Newsflash: Breasts are for feeding babies with!

I wanted to take a break in the current usual proceedings of reflecting upon my time in the field as a mother and to write about a more 'in the news' topic. There has been a week of virtual and physical world activity in support of Breastfeeding. I picked up on a record attempt in the UK for the most women (and babies I assume) breastfeeding simultaneously and a surge of campaigning and images in social media promoting support for all mothers in the practice of feeding one's baby with one's breast (novel idea, its bound to catch on!). 

I am at once overjoyed by the amount of beautiful images splayed across the internet of babes happily latched onto their mothers and also annoyed at the fact a week in the year needs devoting to highlight the support needed for said mothers. At risk of stating the obvious, breasts are for feeding babies with, that is why women have them, any other socially constructed benefit such as the beauty of them, their sexual attractiveness, the invention of special cloth devices to put them in and their marketability to entice heterosexual men to buy anything is merely an added extra. Though in some societies they seem to have got that the wrong way round and even more so have turned them into a weapon of offence in a feeding situation. 

I find the whole situation very odd, I'm sure my baby if she could enter into the debate, would be inclined to agree. That of course is my gut reaction to a world of silly rules, but by thinking anthropologically I can think of some more rational explications to this breast utility obsession. What exactly is it about the human condition that throughout time and place we change the way we relate to our bodies and what they do?  For what purpose does it serve to treat breasts as something other than a source of (emotional and physical) survival for a human infant? Whether we choose to use them for that purpose is a separate argument, put ultimately that is why they are there. 

For some cultural comparison here is a brief ethnographic vignette taken from my fieldwork diary: 

When I boarded the combi* this morning I wished it was possible to take a snapshot of the scene that greeted me. Apart from myself with nuzzling babe in arms there are four other women of varying ages from late teen to 30s (as usual at this time the combi was populated only by women going about daily business) all nursing babes or toddlers. As we chatted about the recent thunderstorms, how busy the city centre had become etc. no-one batted an eyelid at the amount of breasts on show, as they never do because if you have a baby or small child who is pining at your chest then you feed it - why wouldn't you?

*A combi is a micro-bus/van with seating that is used as public transport around the city.

That is what I would describe as a healthy social attitude to feeding one's young. This was by no means a special day and justified by a female only presence, it happens on any day regardless of the gender mix. People of any age and gender will stop and talk to you, kiss and coo at the baby without any hesitation about it being attached to a nipple. Here feeding is not a shameful or secret event and nor are women accused of 'making a point', they are simply feeding their child whether it be on public transport, in the workplace, at home or walking down the street (a skill to be valued in itself!). 

Mexico has a stereotype of machismo and of treating women poorly, and I certainly do not dispute the aspects of violence, maltreatment and appalling incidents of feminicide that occur. But lets get beyond the sweeping generalisations to turn the focus back on a so-called civilized and developed society such as the UK. 

Capitalism and Patriarchy Come Hand in Hand

The societies most offended by a woman using her body to ensure the survival of her baby are the most technologically and economically advanced, or that is to say are the most technologically and economically dominant. There has been a long tradition in feminist anthropology and social theory that questions the use of technology as a means of population control (for an introduction see Emily Martin for a distinct analysis of obstetrics and authoritative anatomy knowledge and Vanessa Maher (ed) for a collection of writings on breastfeeding). Population control in the theoretical sense involves the manipulation of social thought (common sense) and bodies for the common economic good of a nation - or for those that govern the nation. What economic purpose is served by controlling how a growing population is fed? Maybe that is one for the formula companies to answer!

From a feminist perspective I would argue that much has to do with the destructive illusion that gender equality is about making women more like men rather than acknowledging that biological difference is a strength particularly in terms of life creation and survival. Women are 'freed up' to enter back into the workplace and therefore should feel liberated about the choice of bottle feeding over breast. This....as opposed to the workplace adapting to the needs of a breastfeeding woman is the type of situation that makes breastfeeding an issue that then needs dealing with. Laws and policies must be devised and rights defended in order to ensure some smokescreen of equality in what is essentially a patriarchal work-space. Only in the most advanced capitalist societies do organisations need to create a policy for breastfeeding because in those societies women's bodies really are commodified and sexualised to a point where people have forgotten what breasts are for. And those that remember have to work hard to defend what is seen as a radical standpoint and feeding one's child becomes a Right rather than a normal bodily function...what a topsy-turvy world we live in!

La Dignidad Rebelde?

"For many in Mexico today the world seems, indeed to have gone mad. It is a world where politicians funnel eighty four million dollars from the national coffers into Swiss bank accounts, where protesters sew their mouths closed with black nylon string in politically motivated hunger strikes, where students take to the streets in angry riots, and where policemen slaughter dozens of campesinos and hide their bodies in shallow graves. Divorces and homicides are up, literacy rates and education down, and so many young people seem more engaged with what's happening in Friends than in their own back yards"

R. Lester, 2005

   Since the early 1980’s a slow, yet steady rebellion has been taking place throughout Los Altos of Chiapas, the body count of indigenous women, children and men as a result of supporting this rebellion or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time has crossed into 4 figures. Political prisoners are into the hundreds and Chiapas remains a militarized state away from the media gaze. Just like the recent public uprising and rioting in various countries, the Zapatista movement only made the world press when they appeared armed and used violence  (whether symbolic or physical) to get their message across. Since they put down their arms to continue in a non-violent struggle in the face of an uber-violent State one has to search them out to find them in terms of media coverage.

Chiapas remains within the top 5 most marginalized states of Mexico, alongside neighbouring Oaxaca it has a high indigenous population, is rich in natural resources and has an inconceivably huge class and racial divide resulting in a burgeoning middle class who appear apathetic to the abject poverty and starvation that surrounds them. 

My experience of this place over eight years has taught me that an imagined vision (and language) of a 1^st and 3^rd world (who ever got to be the 2^nd??), is nothing but a constructed concept. Break these concepts down and what do they mean any way? Perhaps just another label imposed by powerful governments to say “you are down there, and there you will stay”?... after all has anyone heard of a country that gets relegated to 3^rd or upgraded to 1^st?

What does poverty mean when you have no running water or electricity but you have a mobile phone and cable tv??

The force known to many as neoliberalism no longer has a distinct definition, not one that can be easily fitted into a sentence and applied willy nilly to any situation. It is better to think of neoliberalism as a phantom that haunts society and nation at every level. It is a creature that changes, morphs and reinvents so quickly that its hard to know where it will turn up next. Neoliberalism seeps into every aspect of if social and individual life. It is easy to look at the large scale political and economic actions that are rooted in the free market philosophy of survival of the fittest. The decrease of state funded services, universal benefits and praise of privatisation as the best option are apparent to even the most ignorant of shopping channel souls.  The commodification of everything from body parts to feelings – from those breasts that will make you a winner, the designer foetus that grows into a flawless success, to the happiness that can be bought in any shopping centre or online paradise – now that’s a little harder to pin down.

It’s the emotional and cognitive effect on the individual that is intrinsically linked to the collective social world, and vice versa which can only be tackled through theoretical analysis. Perhaps that is why the effects of neoliberal/free market/neo-capitalist forces on the emotional human being defy an understanding in the common world. If you can’t get hold of something, pin it down, give it a name, catch the phantom at work – how does it become part of the general consciousness?

We blame our unhappiness on whatever our media devices tell us is causing it. The strongest will survive, free market mentality tells us that unhappiness is caused by not having enough – it doesn’t matter what of, you just don’t have enough of it. This translates into the individual a feeling of never quite getting there, never being satisfied and always wanting better. Those who commodify the phenomena of health will tell us that this is depression, a chemical imbalance and that there’s a pill that can fix it and a good therapy or holistic religion for those that can afford it. Your diagnosis can then be traded to earn particular benefits and acceptance in the world you live in. 

Pedagogic theorist Peter Mclaren writes that our feelings are attached to the shimmering surface effects of signs and simulations, and the dull radiance that illuminates the spectacles of everyday. In other words, our feelings have been made external in order that we may recognise them only as emotions accepted by a particular society, at a particular time. This separation between internal and external feelings leads to social confusion. When there only exists a language to explain the socially constructed external emotions we receive on a superficial level, our profound internal emotions are alien to us, we have no way to explain them to ourselves and therefore no understanding of how we should react. As social and emotional beings we do react, and do so in an automatic sense, in ways that seem irrational and violent precisely because there is no other way to understand action that has no constructed meaning. We have lost all ability to recognise our internal repulsion and coping mechanisms to the world around us.

Whether it is Mexico, Egypt, Spain or the UK the world seems to be a mad place for no one dominant reason in particular. Perhaps the phantom neoliberal effect on the individual via the fetishism of commodification has reached its limits of subtlety, and the world is finally waking up to the madness it has caused. No longer can a shimmering surface effect explain away the levels of inequality and injustice that exist in the one world we all live in.