My husband showed me this Washington Post article last night which tells of Salma Hayek nursing another woman's baby while traveling in Africa. "You might want to blog about it," he said. And I would, except I'm not sure what to say. According to the article, a Maryland woman was investigated by police for nursing someone else's baby, but bloggers seemed to think what Hayek did was OK. Maybe because with those breasts, how could you say anything is bad?
Seriously, though, I think people have to check themselves when it comes to women offering the breast to children not their own. It's done, for all kinds of reasons, but I think many think it's somehow unclean (and we're obsessed with clean) or un-family-ish, as if breast access must be limited and must remain in the family. Whatever it is, the squeamish response points to the way I think we are disconnected from our bodies and overly fetishize motherhood.
Beyond that, I'm just glad Salma Hayek's character on 30 Rock didn't break up with Alec Baldwin, and I'm strangely happy she married that rich French guy.
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6 comments:
did you watch the video? it made me uncomfortable AND it moved me. this was a hungry baby in africa, and teh mom was watching. the baby ate because it was hungry. it wasn't the equivalent of berkeley nursing moms swapping babies in an effort to boost their immune systems (NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT) -- it was about sustenance. the baby wouldn't have nursed if it weren't hungry, and the mom could have taken the baby away and didn't. i wasn't sure how to react to what i was seeing (afterward, salma told an interviewer about how her grandmother had, in family lore, also breastfed a stranger's hungry children) but upon reflection i decided to go with YOU GO, GIRL. YOU AND YOUR AWESOME, PERFECT, LIFE-GIVING BOOBAGES.
I didn't see the video, but there IS something disconcerting about it and yet totally Right. But I bet you'd do the exact same thing. Can you imagine being in Africa and seeing a hungry baby and a mom who can't nurse and you're lactating and have a squishy, fat baby of your own and feeling with your hormone-filled brain like "Give me that baby! Let me feed that baby!" Because I think that's what we're supposed to do evolutionarily speaking, ESPECIALLY if you have boobs like Salma. As Tina Fey as Liz Lemon said, "I'd be thanking God all the time if I had breasts like that, too."
I did see the video, and what impressed me was how matter-of-fact she was. She wasn't making a big deal of it, and that sort of made me feel like none of us should make a big deal of it either. (Of course, she was on camera and all, but it seemed like a simple and humane gesture. There was something that needed to be done, and she could do it, so she did.)
Salma Hayek is so cool. Welcome home, Sue!
Your post brought me back to a sophomore literature class, when my teacher told us that one of the most controversial parts of "The Grapes of Wrath" was when Rose of Sharon nurses a man dying from starvation. I remember thinking that people were scandalized by the oddest things in the early part of the 20th century. Guess things haven't changed that much.
I think it's time to read The Grapes of Wrath......
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