April 1, 2016 the Racquette
Opinion & Editorial
Marcus Wolf Publisher
Marcus Wolf Dr. Susan Novak News Editor
Katie Daloia Staff Writer
Kirsten Meehan Op/Ed Editor
Kirsten Meehan A&E Editor
Jay Petrequin College Life Editor
Mark Guido Comics Editor
Michelle Trumpet Sports Editor
Katie Wilson Creative Writing Editor
Grace Milusich
Community Page Editor
Marcus Wolf
Financial Advisor
Imani Snowden Public Relations
Jean-Michael Huallanca Liana Ngai Kevin Agyakwa Staff Writers
Rebecca Augustine Forest Ashley Kevin Agyakwa Jean-Michael Huallanca Sean Pent Fallon Ellen Ricks Contributing Writers
Dan Bronson Julia Zakaryan Sandra Cruz Steve Aponte Katie Agar
Staff Photographers
Alexis Orlopp Katie Daloia Rebecca Augustine
Nowadays if you ask most people how they feel about breastfeeding, they will most likely tell you that they support it and see the nutritional benefits that come with it. However, if you were to ask those same people how they feel about public breastfeeding, their responses are most likely going to change. Some people may still see the nutritional value of feeding the baby, while others will say “that needs to be done in private.” I would like to think that by 2016, the general consensus would be that women can feed their babies wherever and whenever they want to. Unfortunately, women are often mocked and shamed in public for doing something as simple as giving their child lunch. Of course it is perfectly okay to give their child milk from a bottle in public, but feeding your child their exact same milk directly is just taking things too far. Social media users on Facebook and Twitter have furthered this argument by creating hashtags and updating their own newsfeeds about why we shouldn’t be shaming
women for breastfeeding in public. Among them is Joey Salads, a video blogger who conducts social experiments. A few weeks ago, he released one about public breastfeeding. Salads went around with a mother, Emily, and her newborn to public places where she would sit and feed the infant. Some of these places included malls, bus stops and parks. Both men and women were highly offended by Emily feeding her child. In fact, one woman told her that she needed to find a private place, where she could go to feed her child so she wouldn’t upset the rest of the public. Throughout the entire experiment, only one elderly woman agreed with Emily; that breastfeeding was a natural thing and that babies do in fact need to eat. Maybe it is true that there are now private places for women to feed their children, just as businesses and public spaces have designed sections where people can go to smoke. But where are these places? In restaurants, the hostesses doesn’t usually ask “Breastfeeding or non?” However, it is actually more likely that while everyone else can sit nicely in a restaurant to enjoy their meals,
the babies have their dinner in in the back seat of a car, or maybe even a bathroom stall. Another issue surrounding this topic is why people find breastfeeding offensive in the first place. Women regularly wear low-cut shirts that expose their breasts, and that is rarely seen as offensive. Is it the physical act of feeding a baby? Or is it the exposure of a woman’s nipple? Today, women all over the Internet are spreading a “Free the Nipple” campaign, stating that men can expose their nipples in public, so why can’t they? It may be because a women’s nipple has become highly sexualized in today’s culture. Is that what makes people feel so strongly about public breastfeeding, because the sexual element of a woman’s nipple has been taken away? This may be a long shot, but the difference here is that mothers are just doing what is necessary. In addition to his original breastfeeding video, Salads released a second video, in which he not only went around with Emily while she was breastfeeding in public, but brought along a female model as well. After sitting on the same bench for only a short amount of time, the reactions given for Emily and the model proved to
be widely different. While many scoffed at Emily and once again told her “you should not be doing that here,” others called the model “sexy” and “hot.” When the idea of breasts as a purely sexual thing is taken away, people seem to panic. A woman’s breast can’t seem to be viewed as anything but a sexual object. And it’s not just men who see it this way. Salads said that “many women also feel that their breasts should not be shown to the public.” Some of the men in Salads’ video said the model couldn’t help the breast exposure because “that’s just the way her shirt is.” Just the way her shirt is? So if Emily were to wear a breastfeeding shirt with a hole cut out, would it then be socially acceptable? Why can’t everyone just get along? I’m positive, that at some point in our early lives, most of us were breastfed, and it may have even been done in public. It is also safe to say that at one point in time we have all eaten a meal in public; do you like to be disturbed while eating? Personally, I don’t, I like to enjoy my meal with my family and friends and call it a day. A mother breastfeeding her child is just trying to do the same thing.
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Forest Ashley Kevin Agyakwa Sean Pent Fallon
Overheard at SUNY Potsdam
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It’s Just my Nipple
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Outside Union: “I’m thinking about Grad school” “Yeah and then maybe you could be the class of 2036 or something” “We got our midterms back in one of my classes (note - this was a really hard exam) and when the professor gave the test back to the kid behind me just went, ‘No, I don’t really want it, thanks.’”
Correction from last week’s issue Page 12- In the artical “Soca Loca hosts pagaent to Raise Funds for Club:” the Soca Loca pageant is to raise awareness for the club. It is not a fundraising event
Bishop hall around 10 Person 1: Do monkeys have eyebrows? Person 2: Yo don’t f*** with my day like that *watching a YouTube video in class, ad comes on first* Ad: “nothing quite catches your eye like yellow” Guy: “*yells* yeah because it’s ugly as f***”