Marginalized Milk: “Extreme” Nursing, Milk Exchange, and Erotic Breastfeeding

Abstract

This chapter explores breastfeeding and breastmilk uses and behaviors that have been perpetuated as “spectacle” by mainstream media, looking at how this “othering” polarizes people and undermines public acceptance of breastfeeding. Foss examines media’s framing of extended breastfeeding as “extreme” with frenzy over the documentary Extraordinary Breastfeeding, the controversial 2012 Time magazine cover featuring a mother and her breastfeeding 3 year-old, and the Game of Thronesepisode in which Noblewoman Lysa breastfeeds her very articulate older child. Other breastfeeding-related examples are also addressed, including the distribution of human milk and erotic breastfeeding. Foss concludes that public backlash to different “deviant” breastfeeding acts are gendered, reinforcing power disparities between the public and private, male and female desires, and differing conceptualizations of the female body.