By Lisa Gutierrez
The Kansas City Star
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) In a museum filled with artwork of bare-chested women, a breast feeding mom was being asked to cover hers.
The Kansas City Star
In the game of gotcha, this breastfeeding mom just won.
The mom, who goes by @vaguechera on Twitter, tweeted on Saturday that she had “flashed a nanosecond of nipple” while breastfeeding at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was “asked to cover up.”
She was “stunned into silence” by the request from a female employee, she later told the BBC, which did not name her.
In a museum filled with artwork of bare-chested women, she was being asked to cover hers.
“I had been attempting to be discreet and to feed under a cardigan, but with a distracted 1-year-old it can be challenging,” she said.
“The staff member was friendly and polite, but obviously asking me to cover up was still intrusive, unpleasant and embarrassing for me, as well as obviously ludicrous.”
To make that point she tweeted several photos of museum pieces that feature women’s breasts, including one of herself standing in front of a statue of a woman breastfeeding a baby.
She also photographed a statue of a man holding up a naked woman and captioned it: “‘I will throw you out of this museum with your naked breasts!’ ‘But I’m made of marble!’ ‘Oh sorry you’re fine then.'”
“On the upside,” she tweeted, “I had a lovely day at the V&A exploring depictions of breasts through the ages and making lovely mammaries. I mean memories.”
After the mom tweeted at the museum, director Tristram Hunt responded with an apology, which she accepted.
“Our policy is clear: women may breastfeed wherever they like, wherever they feel comfortable & shld not be disturbed,” he tweeted back.
Hunt told the BBC that staff members receive regular customer service training and would be reminded of the museum’s breastfeeding policy.
The mother said she had called attention to the incident on behalf of other moms who might not be as confident as she is breastfeeding in public.
“The shame and embarrassment caused by that kind of interjection when you are trying to feed could be crushing for a woman who was less Teflon than me,” she told the BBC.
