We Need More Breasts!

To Mr.G. Kerson,

My name is Shannon Hardy and I am a certified birth doula and a mom from the Halifax area.

While searching for a Nova Scotia based breastfeeding support web site I was directed to www.first6weeks.ca . I opened up the link, thought it was a cute site but I wasn't sure it was what I was looking for.

There were no pictures of babies, or breasts, or babies breastfeeding on the home page, which I thought was a little strange but I pressed on. It turns out that it was what I was looking for but I was shocked to only find one picture of a real mother and baby breastfeeding on the entire site.

It was not a very prominent picture and, in point of fact, was not even directly on the site but was part of a document on the Resources page. There are four illustrations of mother’s breastfeeding in the “How to Feed Your Baby” section but only one actually shows a breast.

I found it odd that a website dedicated to helping women breastfeed had such a dearth of actual breastfeeding pictures. There are two breastfeeding commercials on the site but they have next to nothing to do with breastfeeding, and do not show babies, breasts, breastfeeding or even a pregnant soon-to-be breastfeeder.

If your goal is to normalize and promote breastfeeding wouldn’t it be more productive to actually show women breastfeeding?

I recognize that I am a visual learner and not everyone is the same but after five years of offering breastfeeding support and education, as well as breastfeeding my own boys, I do know that breastfeeding is best learned by actually seeing it done.

We must become a breastfeeding culture.  If we want more women to breastfeed it must be part of our everyday reality. It is not enough to direct people to the Human Rights provisions or write a “how to” guide (with no pictures), it needs to be our lived experience.

We need to see breastfeeding on television, both in commercials and programming, on print advertisements and on posters throughout the city. We need to see real moms and real babies breastfeeding.

I ask that you consider what message you are sending to women who visit a breastfeeding site and see little to no visual evidence of breastfeeding. I know that you are the administrator for the site but I am sure you are not solely in charge of content and I would be very grateful if you would forward my letter and concerns on to the appropriate people.

In the doula spirit,

Shannon Hardy, CD(DONA)
Cc’d The Honourable Maureen MacDonald, mmacdonald@navnet.net

Special note for my blog readers:
Here are two breastfeeding ads that I thought were brilliantly executed, a print ad from Brazil (to the right) and a television ad from New Zealand.

And more print ads from NZ !