“Breastfeeding”
acrylic on collage of recycled materials on unmounted canvas panel
72”x36”
Currently NFS
A visitor to my studio told me her story about breastfeeding from the 1970s in France. She really wanted to breastfeed her newborn baby, but at the time it was "unfashionable" as she put it. Twenty-five other moms had a baby that day and none of them were breastfeeding. The nurses helped them stop the flow of milk by bandaging their breasts tightly, and the babies were bottle-fed. My visitor told me that she had to call her doctor to ask him to come and tell the nurse to respect her choice. Later, a nurse explained to her that it was easier to make sure babies ate enough when they were bottle-fed. Today, in many countries, breastfeeding is still problematic for many reasons: a lack of knowledge about the values of breastmilk linked to social norms, as bottle-feeding is considered by many to be the "normal" way to feed infants.
This painting represents an incongruous and impossible scene: a young mother proudly breastfeeds her little girl at the public swimming pool, standing in the water, without hiding her breasts under a scarf. Today breastfeeding, (remember that breasts are intended to feed babies) is considered immodest and sexually charged by both men and women. Due to the excessive use of women's bodies in commercials, TV shows, and movies, breasts have become synonymous with sex in many cultures. This means that while advertisements and billboards can expose women's breasts, new mothers cannot. A simple task is diverted from its primary purpose. This situation is not new, as the representation of a detail of The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer in the swimsuit of the young mother suggests. In Dutch art history, milkmaids and kitchen maids, hard working women, were depicted in paintings of kitchen and market scenes with an erotic connotation, some of the paintings were subtly suggestive, while others were more openly so. The misappropriation of the female body for a representation of desire is common in human history, but has constant negative consequences in the lives of women.
In order to protect women, states had to put in place breastfeeding laws. In California, the Civil Code § 43.3 (1997) “allows a mother to breastfeed her child in any place, public or private, except the private home or the residence of others…” But even in situations where a woman is free to breastfeed in public, there are societal conventions that dictate how it must be done for it to be considered an "appropriate" activity. Therefore, if and when they are breastfeeding in public places, women should be aware of other people's feelings, lessen their discomfort and "protect themselves". Lack of social support, fear of embarrassing situations and the need to return to work are also some of the issues women face when deciding whether they can/want to breastfeed.
Bathing suit details: Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1658 (details)