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Watching People React to Breastfeeding: My New Favorite Hobby
As much as I love my brand new nephew, few things have brought me as much joy as watching people’s reactions to my sister openly breastfeeding him. This new parlor trick of my sister’s, clearing a room faster than a landing boot evicts a colony of ants from their home, has nearly overshadowed his arrival into existence.
I feel fortunate to live in an era when parents and babies alike are doing the arduous labor of de-sexualizing and de-shaming something as objectively not sexy and not shameful as breastfeeding a baby. But I often wonder what people are so squeamish about when it comes to seeing someone breastfeed. Do they think that if they detach sucking on a boob from whatever nipple-core fantasies they have in their head that boob play will forever be ruined for them? I am finding all sorts of opportunity to ponder and ask these questions, as my sister nurses her first born purposely unencumbered by office-place breastfeeding closets and fabric shrouds.
If there were ever going to be a champion of the movement, it would surely be my sister. She has always had a little exhibitionist in her. She gets it from our father, a person who spent the first 30 years of his life in Poland. The kind of man who was puzzled as to why people stared and snickered at him as he swanned around in his speedo on rural Pennsylvanian…
