Tuesday, June 07, 2005

I'm a minority?!

I've never thought of myself as a minority, I've always thought of myself as just a regular person . . . I'm pretty plain as you can get. Blonde hair, blue eyes, raised in an upper middle class family in a small town, college graduate, married, child ~ just your plain Jane. But then today I read an article about a breastfeeding protest that took place outside ABC's studios in New York after Barbara Walters made a negative comment about a woman that was breastfeeding on an airplane next to her. I think it said 250 women went to the protest and openly nursed their child in front of the studio to get back at her. Now, I think that's ridiculous in itself, but what got me was there was a line in the article about how mom who breastfeed in public can be grouped into the same group as multicultural couples or gay couples being ashamed to walk down the street hand in hand because it makes other people uncomfortable. Now personally I don't have a problem if someone wants to nurse their child in public ~ more power to them, but I don't really feel comfortable with it. I've only done it once and I didn't feel ashamed or like I was doing anything wrong. I don't think anyone (other than the people sitting at the table with me) noticed, but they could help but notice my child who was screaming because she was hungry. I don't feel like I'm expressing myself very well, but it just made me stop and think when they compared breastfeeding, which I had always considered the best thing I could do for Alyssa, to something like homosexuality or mixed couple/marriage. Not saying that those are wrong, but I think about all the people that are against homosexuality and gay marriage and it just makes me sad to think that something that I do could cause those feelings of anger and hatred towards me. Because I've always been accepted and done the "right" thing or at least the non-controversial thing.

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