A Breast-In

I heard an interview this morning on the radio about Melanie Flores who was shopping at the mall and kicked out of a store for breastfeeding. I found two articles about it online, one at ABC local, and the other at the Toldeo Free Press. The part I just can't believe, and am really offended by, is excerpted here from the Toledo Free Press article:

“The clerk, Amy, let me feed him, but when I was finished and looked to her for assistance she was very forward and confrontational with me and told me I could not breast-feed in that store and if I wanted to do it again I needed to leave,” her e-mail read.

Later, the e-mail states, “She then told me ‘We are a privately owned family store, we don't need to follow that law and you can't just go around throwing your breasts out where ever you'd like.'”

It makes me so angry that something so natural and necessary is so often demeaned. (One of the radio personalties called the store clerk a gigantic bitch, and having read what she ignorantly said, I would kind of have to agree. The article also said that the owners of the store have not responded on this matter, and frankly, if I were them, I would totally try to distance myself from this employee.) On the radio this morning, Melanie said that there was going to be a Breast-In at the mall, and mothers could come with their babies and breastfeed in public together.

The other thing that this clerk may not realize, is that in New York it is legal for women to be topless (or topfree, as the movement is called) in public, just as men can. There was even a recent article in the New York Post about it. To find out more, and about the history of the law in New York, read the Post's article and the Topfree website.

Go Women! We deserve equality in all matters!