Move over, #BernieBros, there’s a new hashtag in town. Ever since Ohio woman Margaret Ellen Bradford was photographed breastfeeding her daughter Harper at a Bernie rally, #BoobsforBernie has been taking over Twitter. The photo went viral, and Bradford received “a lot of hate mail and a lot more love mail,” she wrote on Facebook. While Bradford and the #BoobsforBernie hashtag have garnered a lot of enthusiastic support, she’s also received death threats. Haters have argued that Harper should be taken away and have called Bradford an “uneducated lowlife hick.”
Seriously?
As much as I am obsessed with the #BoobsforBernie hashtag and will probably attach it to all my future tweets regardless of relevance, it’s shocking that in 2016 public breastfeeding is still an issue. What, exactly, is so controversial about a woman feeding her child? As Bradford herself put it, “There is no, ‘I’m feeding you in 10 minutes.’ It’s, ‘I’m feeding you right here, right now, or you’re screaming…’ A hungry baby is a hungry baby.” The right to publicly breastfeed is legally protected in 47 states. Now we’ve just got to tackle the cultural prejudice that polices women’s bodies and biological processes.
Bernie and his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders publicly applauded Bradford. “As a society, we should never stigmatize women for breastfeeding in public,” Bernie tweeted. Maybe the popularity of #BoobsforBernie helped his victory in the Michigan primary? After all, boobs are a powerful force.
Image via Facebook and Twitter
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