At present, the Government is preparing a new law: to protect women’s rights to breastfeed legally in public. This follows a high-profile case in which the National Gallery in London stopped a mother breastfeeding in one of its galleries and subsequently had to issue an apology. With inspiringly apt irony, the mother and child in question were in the same room as Tintoretto’s The Origin of the Milky Way, in which Juno breastfeeds Hercules.

This legislation is to roll out by the end of the year, following the lead of the Scottish Parliament, which introduced similar laws four years ago, so soon we’ll be able to lactate in the Tate, whip out our boobs in White Cube, utilise our mammaries in the Royal Academies. This is a huge coup for those of us who like to claim the moral high ground by breastfeeding, when the truth of the matter is that we’re just too slatternly to sterilise umpteen bottles a day, and find that the smell of Milton’s Fluid makes us pukey. But it also highlights the extraordinary fact that, until this law kicks in, it is actually illegal to breastfeed publicly in this country. Illegal. Indeed, it’s so illegal that there are two, separate, acts under which a breastfeeder can be prosecuted: public order laws, or laws of public decency. Conceivably, if a woman got busted* after a very long feed, one involving both breasts, the left one could be charged under the public order laws and get away with a light fine, while the right one, having offended public decency, could be looking at a seven-to-ten stretch in the pen.

And ladies, let’s face it: after breastfeeding, your bosom-area looks like it’s done time in the slammer anyway. Whenever I take my bra off now and check myself in the mirror, my breasts look knackered. But be this as it may, I can assure you of one thing: there’s barely a mother in this country who knows that it’s illegal to breastfeed in public. I did a quick text-round of all my 24-hour post-partum people and they were amazed that the third most physically crucial aspect of motherhood - after hoiking the baby out into the world, and then not leaving it on a cliff edge while having a fag - is prosecutable. For many, it’s been like finding out that it’s illegal to put your child on a swing, feed it carrot sticks and hoummos or beat it with a spiky oaken paddle named “Mr Whackbum”.

“The logical conclusion of this legislation is that the British believe a woman should not leave her house - not even once - until her baby is weaned,” said one friend, on her mobile phone from Beachy Head, between drags on a Rothmans.

Of course, in many ways, it’s quite heartening to find out that it’s still illegal to breastfeed in public. It’s almost comforting. Women tend to blame themselves for everything. British mothers had, therefore, presumed that the reason why England has the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world - only 25 per cent breastfeed up to six months (frankly, worms do better, and they don’t lactate) was simply All Our Fault. We didn’t have the commitment, the selflessness or the nerve to get the big boys out and feed the little boys (or girls) in public. Because it takes nerve to breastfeed in public. There is a lexicon of Acceptable Public Breasts, and those who have a baby on the end don’t make the list. You can have statue breasts (classy tits), native tribeswoman breasts (educational tits) and 18-year-old girls looking down at their Nuts tits with a combination of pride and surprise (tits somehow fundamental to the continuation of the smooth running of this country). But a hurriedly bared wet nipple at a bus station in January being waved, semi-despairingly, at a wailing child just doesn’t make it into this pantheon. These breasts - the useful breasts - must be kept hidden.

I’m apt to blame this baffling aesthetic and moral schism on a gigantic as-yet untackled seam of rampant misogyny. It bears all the hallmarks of The Patriarchy, ie, a world tilted in favour of perky tits, normal women made to feel bad. Damn you, The Patriarchy! I shake my fist at you, again! Indeed, I keep meaning to replace the F11 key on my Mac with a “Patriarchy Alert” button so that when I press it all my open windows fly off the screen, leaving me to stare at an inspiring and soothing screensaver picture of Mary Wollstonecraft.

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 sufficienthead 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.

*Hahaha. I’ve just noticed that; that’s quite clever.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article4182468.ece