24 June 2008

Lactation for the purposes of pugilism

Caitlin Moran in the Times, on breastfeeding in public:

So what will it take to increase breastfeeding rates in this country, other than stopping it being illegal in the 99.99999 per cent of the British Isles that isn't the lactating mothers' front rooms, of course? For myself, I was a constant, militant, public breastfeeder - but I can't now, three years later, remember quite why. Briefly analysing it, I would say it was probably a combination of: 7 per cent having a mother who contentedly breastfed eight children, in turn, for the first two years of their lives; 12 per cent being a rock-hard, ice-cool feminist warrior queen, like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, but wearing a purple, white and green hat; and 81 per cent wanting the crying, screaming baby to just shuuuuuut uuuuuup before we set off all the fire alarms in Boots.

To be honest, I brought a geeky aesthetic to the process, in that I often pretended my breast milk was a killer laser beam. Once I'd built up a sufficient head of pressure, I'd jet my milk lasers across the room, "taking out" objects/people while making the "zzsswhoompf" light-sabre sound from Star Wars. Perhaps we could get more women into breastfeeding from that angle, encouraging them to use lactation for the purposes of pugilism. That way, until public breastfeeding is made legal, at least they could pick off disapproving art gallery security staff, one by one, with their mummy-guns.

- Source: The Times, 23 June 2008

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