With all of the awareness that’s been raised about the benefits of breastfeeding and a mother’s right to feed her child, whenever and wherever she may need to, there are still people going out of their way to shame these people. It's wrong in so many ways, but it still happens all the time.
Instead of confronting one mom trying to enjoy a beach day directly with their outrage, one person chose to take their complaints about public breastfeeding to social media. Perhaps in an attempt to allow for a collective shaming. But the mother who was recorded — without consent — found the video.
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Isabel discovered the video of herself while scrolling on Facebook.
Isabel Lomax, a 24-year-old first-time mom, was scrolling through Facebook when she discovered a video of herself breastfeeding her baby on the beach. The caption for the video read: “Im not shaming woman who breastfeed their babies. I’m shaming the woman who breast feed in public with no respect to cover themselves up and just let their boobs hangout (nipple included) for everyone to see! COVER TF UP!!! I shouldn’t have to cover my son’s eyes and explain why your boobs are out and quite frankly I don’t want to see it either. Have some respect!”
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Isabel said the woman could have spoken to her in person.
Isabel used her TikTok to respond. “Imagine waking up, getting on Facebook and seeing this video of yourself, yesterday at the beach,” Isabel began. “Not only did this woman walk past me multiple times with her son, you had every opportunity in the world to say something to me. Not that I would have cared or stopped what I was doing, but you instead choose to post a video of me and my child on Facebook, publicly for the world to see.”
Isabel wanted to know, what if someone asked you to cover up with a towel when you ate on the beach?
Isabel addressed the cover up request. “What if you were told, the only way you could eat at the beach was if you were covered up with a towel?” she asked, illustrating how ridiculous the request is. Isabel shared that the post has since been deleted but she was grateful to the people who came to her defense in the comments. “Next time you see a mom breastfeeding her child in public, covered up or not, tell her she’s doing a good job.”
She also warned the woman about sexualizing breasts for her young son.
Lastly, Isabel said the woman’s son was 4 years old. “If you’re sexualizing breasts to a 4-year-old child, you’ve got you own set of issues,” she said. Mic drop.
This mother was loud and wrong in her decision to expose Isabel (especially so publicly), in her thoughts on covering up, and especially in her reasoning that her son needed to be “shielded” from a very natural occurrence. It would have been the perfect opportunity for her to explain breastfeeding to her child.
Isabel's comments section was full of support.
Half a million people have watched the video with many expressing their support for Isabel.
“Beautiful!” one user replied. “I teach my boys it’s amazing that Moms can do this and they can see it but don’t stare because it’s impolite.”
Another mom offered her staple response for these scenarios: “I always tell people to put a shirt over their head so they don’t have to see me lol.”
