Breastfeeding moms crowd Vancouver clothing store in protest

[struggle4progress]

Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, August 07, 2008

VANCOUVER -- Scores of breastfeeding mothers crowded into downtown Vancouver's H&M clothing store Thursday afternoon to protest the way another woman was treated when she tried to feed her baby in public.

At least 60 women sat cross-legged on the floor, milled about the store feeding their babies or spilled out into Pacific Centre mall in support of Manuela Valle, who was told by store staff on Tuesday to go into the changeroom to feed her two-month-old daughter Ramona ...

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=22b2e9cd-8375-441b-8efb-05ccd2e0a6e5

[sasquatch]

1. Thank you Jesus

:popcorn:

[zeemike]

2. Good for them

I am tired of people trying to make feeding a baby a shameful thing
Those people just need to get over it.

[spag68]

3. Breast feeding

Well here we go again, some idiot is trying to make something that has been natural since the beginning of time into something immoral. When are we as a society going to grow up. Further what is the fascination with covering womens breasts, surely a hairy slob with his beer gut hanging out is way mare offensive then breasts. Get a life, I thought the canucks were better then that, guess not.

[iverglas]

4. more than one issue

How it went down:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080807.wbcnurse07/BNStory/National/home

The controversy began when Manuela Valle went on a shopping trip with her family to the giant H&M chain's store on Granville Street on Saturday. While her husband was trying on clothes in a fitting room, the couple's two-month-old began to cry. So Ms. Valle, standing near the cash, lifted one side of her T-shirt and placed the baby on her breast.

"The baby covered my breast - you couldn't see anything," she said yesterday.

But a sales clerk appeared and asked Ms. Valle to move into a fitting room, the 34-year-old recalled.

"She said that what I was doing offended other customers - and that there were children around," Ms. Valle said. "I was shocked. She said, 'Sorry, this is store policy.' "

Another employee showed up to direct Ms. Valle into the room, while someone else spoke over a walkie-talkie; it prompted other customers to stare, "like I was stealing something," she said.

Okay. So we can all agree that it appears she was treated badly. Unless, and this isn't clear, she chose to make a scene and continue what she was doing rather than comply with store policy. This might explain why she was "hustled" to the fitting room.

But I just dunno. Like, gimme a break?

Who NEEDS to breastfeed an infant while standing beside the cash register in a busy retail store?

Someone with a point to prove maybe? Why the hell would a woman needing to feed her infant not WANT to sit somewhere private and surely more comfortable than standing beside a cash register in a busy store?

Someone else in one of the gazillions of articles about this was offended when a furniture store instructed her not to breastfeed her infant on the furniture on display, since people might not want to buy it. Well duh. It's for sale, not for use. Would I lie down on their one of the display beds and go to sleep? I think not. People might not want to buy it.

Do the same women kicking up these ruckuses just wander abroad with their breasts bare? It's legal in Canada, you know. And yet nobody does it. Including women with infants of breastfeeding age. Somehow, they just don't actually seem to regard their breasts as simply milk-giving body parts.


Another one:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/08/06/bc-breast-feeding-cover-up-west-jet-.html

Takeoff and descent can cause painful pressure in the tiny Eustachian tubes of children's ears, so it's common for mothers to nurse their babies, Tarbuck said, as swallowing helps ease the pain.

"(The flight attendant) came up and said quietly, 'You know, some men find the sight of a bare breast quite offensive. Can I offer you a blanket to cover up with?" Tarbuck said on Wednesday.

Tarbuck declined the offer of a blanket, but one was brought to her anyway.

"I was pretty shocked," said Tarbuck.

She later complained to WestJet's head office and received a written response.

"The rep defended what the flight attendant had done. She said we have to make our customers feel comfortable," said Tarbuck.

Well, yeah, nobody needs to be told that the sight of her body is offensive, and that wasn't a smooth move. A simple "we prefer that this be done privately" from the flight attendant, and a simple "thank you" from the woman, would have been adequate. Because frankly, sharing close quarters with bare-breasted women DOES make some people uncomfortable, and the airline is entirely entitled to be concerned about its customers' comfort and adopt policies to ensure it, certainly where the policy is something as simple and unintrusive as providing a blanket and asking that it be used.

And because once again: who the hell would NOT want privacy for this? What woman really really wants to sit around an airplane with her breasts exposed? Not me. Anybody here?

This breasts are public baby-feeding machines when we want them to be, but private sexual body parts when we want them to be is just disingenuous. Sorry.

If someone is genuinely caught out with a baby that desperately needs feeding and has no option but to do it while standing beside a cash register in a busy store, well then that's what needs to be done. It's just beyond me why anyone would *choose* to do that when there's an alternative.

[primavera]

5. Interesting point

I never really thought about it before, but I think your point that viewing breasts as sexually neutral in a society fixated with breasts as sexual objects is a good one. I'm thinking back to experiences living in Europe, where such things as nude beaches and coed saunas are commonplace. Never have I seen a man get a woody at a nude beach or in a sauna surrounded by naked women, because Europeans, unlike us, are sanely brought up to appreciate that nudity is not inherently sexual - sex is sexual and that's something different and unrelated to nudity which is... well, just nudity. Here in the medieval puritan states of America though, we hang drapery over statues to cover salacious breasts, we're taught from birth to be ashamed of our bodies and to perceive them as dirty. That's obviously why many people feel uncomfortable with public breastfeeding. Personally, I think we'd be a whole lot saner if we got over that misguided association between nudity and sexuality, but it makes sense that winning the right to breastfeed in public is apt to be an uphill battle, as it's essentially addressing a symptom of a much greater underlying disease without doing anything to address the disease.