Would you eat your dinner on the toilet?

Adfreak featured these hard-hitting ads, created by two students at the University of North Texas, Johnathan Wenske and Kris Haro.

The copy reads, "Would you eat here? By law, breastfeeding mothers are not protected from harassment and refusal of service in public, often forcing them to feed in secluded spaces such as public bathrooms. Contact your state and/or local representative to voice your support for breastfeeding mothers, because a baby should never be nurtured where nature calls."

From their Behance page:

Welcome to the When Nurture Calls campaign. This aims to protect a mother's right to breastfeed her baby in public by striving to pass the bill HB1706, which will protect breastfeeding mothers from harassment and discrimination when they choose to nurture their child in public.  To start off, there would be print ads placed on the back of bathroom stalls. These ads create a "reflection" of the stall facing it, and show mothers who have been harassed to the point where they feel they have no other option but to nurture their baby in the restroom as to not offend anyone.

It's an old argument, in lactivist circles, but the proposed media placement of these ads is brilliant, personalizing the message in a really powerful way.

You can support the campaign at whennurturecalls.org.

Classic Benetton ad is still freaking out the squares

This infamous Benetton ad from 1989, by Creative director, copywriter, art director and photographer Oliviero Toscani, is still stirring up shit. A prominent Facebook breastfeeding advocacy page reports,

"Clearly Facebook doesn't like this image. This iconic, 23-year-old ad from UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON has been pulled down from countless accounts now, and [two users] have both been banned from Facebook for posting it, [one] for 24 hours, and [the other] for 3 days. It has been removed from this page several times."

A similar page has also been blocked for it.

Back in the '80s, Benetton was attempting to blow people's minds with its rather blunt attempts to show "interracial" love, understanding and equality. I wonder if people reporting on this image were more offended by the nipple itself, or that it showed a black woman nursing a white baby?

Nonetheless, Facebook remains a bastion of American breast anxiety.

See more classic Benetton ads here.

F'd Ad Fridays: Birthing and nursing o'lanterns

I actually like these, although others may find them weird. The first one would be a great way to freak out your neighbours, depending on the uptightness of your community. The second is just damn cute.

They were created by Blessed Birth Doula Services and shared by my super-lactivist FB friend Emma.

Happy Halloween weekend, everyone.

Postscript: Apparently birthing pumpkins are a thing this year. But most seem like they were done by guys.

"It's like the movie 'Super-size Me' ... only with breastmilk."*

(* Headline by Emma K., from her FB feed)

He already looks kind of "super sized"

The man on the right is Curtis, a first-time dad. The woman on the left is Katie, mother of Curtis' child (her third) and a doula, childbirth educator, and lactation educator.

As a publicity stunt to promote the health benefits of human breastmilk, the two of them are embarking on a public experiment: to see how long Curtis can survive eating nothing but Katie's milk. They are documenting it on a blog called "Don't Have a Cow, Man!"

Some people will be instantly repulsed by this project. Others, perhaps, a little titillated. But Curtis insists it's just a natural thing to do with all the excess frozen milk Katie banked (but won't need now) in case her premature baby was unable to nurse.

"I grew up in a very rural area, on a mostly self sufficient farm/ranch surrounded by all manner of animals. Pigs, sheep, goats, horses, cattle, and chickens not to mention all of the wildlife on the property.  I was raised around the birth and rearing of animals. We had milk cows and milking goats the milk of which I have drank fresh and unprocessed as it is intended. We also butchered all of our own meat from beef, pork, and venison, living off of what we had to survive.

We were raised that breastfeeding is perfectly natural and the surplus milk is to be used not wasted. We even had a milking goat that would reach her head back and feed off of her own udder as her kid ate. I see nothing disgusting or wrong with drinking my own species milk (especially that of my wife), it is nothing more than a healthy meal.

Since some people have asked, my wife is currently breastfeeding our baby until she is two years old which is far beyond the shelf life of frozen milk. Waste not want not."

 As a healthcare professional, Katie did the math:

"How much breast milk will it take to nourish a grown man? How many days can a grown man life off breast milk comfortably?

Stats:
6'4"
185lbs

-Curtis needs approximately 2,000 calories a day.

-Average breast milk contains between 18-22 calories per ounce. My breast milk has been tested and contains approximately 27-32 calories per ounce.

-Roughly Curtis will need to drink 66 ounces of breast milk a day to get about 2,000 calories.

-We will keep track of the number of ounces he drinks daily.
-We will also monitor his weight to be sure he isn't losing weight.
-No other food will be eaten"

Yeah, it's crazy. I really wonder how long he'll last. As a lactation consultant, Katie will know that human milk contains a very powerful laxative, to help clean out the baby's digestive system. (Good luck with that, Curtis!)

Another interesting fact is that milk contains natural pot-like drugs, endocannabinoids that calm the baby and promote sleep. (And which some veganism advocates, comparing it to opiates, claim is the reason ovo-lacto vegetarians can't quit cheese.) So the effects on Curtis' brain could be... blissful?

I guess I'll be following this blog. It's certainly going to be more interesting than watching Morgan Spurlock puke out of his car at the drive-thru...

UPDATE: They have quit the experiment and are sharing the milk with a needy mom of multiples.
 

Top 10 of 2010, Part 2

My five most popular posts of the year, according to Google Analytics.

5. Unreal Beauty (June 28)

I never really set out to write a feminist blog, but every time I cover women's issues in advertising I get lots of hits.

This one was about Dove's campaign for real beauty as a celebrated PR move, contrasted with a leaked casting note that specified: "MUST HAVE FLAWLESS SKIN, NO TATTOOS OR SCARS! Well groomed and clean...Nice Bodies..NATURALLY, FIT Not too Curvy Not too Athletic."

I thought it was a brand fail. Others disagreed. Lots of people read it.

4. A Case of Blondes (May 19)

This post was my reaction to an outdoor ad I saw on Bank St. just before the May 24 weekend. While not particularly remarkable on its own, it got be ruminating about the "blonde" sexy/ist cliché in beer branding and advertising and looking for other examples.

I guess it was some good collecting, because it got picked up by my favourite social science blog, Sociological Images — which brought my blog (then still called "Change Marketing") to a whole new audience.

3. Copywronging (Feb 9)

I kind of felt bad when I wrote this post. The cause is a good one, and I'm sure that the campaign was heartfelt. But this was one of the most unintentionally awful copwriting fails I have seen in ages.

You need a fairly sick (or cynical) mind to see it, so it's only natural that this post was picked up by  Copyranter — giving this post a big boost in traffic.

If cybertip.ca ever saw my post, I hope it helped them improve their campaign.

2. Should fashion models come with warning labels? (Feb 26)

Another "women's issues" post, this one is about attempts to regulate the portrayal of women's bodies in the media — both by banning "too skinny" models, and by putting warning labels on images that have been heavily Photoshopped.

I was actually fairly circumspect about the issue, but any discussion of sexism in advertising seems to generate lots of interest and debate.

1. The Facebook Double (D) Standard on Obscenity (November 18)

My most popular post of the year by a margin of about 2,000 unique visits, this one came out of nowhere. It was one of many anti-Facebook rants — published on Facebook, of course — calling them on their apparent war on breastfeeding pictures in profiles.

Basically, the author compared several semi-pornographic cleavage pics, found on a simple Facebook search, to several innocent breastfeeding portraits (like the one above) that had been quickly removed as "obscene".

There is a very large lactivist community in social media, and when I managed to screen cap this note before it was deleted — and put it on a third-party medium — it got picked up by many of the communities who had experienced similar selective censorship.

Some were surprised to see a man taking up this cause. Those who read regularly know it is one of my most heartfelt pet issues.

So, what can I learn from my blog's most popular posts? Maybe I should offer Jezebel or Feministing my services as token male correspondent ;)

Merry and safe Christmas, everyone. I'm on vacation until the New Year, but may post sporadically if I miss you all too much.

Cheers,

- Tom