A London mom was recently breastfeeding her 1-year-old son in the courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum when a staff member asked her to 'cover up' while doing so. Yeah, it's 2017 and we're still dealing with this.
The woman, whom we know only by the Twitter handle Vaguechera, had apparently only flashed a "nanosecond of nipple" when the incident occurred, and it goes without saying that she was just a little bit dismayed. After all, not only is breastfeeding one of the oldest and most natural practices known to humankind, it's also protected by law in the UK, even in museums. To make matters worse, this all took place on August 5th - smack dab in the middle of World Breastfeeding Week.
The V&A found itself in serious hot water over this one, and in addition to issuing an official apology to the mom on behalf of both the museum and its director, Tristram Hunt, they had a lot of explaining to do after the woman's clever Twitter post on the issue went viral with more than 7 thousand retweets. Scroll down to find out how she did it, how the museum responded, and what people are saying about it.
This mom was asked to 'cover up' while breastfeeding her son in a museum
However the place was full of nude women sculptures, so she thought of the perfect response
She took some photos of bare-breasted sculptures to show how ironic it was that she was not allowed to breastfeed there
She also added some hilarious captions to ridicule the situation even further
The tweets got shared so many times that the museum had nothing left to do, but publicly apologize
As breastfeeding is protected by law in the UK and other countries, many users were in support of her too
Others, however, clung to an alternative rhetoric
