The lactating feminist
I'm not a porn star. I'm not burning my bra. I'm just feeding my baby in public.
 

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By Roxanne Beckford Hoge

July 26, 1999 | I was born too late to actively participate in the women's movement -- not that it would have mattered anyway, since I was born in Jamaica, where you are still either "Miss" or "Mrs." and never "Ms." I didn't get to burn any bras, either, but I wonder how many people would have torched their bras, had they been LaPerlas or even Victoria's Secret numbers, instead of those old-fashioned bullet-breasted ones so readily available at the time. I've always considered myself a feminist, even when the mark of a really popular girl at my Southern Baptist liberal arts college was to say, "Oh, I'd never call myself, you know, a feminist," as if it were the c-word. In seventh grade, I even sported an "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" button on my Catholic school uniform.

Lately, however, it feels like much of the work of feminism has been done. I'm in my early 30s now, and pretty happy in my life. Young women seem to have a world of choices open to them, and all is right with the world. We can now do and be anything -- at least in the United States.

Anything, that is, other than use our breasts the way they were intended to be used.

The facts are dismal. Far too few American women nurse or keep at it for very long. I think part of it is out of a desire to get their "old" life back, which is, of course, a fantasy on par with guys thinking that their pizza will be delivered by two lusty coeds with a lot of time on their hands and a desire to get really good at giving oral sex. Yet in an effort to relieve the guilt of those women who choose not to, or maybe just as a good old-fashioned American response to breasts being used for something other than to sell cars, people are working themselves into a lather about women who feed their babies in the presence of others. A Southern California writer brought suit against Borders Books for kicking her out of a store in which you're invited to sit, read, drink coffee, listen to music -- anything except lift your sweater to feed your baby. And there's been a flurry of news about "Breastfeeding Gone Horribly Wrong," which is usually a story about the failure of medical professionals to provide any kind of support and guidance to mothers, but presented as a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to make human milk. Not very, if you have support and information and can get past the first six weeks.

I was not given away by anyone at my wedding and I fought rape and sexual harassment and I kept my own name after marriage (I'm changing it now, as a gift to my dear husband and child. He, of course, thinks I'm only doing it on the advice of an attorney.)

But it turns out that the most radical feminist act I've recently undertaken has been to nurse my child in public.