breastfeeding

Facebook actually sorry for banning breastfeeding pic

Facebook's relationship with breastfeeding mothers has some Oedipal tinges.

It seems that ever since the site became populated by people who weren't university students desperate to find a warm body, Facebook has shivered at the site of anything that resembled a naked breast.

Even when it was actually an elbow.

Though breastfeeding mothers have always railed against Facebook's anti-breast policies, the company has always claimed that it is a medium, and therefore abides by the same standards as other media.

This is odd, because at the launch of Facebook Home, Mark Zuckerberg insisted that Facebook was actually … Read more

Breastfeeding truck coming to a city near you?

What would you do if you saw an ice cream truck with a giant boob--nipple and all--on its roof?

You'd probably do a double-take. Then, tell your kids to stay away because they can't buy ice cream from it. It's not an ice cream truck, after all. It's The Milk Truck, an on-call mobile breastfeeding vehicle that performance artist and mom Jill Miller would like to turn into a reality.

Miller--a faculty member at the School of Art at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University--is looking to raise $10,000 in funding through pledge site Kickstarter. If the breastfeeding crusader succeeds, nursing moms in the Pittsburgh area (and eventually beyond, Miller hopes) will never have to worry about finding a private spot to pump or nurse again.

"There's a reason for making The Milk Truck," Miller writes on her Web site. "To create a mobile breastfeeding unit that allows mothers to feed their babies in places where they have been discouraged: restaurants, shopping malls, public spaces, etc. Babies should be able to eat anywhere. And everywhere." … Read more

Hey, ever tried talking on your cell phone while driving and, er, breast-feeding?

It was a wet morning just like any other wet morning in Kettering, Ohio. A woman driving in her Honda mini-van was doing what many other women might have been doing. Ferrying children. Oh, and chatting on her cell phone.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot. She was also breast-feeding.

Chris Cahill, 33, spotted her, called the police and then, as people sometimes do on a wet Kettering morning, decided to follow her. There is, naturally, no irony in the fact that, according to a recording of his call to the police, he continued talking on his cell phone while he … Read more

Hey, Facebook, what have you got against breast-feeding?

I am not sure how you feel about breast-feeding in public, but Facebook seems to have made its views very clear.

The site had something of a contretemps with Heather Farley, a Facebooker who posted photographs in October of herself feeding her new baby. She was, at first, bemused when the photos were removed. So she put another one up, only to receive a note from Facebook threatening to remove her from Facebookdom.

Her sin, explained Facebook, was not the actual image of breast-feeding. It was the visibility of her areola, the dark area around the nipple.

A Facebook spokesman … Read more