Many of you no doubt saw the recent story where Barbara Walters complained that her plane flight was ruined by a woman sitting next to her who insisted on breastfeeding her infant. The things you have to put up with in First Class!
The media was thrilled to see a number of breastfeeding moms come out in force to demonstrate against Walter's prejudices. As much as I admire them, since I haven't lactated in fifteen years, I was surprised to find myself used as an example of a milky pervert in a recent column called "It's Getting Tough to Keep Abreast of All the Boobs in Nursing Battle,"
from the Boston Herald, by Margery Eagan:
"You know once I interviewed Susie Bright, a famous gay writer who jumped up mid-interview in her Cambridge room, whipped off her shirt, breasts waving in the breeze, to nurse her son, topless, as if this was ho-hum. Only later did I think of clever remarks I might have made. `Susie, are you seducing me?' Or,`Susie, are you trying to intimidate me with your enormous nursing breasts?' Instead I sat there trying to be cool, taking notes so furiously I couldn't read them. Then I ran from the room. No need to see me out.
"Power bosoms do indeed make us very nervous. I can fully attest to that."
I'll tell you who makes me nervous: bitchy prudes. Margery says she doesn't think women should have to hide in smelly toilets to feed their infants, but she's not so sure they should, you know, just make themselves comfortable.
I submitted the following "Letter to the Editor" to the Herald:
Dear Editor:
Ms. Eagan uses me as an example of someone who had inconsiderate- and perhaps even salacious- intentions when I nursed my baby in the same room with her, during an interview she conducted with me fifteen years ago.
I'm afraid she has both the facts and my intentions dead wrong. I do not have a son. I'm not gay, merely bi. Her reporting would be a fine description if it was true, but I've published 20+ books since I met Ms. Eagan, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine columns, so fact-checking should be easy.
I met Margery during a book tour where I covered 15 cities in 30 days, where I naively thought I could travel with my six-month-old daughter. I was young, and this was my first book tour. It was grueling.
The day Eagan interviewed me in my hotel room, I'm sure I was called upon to nurse my daughter because she was starting to fuss or cry, and it was clear to me she wanted to be fed. I wouldn't have denied her food, or set off a screaming fit. I nursed to satisfy the child, and also give Ms. Eagan a quiet interview. The notion that I would be in the mood to "seduce," or "intimidate" Eagan with my breasts, embarrasses and angers me.
I can't think of one nursing mom with these kind of motives; it's ludicrous. It may strain the the prurient mind, but lactating moms are focused on one, and one thing only.... feeding that baby before she howls. I never yearned to be the object of anyone's attention when I nursed, or changed a diaper, or patted out a burp. I always wished I had some decent back support. I hated traveling in airplanes. I spent all my time trying to meet the day's most demanding challenges while the baby was asleep.
When Eagan describes me "waving my breasts in the breeze," it gives the impression of a flag, of a militant conquest. Breasts have more gravity than that. Eagan doesn't describe nursing reality. Apparently, I made the mistake of being comfortable breastfeeding in my room, in front of one woman a little older than me, who I thought was a mother herself. My mind was so focussed on the kid, that I didn't sense that Eagan was the type who would be scared to meet me in the first place— whose mind would race to the carnal corners of her fears and fantasies.
To appear as her joke example of boorish behavior, fifteen years after the fact, is no treat. The next time Margery meets a woman whose bosom incites such feverish paranoia, maybe she ought to excuse herself and go sit in the bathroom for a while.
Susie Bright
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