So first and foremost, Salma Hayak has come out with some ‘interesting’ comments about breastfeeding. Now, here at mama-is.com we’re always happy to have a celebrity talk about breastfeeding. It helps to legitimize, ya know? But, what the heck?
“I’m like an alcoholic. It is like, I don’t care if I cry, I don’t care if I am fat, I am just going to do it for one more week, one more month, and then when I see how much good it is doing her and I can’t stop.”
Apparently she didn’t get the memo that people freak out if they know you’re breastfeeding beyond a year (her baby is still nursing at 13 months) AND that you better not talk about it as if it’s for your own pleasure. And seriously, ADDICTED? can’t you come up with a better way of putting it? And don’t even get me started on her comments about how painful it is (IS? at 13 months?) and how it doesn’t help you lose weight at all. Oh no, I fear breastfeeding will need to hire a PR agent for the backlash.
Ms. Hayak, good for you for breastfeeding, and still going at 13 months, but if you can’t think of anything helpful to say about it, maybe you could attend a La Leche League meeting and get some advice on helpful responses? Nodding and smiling and giving vague responses can also be a tactic, I use it at the pediatricians office and it seems to work very well.
I appreciated this blog post: Salma Hayek “still” breastfeeding – world can’t decide whether to jerk off or prosecute
by LAUREDHEL
It’s not as simple as “The Patriarchy wants women to not breastfeed” or “The Patriarchy wants women to breastfeed”. What The Patriarchy “wants” (if you’ll bear with me on this somewhat teleological train of thought) is to have control over breastfeeding. Sometimes that might involve coercion to breastfeed (while withholding full support), sometimes coercion to not breastfeed, sometimes breastfeeding is a tool to confine women to the domestic environment, sometimes guilt over not breastfeeding is cultivated to sell women more products. Above all, breastfeeding women are reminded day after day after day that their bodies are public property, that breastfeeding isn’t a free pass out of the sex class, and that whatever they do, there will be no shortage of people telling them that they’re doing it wrong.
Australian and USAn societies are down there with the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. We have developed a peculiarly pernicious mix of:
* half-secularised Puritanism;
* half-baked woman-hating Freudianism;
* toxic capitalism;
* mother-hostile workplace practices;
* social isolation of new mothers;
* a deep-seated fear and suspicion of any bodily intimacy that isn’t sexual;
* and an overwhelming sense of proprietorship of breasts by heterosexual men.
Absolutely!
And then, you’d have to be under a rock if you didn’t hear about the Motrin ad this weekend (thanks Ellen, Lori, April and everyone else!) By the time I was ready to respond the furor was over…Twitter Moms Sink Motrin Ad and Moms and Motrin By LISA BELKIN Congratulations to moms everywhere for winning this one, even if they liken us to the borg. What are we going to do? they like to pick on us, and then when we fight back and win, they have to give one more kick on their way out the door. Fine. We’re mothers we can deal.
So, todays comic is a sideways glance at these two topics…enjoy!
xox,
Heather
i read her comments on celebrity baby blog & i really suspect they were taken out of context. and as for hurting, it’s possible she’s dealing with thrush, like i have been for over a year. it’s a tough opponent to beat, despite my best efforts, and it makes nursing my 2-year-old occasionally excruciating. i get cracks & hard nipples that won’t go down. but i know he’s not ready to stop, so i try to compromise by nursing him fewer times a day on my worse days (even then we’re nursing 5x a day). plus, he favors one (clearly not an issue for her), so there’s that whole drama we play out when i “force” him to nurse on the lesser breast. i am personally glad she said those things because it’s her truth. if people want to twist her words & sexualize her relationship with her daughter, that’s their own perversion, not hers.
Oh Dear. I guess I’ve been under a rock. I hadn’t seen the Motrin Ad. What the heck where they thinking? Complete cluelessness. Really takes the baby as fashion accessory thing (basically one of the first lines of the ad) and runs with it (high heels make your feet hurt like hell but make your legs look good…/wearing a baby makes your back hurt but you “it totally makes me look like an official mom” Um, ok.
I hate that motrin is targeting new mothers who shouldn’t take motrin anyway due to breastfeeding…
I feel kind of bad for Selma. I think she is responding to external pressure to wean, but just doesn’t feel strong enough to tell people to stick it where the sun don’t shine, so she makes it sound like she has this weird “quirk” or even “addiction”, which can explain her “extended” breastfeeding, yet really doesn’t normalize it. She may even believe it herself. I hope she gets some support and realizes that her desire to continue nursing her child is not an addiction, but is completely natural.
Ugh… that Motrin ad. Ok, I wore my DD out of total convenience, and the fact that while she was nursing all day long, I occasionally wanted to get out of my chair and perhaps eat!!! Completely out of line. They could’ve made that ad SOOO much better!!!
thrush.
If anyone knows how to contact I-dra – Please let her know about grapefruit juice. White if you can stand it – ruby red if you need something sweeter.
I never had thrush (we use a lot of garlic in our food) but I know vaginal yeast. Drinking grapefruit juice gives immediate relief. It worked for my neighbor, too, after the oral prescription and the vaginal creams didn’t do squat.
thanks for the tip, lori! i will try that. i have done (in rotation) grapefruit seed extract, probiotics, goldenseal, vinegar, gentian violet and i eat more garlic than anyone else i know. it’s not going without a fight. i rub coconut oil, comfrey root ointment & calendula salve on my nipples (this is all in rotation, btw, not all at once). i will give grapefruit juice a shot.
Do you eat raw garlic or cooked garlic? Raw garlic is much more effective. I hope you feel better
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you know, I read her comments and I just thought “rock on woman”. She doesn’t owe us anything. She doesn’t have to speak any certain way about her experience and her truth. Who are we to say “oh, don’t talk about breastfeeding unless you use our approved code.” That’s as bad to me as the people who say “oh, it’s fine if women breastfeed as long as they do it discreetly”. BS. You go, Selma! And if you like your prolactin rush as much as I do, then more power to ya.
All she needs to say is, “I’m doing what I think is best for my baby and myself.” That should cover ANY mom in ANY situation!
–I hate that motrin is targeting new mothers who shouldn’t take motrin anyway due to breastfeeding…–
That’s not true. Motrin is approved by the AAP for use in breastfeeding mothers. Many medicines are safe for breastfeeding mothers to use. No woman should have to suffer unnecessarily or worse, stop breastfeeding because she thinks medications can’t be taken while breastfeeding. A lactation consultant is the best bet for advice on what medicines to use while breastfeeding.
I remember similar comments about 20? years ago when Lisa Bonet was still nursing her 13 month old daughter Zoe. There was a whole article on what a wacko she’d become because she was a vegetarian and didn’t vaccinate and was breastfeeding, blah blah. Now it’s Selma Hayek – though admittedly her comments were less helpful than Bonet’s at the time. Still they made her out to be a complete nut. Sigh.
The Motrin ad pissed me off. It was very patronizing and condescending – at first I thought the anger was going to be because nursing women shouldn’t be taking Motrin – no idea they were putting out false information and patronizing ideas about baby-wearing. Jeesh. I saw some of the youtube videos too – some young marketing guy (who, uh, has obviously never had a baby) can’t understand what all the fuss is about. I hope someone explains it to him
In particular, he says it was narrated by someone who’s a mother herself – what makes him think that? Because the COPY was written to SAY that? She’s a voice; we don’t know and he certainly doesn’t know if she’s a babywearing mother. From the copy I’d really have to say that whoever read it was not a babywearing mother; I’ve never heard one say things like that. I was so poor and slings were so expensive when mine were babies that I never had it (and didn’t have Hathor’s books to tell me how to make one up for myself or I would have) but I envied the women who had them; they were so much more comfortable and content than I was. One young commenter said his mother would never have worn a sling 20 years ago – maybe she wouldn’t, but people certainly did (and obviously for a long long long time before that; I’m just saying it was out of the US consciousness for a long time) so what.ever. Yes, it’s silly to think about youtube comments. Sorry. But I’m glad they took down the ad – I don’t buy Motrin anyway though hehe.