As you know, today starts World Breastfeeding Week. While we all know “breast is best“, we have varying comfort levels regarding public breastfeeding.
How ’bout plastered on walls around the world, every day of the year?
That’s what the 2010 Rugby Breastfeeding Calendar is shooting for. It’s a calender produced by the UK’s Rugby Breastfeeding Cafe, where women play a full-contact sport while nursing. Oh wait–no. (It’s located in Rugby!)
From the Telegraph:
One photograph shows a half-naked couple embracing with their newborn baby at the breast.
Another features a pregnant woman breastfeeding her four-year-old daughter after a bath.
And one shows a pretty brunette in a revealing bra putting on make-up while breastfeeding her son.
These tasteful, beautiful shots are used to show it’s absolutely hip and “sexy” to breastfeed, while raising money for the Cafe. And it all started with a tiny little £100 donation.
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Actually, it’s a calendar for charity. These women donated their beautiful shots in order to show,
You can still be young, trendy, [and] sexy and still be a breastfeeding Mum. Mums can enjoy breastfeeding. Mums can breastfeed for as long as they and their children like, breastfeeding past 1 year of age is not necessarily ‘extended’ feeding.
All of the proceeds will go back to the Breastfeeding Cafe, to provide food and drink and education on the benefits of breastfeeding.
The local women photographed had their hair and makeup done up free of charge or “massively discounted” by local businesses for the shots. Same for the photography services.
One of the many cool things about the calendar is that these women had either sought support through the cafe or had offered peer support for breastfeeding. In doing the calendar, they are providing one more service to the Cafe.
Calendar organizer Rosie Evans said she wanted the subjects to be comfortable, so she let them choose how they’d like the pics done, be it with a husband, other siblings, or simply one-on-one time, mother and babe. She hopes the word will spread and offer other women support. From her Facebook post,
I feel that this will be a very popular calendar and we will be encouraging GP surgeries, shops, restaurants, schools, children’s centres and any other place that a parent may go to, to sell calendars for us and display them too.
This isn’t the first or only breastfeeding calendar. In 2009, the Australian Breastfeeding Association had a calendar full of gorgeous shots, and are currently taking pictures from the public for their 2010 calendar, which benefits their educational group. Check it out.
Image: Telegraph. Check out their story on the “provocative calendar“.
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The whole point is that breastfeeding is an important biological process.
I’m not sure if “sexy” is the message we want to be sending. Breastfeeding is not a show. A lot of work has been done to make breastfeeding acceptable in public. We need to continue this work by promoting it as a common place activity, rather than a quasi-sexual spectator event.
Yeah, I am not sure if this is the right way. Isn´t the goal to have people see that breastfeeding is as normal as maybe doing laundry and I am sure nobody wants to see a calender of women (or men) doing laundry. How boring would that be. I wish that one day moms will nurse their babies in puplic and no one will even care or really notice them. It´s the natural way to feed your baby and it is nothing special about it. It´s the way mother nature wanted us to feed our babies so why trying to make it look sexy or like art?
I don’t think that “sexy” means titillating in this context. I think it’s about how breastfeeding mothers are still women in every way including being sexy. It’s art. If someone made an artful calender of people doing the laundry it would be worth seeing.
Ok, you´re right! 🙂
Casey,
That’s a good way to put it.
Plus, in some places (though not all), there is such a stigma around breastfeeding in public. I’ve even heard some “dog and her puppies” reference–though about BFing public OVERALL, not to me while I was doing it. (Broad generalizations: “As long as you’re discrete,” or “As long as your kid isn’t old enough to ask for it.”)
These women are showing that it’s part of life overall. They’re nursing while putting on makeup (brave mama with mascara in one hand and a baby in the other!) or while hanging with their toddlers.
Not sure I’d want it on my wall, true. But I’d be delighted if the mother/child-friendly stores nearby had the calendar as I made myself comfortable to breastfeed.