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Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Hard to even imagine, isn't it?
Dozens of breast-feeding women plan to descend on the Hirshhorn Museum on Saturday for a "nurse-in" to highlight their federally protected right to nourish their babies in public.
The cause of the grass-roots gathering of lactivists: A Jan. 30 incident involving Noriko Aita, who was nursing her daughter on a bench in the Hirshhorn when she was informed by a Smithsonian security guard that she would have to move to the women's restroom.
Aita, a stay-at-home mother from Rockville, said she couldn't find anywhere to sit in the restroom, so she returned to the bench. The guard then told her to try sitting on the toilet. When she moved to another bench instead, another Smithsonian guard told her to stop.
During my two-and-a-half decades of nursing babies (1974-1997), I frequently nursed in public--restaurants, airplanes, amusement parks, beaches, etc.--and I was never once asked to stop or to leave. I can't figure out why when we think of ourselves as so progressive in other areas, this issue seems to be getting ugly... one where the general public feels the right to bully nursing mothers who are using their body parts for God-given purposes, as opposed to showing and using them for purposes that were MEANT to be done only in private.
Labels: Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd
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