I was sitting at a crowded cafe yesterday and noticed a young mom quietly breastfeeding her baby. She was completely covered up, totally minding her own business, just trying to feed her hungry child. Out of nowhere, this guy at the table next to her huffed loudly, rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Can you not do that in public? It’s indecent.”
It was absolutely infuriating to witness. It is wild how society has completely hyper-sexualized women’s bodies to the point where people get genuinely offended by a mother performing the most natural, basic human function.
Men will literally walk around shirtless on a hot day without anyone batting an eye, but the second a woman uses her body for its actual biological purpose, it gets labeled as a public disturbance.
What makes it worse is that nobody thinks about how stressful it already is to be a new mom navigating the world with a baby. You are dealing with sleep deprivation, physical recovery, and the constant anxiety of trying to keep a tiny human happy. So it completely sucks that on top of all that pressure, women are expected to hide away in gross public restrooms or suffocating cars just because some stranger can’t handle seeing a baby eat.
As a society, we need to do better. If a grown adult is more uncomfortable by a baby being fed than they are by their own blatant disrespect, the problem isn't the mother, it's them.
We need to stop policing women's bodies and start letting mothers breathe, and feed, in peace.