Babies at Breast: Pedagogy, New Media Flows, and the Politics of Breastfeeding

• In Event: Digital Dissent

Abstract

As indicated by the rise of hashtags like #normalizebreastfeeding and #brelfie, celebrities and everyday women are turning to social media to advance their mission to present breastfeeding as a “normal” activity. For example, women take pictures of themselves nursing their babies and then circulate these breastfeeding selfies online. In addition, humorous, satirical viral videos that strive to educate audiences about the benefits of breastfeeding and about how breastfeeding is regulated in public spaces reverberate across multiple platforms. In this paper I unpack how the politics of breastfeeding are taught through such new media practices, consider the ethical implications of the circulation of these images, and analyze how femininity is constructed through depictions of caretaking. This pedagogical work of “normalizing” breastfeeding constructs larger discourses in which feminized subjects demonstrate their desire to self-author their claims to their bodies and work to disrupt the regulation of care work. However, while these images may attempt to educate and promote images of disruptive, autonomous femininity, they also demonstrate how feminized bodily autonomy through care work is best achieved by having a visible, white, middle-upper class body.

The presentation of women breastfeeding online works through a pedagogy of consciousness raising about the impositions of control over women’s bodies. The distribution of images and short narratives about breastfeeding situate the personal as political specifically through the use of platforms like YouTube and Instagram that circulate celebrations of and information about maternal labor. The increasing popularity and ubiquity of social media sites have arguably transformed the landscape of social justice movements; activists can circulate information and concerns more widely, but activism risks remaining bound to screens.

These tensions are very much present in the work of social media breastfeeding activism in which the flows of online communities construct pedagogical discourses about appropriate modes of caretaking and bodily integrity. Through selfies in which women document their own experiences performing caretaking work, communities are invited to appreciate how the photographers celebrate their bodies’ laboring capabilities. And through the circulation of viral videos which often humorously comment on how that caretaking work, communities are prompted to critique the ways women’s movement through public spaces are surveilled and contained. While these online displays of feminized labor seek to promote femininity as empowered, and use social media uniquely to do so, they are always already constrained by the hegemonic tendency to control femininity through visual objectification. And, these social media displays of maternal labor celebrate a white, upper-middle class woman as capable of not only doing caretaking work, but also capable of multitasking; across the social media texts, breastfeeding is often presented as work done while also engaging in other forms of labor such as professional work or self-care. As Obamacare and the subsidized breast pump it provided are in jeopardy, the ability to freely breastfeed, and thus not work professionally, connotes added privilege. Thus, while these social media texts seek to educate how to disrupt expectations of femininity and caretaking practices, they reaffirm traditional structures of power.

Author

• Elizabeth Nathanson, Muhlenberg College