Play Nursing: The Creepy Breastfeeding Doll

If you have kids and you’ve breastfed in front of them, chances are, your toddler mimics.

Now a Spanish doll, under the guise of teaching little ones that breastfeeding is normal, is trying to capitalize on lactivism.

Problem is, the Bebé Glotón makes breastfeeding seem more unnatural and strange than a natural human process. One commentator, MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy, went so far as to say it “set back feminism 150 years.”

Here’s how this little glutton feeds:

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1. A girl, theoretically, puts on a halter top.
2. The halter top–no joke–features pasties meant to represent nipples.
3. The gluttonous baby cries when it’s hungry.
4. Girl puts baby to “breast” to feed it. Glutton baby sucks loudly while she nurses.
5. Once baby is full and you pat its back, it lets out a large, disgusting belch.

Here’s my problem with the doll: putting on a special shirt hardly teaches a kid about breastfeeding. No, I don’t think it sexualizes breastfeeding any more than a poster featuring a toddler pretend breastfeeding does. (Stop sexualizing natural processes, and you won’t see it this way, folks!)

I also don’t believe it sets back feminism. Encouraging natural processes, no matter how weird the campaign may be, isn’t anti-woman or anti-feminist. If our progress as women is so fragile that it could be shattered by some freakish toy, we’re in big trouble, ladies.

However, wearing a halter top with pasties is not natural. It’s not the normal way to feed a hungry infant. The doll’s sounds, the pasties, the age group targeted in the commercial? All wrong.

And the silly doll is simply encouraging parents to buy more “stuff”, and plastic stuff at that.

Let your kid put her own favorite baby doll up her shirt and “breastfeed”. The mimicry–the interest–that is normal.

Hat tip: I first saw this on Thingamababy, and was reminded of it when a horrified friend sent me a link to Jezebel’s story.

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