Model, writer, poet, and flight attendant, Gilu Joseph was on the cover of Malayalam magazine, Grihalakshmi’s March issue. What made this particular cover stand out among the thousands of magazine covers featuring various models, is that Joseph was seen on the cover breastfeeding a child. This was a rather bold and revolutionary move, not just for print media but for us as a society as a whole. The cover was a clear attempt by the magazine to normalise and eradicate the stigma associated with breastfeeding in public, to bring its discussion to the mainstream instead of where it exists now, in hushed whispers between women.
An effort that was necessary and was noble, garnered unimaginable hate and trolling online. Although the ridiculous outrage over a harmless magazine cover doesn’t end there, attorney Vinod Matthew Wilson, of the Kerala High Court went on to file a case against Grihalakshmi magazine and Joseph herself. Wilson’s complaint alleges the picture is ‘lascivious’ in nature, and that it appeals ‘to prurient interests and tends to degrade the dignity of womanhood.’
Breastfeeding is not lascivious in nature and it isn’t degrading to women or the cause of women if a model is shown breastfeeding. This unwarranted outrage highlights the very need for a magazine cover of this nature to be published, to have an open conversation about our take on breastfeeding and how we sexualise it.
The outrage over it brings us to an important question, though. Why are we as a society outraged over an adult woman portrayed breastfeeding on a magazine cover that was shot with her consent and will, when we turn a blind eye to issues we should really be outraged about, like, rape and rape culture, period-shaming, sexism in homes and schools, the practice of dowry, acid attacks, sexual harassment, and everything else on the endless list of afflictions that affect women in our country?
It’s hypocritical that a society that worships and idolises motherhood, and insists it is something every woman should aspire to have, also insists that feeding a child, an important part of motherhood, is shameful and should only be done away from the public eye.
The most common argument against breastfeeding in public is that breasts can cause sexual arousal, and thus women should refrain from feeding their children where the wandering eye of a stranger might fall on her breasts, but it isn’t as simple as that. We aren’t protecting the woman from the lecherous eye of the stranger who will perversely stare at her breasts and sexualise the act of her feeling her child, we are instead protecting the lecherous stranger with a wandering eye.
Why is it that there has to be shame associated with things that are exclusively feminine, when women choose to enter public spheres? We shame women for feeding their babies, we shame them for menstruating, we shame them for wearing clothes that we deem un-Indian. Though, the irony is that, we shame them for not doing these things as well. Women who chose to not breastfeed their babies are demonised and hated, women who don’t bleed are treated like a burden or a broken toy and called baanjh, and women who cover themselves extensively are called prudes or behenjis. In the light of this, an uncomfortable question stares us right in the face, is it breastfeeding that we collectively take offence to, or is it women participating in public life? Babies get hungry, they need their mothers to breastfeed them, and when we tell women that cannot be done in public, we essentially get women to stay home. Home, the only place a lot of people still think women belong in.
This magazine cover is important in normalising breastfeeding, and it is essential to normalise it. There is nothing sexual about feeding a child, there is nothing shameful about it. Feeding a child is a crucial aspect or raising a child, and women who choose to have children cannot be forbidden from nourishing their children only because we as a society are too regressive. A child has a right to nourishment, and a mother has the right to provide her child just that, and no one should come in the way of that, not a lawyer, not society, and not even our patriarchal and archaic ideas.
Seeing a model breastfeed on a magazine cover isn’t something that should cause us shame, or offend us. We have plenty to be outraged about, plenty to feel shameful about. We are a patriarchal society that fails women, our collective shame, outrage, outcry, and action should focus towards that.
What the magazine and Gilu Joseph tried to do is necessary and revolutionary. They probably paved way for future discussion about breastfeeding and shed light on the importance of normalizing it. Their pioneering move will be a historic first in India’s ongoing fight for the cause of women, but the only way this monumental attempt will be fruitful is if we quit being obstacles in the way of progress, every time we are outraged and file cases over something as important and revolutionary as this, we set back the cause of women by a few thousand paces.