them both. They’re sleeping with their legs all intertwined under a blanket and I remember looking at them and just getting all giddy and wanting a picture of that moment. It was not too long before that that we were still struggling with all kinds of premie issues and birth defect issues that scared the hell out of us for many months. It had been a whirlwind and everything had finally been a-ok for more than a couple of weeks at a time, and that happiness just washed all over me (thank you oxycontin oxytocin) and I wanted a picture of the preciousness. I remember taking great care to make sure the blanket covered every. bit. of. skin. before Bryan snapped it because I didn’t want the film developer at Frank’s Supermarket (Chesaning’s number one grocer!) to turn me in for indecent photographs.
Yeah, um, well done.
And out in public? For as much as I knew that if anyone ever came up to me and asked me to leave because of breastfeeding my baby/toddler/pre-schooler I would say, “No, thank you,” I was certainly very quick to turn away from any spectator, thus avoiding giving off any bring-it-bitch vibes. My vibe was more of a “Yes, I’m using my dirty pillows out in public, but I don’t want any trouble. Look at how I’m looking lovingly at my baby. Aren’t we precious? Please just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking.” *sigh* That post makes me want to borrow somebody’s nursling (or two) so I can run about breastfeeding in public and staring down the gapers with my new and improved grow-up-you-idiot vibe. I love the internet. I wish it would’ve been alive when I was little.
