Making breastfeeding social: the role of brelfies in breastfeeding’s burgeoning publics

Abstract

This chapter looks at the online circulation of breastfeeding selfies — or brelfies — and asks what their benefits might be in terms of making breastfeeding easier. It looks at brelfies as social media activism, drawing attention to embodied mothering, and upending assumptions about the solitary nature of maternity. It argues that brelfies provide a means through which breastfeeding can emerge from its existing practical, conceptual, and imaginary confines, by communicating images of breastfeeding to an almost limitless audience. Not only have brelfies attracted extensive media coverage, raising awareness about breastfeeding in the community, the images also provide a unique form of communication between breastfeeding mothers and their friends, families, and children, as mothers see themselves in the act of taking their own photos. By considering the implications of increased images of women breastfeeding in public — as well as the increased circulation of images of women breastfeeding generally — this chapter argues that brelfies invite us to reconceptualise breastfeeding in public as breastfeeding in social contexts more broadly: in short, to reimagine breastfeeding in relation to its many publics.

Images of women breastfeeding in public: solitude and sociality in recent photographic portraiture

“…It is the relational economy that this signifies of the mother — with other children, family, friends or strangers — that reminds us of the relational economy at the heart of the breastfeeding act: the mother and her breastfeeding child. By shifting the problematic from one that positions breastfeeding in private as opposed to breastfeeding in public, I suggest we dismantle the private/public binary and begin to think of breastfeeding in terms of a continuum from solitude to sociality, encompassing the variety of relational economies that this offers [ 27 , 28 ]. It is here that images of women breastfeeding while engaging socially with non-breastfeeding others — whether inside or outside the home — might have the most value; and where proxemic distance may begin to be traversed.…”

“…This gestural invitation to be seen is in and of itself an important advance on previous ideals of seclusion and invisibility. Brelfies have therefore made an important contribution to socializing breastfeeding through the digital sharing of their images [ 27 , 28 ].…”

“…The proliferation of celebrities breastfeeding not only attracted mainstream media to the brelfie phenomenon, but also led the way for women to seek out professional breastfeeding portrait photographers. It is curious to see how this pro-social celebrity trend might have encouraged women to record these moments as worthy of belonging to their personal archives, and to sharing their images with friends on social media, particularly following the more lenient policy toward breastfeeding images adopted by Facebook in 2015 after lactivist protests [ 27 ].…”

“…The definition of sociality here instead signifies adult company implying a sense of audience as well as companionship. See my article ‘Making breastfeeding social’ for further discussion of this point [ 27 ].…”

Embodied Online Activism: Breastfeeding Activism (Lactivism) on Facebook

“…Ferreday 2009, Tiidenberg 2015.We share pictures of ourselves breastfeeding our children ('brelfies'), experiencing the pleasure and navigating the exposure this kind of sharing can bring, including anger and fear of charges of 'indecency' (cf. Boon and Pentney 2015, Giles 2015, Tiidenberg 2016. We can also be 'vicariously traumatised' (Pearlman 1995) by the experiences of others: death of a fellow member's child, reports of neglect, abuse, illness or stories of birth trauma.…”