Even though it is a late reaction, but as the ancient proverb goes: ‘better late than never’. In the year 2018, a Malayalam magazine “Grihalakshmi” took a brave step when it captured a model breastfeeding a child for its cover.
The Kerala-based model Gilu Joseph stunned everybody when she posed for the cover looking like she was breastfeeding a baby. This was followed by a number of protests, hate campaigns and even a cased filed in Kollam against the publishers of the magazine for violating human rights.
Here again, steps in the politically and morally correct society, which on the one hand fights for the right to expression, but on the other hand stops us from expressing our thoughts, feelings and raising our voices, by judging us for our choices.
Trolls are everywhere! We can find memes in every other thing, but in the course of time, society forgets that by “moral policing” someone it is ruining her mental as well as emotional health, which is not justifiable in any manner.
Stop Moral Policing Women
It is the same society which supported a girl for opening up against a sexual assault, stood by the feminists who supported her, but at the same time, shames some other girl for her work.
Ours is a society where the majority lives to watch “how its done”. They will watch it in private, enjoy it to the fullest, but for the outer world, the same majority acts as a moral police as soon as they log out of the incognito tab.
Here, the patriarchs don’t want to understand that the debate is not to do with the cover, but the freedom to breastfeed openly, freely.
When a woman is being shamed for breastfeeding her baby in public or some airplane or train coach, the hate mongers not only shame the mother, but they are also condemning the baby for merely eating its food.
Babies Only Know Hunger
According to the pediatricians around the globe, the best and most nutritious food for a baby for the first six months is a mother’s milk. If anyone denies a woman the chance to breastfeed, they are denying that child the right to fill its tiny tummy.
See the irony: while shopping or mall-hopping, we usually crave for food and instantly head to the nearest food joint, why does nobody notice this? Why is the protocol of not eating on the streets or out in the open not dismissed?
I understand the fact that somethings should be better kept under the wraps, but a child as tiny and timid as a two-month-old is, doesn’t realise if it is in the warm coziness of home or in a restaurant or flight or train coach.
What the baby realises is the songs of hunger and the craving for its favourite food, as well as longing its favourite person i.e, the mother.
We need to understand that we have no right to control anyone for their choices. Instead, we should try and make our own lives more beautiful. As a society, we should appreciate each other; we ought to clap, support, hoot for each other!