Justice

People Love This Woman's Viral Wedding Breastfeeding Picture

March 1st 2016

A 21-year-old Australian blogger, who posted a picture of herself breastfeeding at a wedding, is the latest mother to win praise for championing the cause of breastfeeding in public.

"Just me and my baby having a drink. (Gotta do what you gotta do, wedding or not),"Haddas Ancliffe wrote in a recent Instagram caption that included the hashtag #NormalizeBreastfeeding.

The post from February 7, which has nearly 2,900 likes, recently picked up media coverage after it sparked controversy and bickering between commenters — firmly planting itself in the midst of an ongoing debate over the appropriateness of public breastfeeding.

"It's cool you're breastfeeding but don't need to show it to the world. Attention whore," wrote one commenter. "This has made me feel extremely ill," chided another.

Most of the post's comments, however, were fervently in support of, Ancliffe, who calls herself Dahs. "You're absolutely beautiful and it's so nice to see you put your baby's needs before your own (regardless of other people's warped over sexualised thinking)," a commenter noted.

"Porn culture is destroying so much of society, it's getting to the point where people find a child feeding gross because they only see the human body sexually," the same commenter added.

The breastfeeding controversy.

Breastfeeding in public has recently become a source of controversy, and a facet of a broader conversation surrounding body positivity and cultural standards of beauty and sexuality. Ancliffe's post isn't even the first to spark discussion about breastfeeding at weddings in Australia, either. In late January, a picture of a bride breastfeeding 15 minutes before she walked down the aisle sparked a similar conversation and debate on social media — as viral posts involving women breastfeeding in public often do.

The issue has been debated publicly in Australia as recently as last week, when dozens of mothers showed up at a Bendigo, Victoria mall to breastfeed en masse after a mother was recently asked to move to a mother's room to feed her child.

[It's] to show support for this one young mum, and every other mum who has ever been told what she's doing is wrong," Van Zyl told the Bendigo Advertiser.

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