So Facebook and breastfeeding hit the headlines again as they take down Emma Bond’s photo of her nursing her premature baby for the first time, reportedly after someone marked the picture as offensive.  Brave Emma took a stand against the social media giant re-posting her photo to a pro-breastfeeding group to be met with overwhelming support from the nursing army. Go Mama’s!

She made appearances in the media and across the nationals demanding that breastfeeding be supported and celebrated instead of being treated as offensive nudity.  I admire the lady for taking this stand after what must have been the most terrible ordeal.

Emma’s baby was born 12 weeks premature and the initial prognosis was that her daughter, Carene, was unlikely to make it past a few days old.  One can only assume that Emma then took the decision to do everything she could to help her little girl survive.  To be faced with such a poorly baby born prematurely must have been awful.  I cannot imagine what Emma and her partner were going through.

Not only were they faced with everything that having a sick child in hospital comes with, she also decided to provide her baby with the essential milk she needed to survive. Becoming a pumping Mama under these stressful circumstances cannot of been easy. To maintain your supply you’d have to pump every 2-3 hours day and night to make sure you have enough milk.  What she has achieved was an amazing thing and it has been brought down to the fact that in the picture you could see a large part of the areola or nipple. Really?

facebook

There are so many offensive pictures and groups all over Facebook, including an anti-breastfeeding page that labels nursing ‘mouth rape’.  These are still standing despite requests to take them down.  Does Facebook not care unless the removal of the page may cause some controversy?  We all know that where there is a debate to be had, there is news and there is also traffic, website traffic that is!

What is the lifeblood of Facebook, but traffic and engagement.  They don’t care what the debate is, or whether they may have to make a slight modification to their procedures as a result.  They just see hits go through the roof as pictures attract hundreds of thousands of likes, and comment after comment on page after page debating the issue.

I’m left feeling that the sad fact is that this poorly little baby and her mother who should be celebrating how far they have come, didn’t take on Facebook in the breastfeeding debate to get their picture reinstated.  Inadvertently, they became part of what makes Facebook what it is. Facebook just lights the match, and watches it’s stats grow on a scale that only you and I can dream about.  But it’s all in the name of users being able to to share and express what matters to them’ of course.  Their vision suggests we are in the driving seat, but I think we are just bait for paying advertisers that score Facebook it’s hefty profits.

Do you think Facebook were right to remove the picture?  Do you think they were just implementing their policy or do you think they hoped it would kick up a media frenzy?  I’d love to know what you think.

Previous articleBaby Swimming with HUGGIES® Little Swimmers®
Next articleLittle Pudding’s 5 Month Old Baby Update

13 COMMENTS

  1. Brilliant post Zena and you are absolutely spot on. Facebook are absolutely despicable over their treatment of breastfeeding mothers. Breastfeeding is normal and natural and censoring such pictures is in stark imbalance to the the other appalling images it judges to be ok.

  2. I have always thought Facebook to be fairly despicable, for a variety of reasons. This latest travesty does not surprise me, and confirms my view that Facebook should be avoided by all right-thinking folk.
    Take a stand, all you lovely, natural, normal, breastfeeding mums (how did the human race ever survive before bottles were invented?!), and refuse to use Facebook. There are plenty of other ways to communicate with each other online.

  3. It is ridiculous when anybody, let alone a social media site gets all in a fluster over something as natural and normal as breast-feeding. When will they realise that is primarily what they are there for.

  4. It makes me so sad that things like this happen, when I see so many actual offensive things on FB. A mother breastfeeding is the most natural and lovely thing – why would you find this offensive?! Great post Zena 🙂

  5. It annoys me when things like this happen so I tend to keep quiet. Why people get in a fluster about something so natural is beyond me, if they dont like it, dont look at it x

  6. What I want to know is who on earth are these people who report images of breastfeeding as offensive? How on earth a mother feeding her child the way nature intended is offensive to anyone completely baffles me. And the fact that the image got removed only fuels these crazy people into thinking they are right and it is offensive. So wrong in so many ways. Great post xx

  7. Makes me mad facebook are crazy to remove it was going to do a post as my daughter was 10 weeks early.

  8. I can’t believe in this day and age that so many people forget what is absolutely natural in life. That they can take something that is so pure and basic in life and deface it. I can only think these types of folk weren’t breastfed themselves and wouldn’t survive if they got lost in the woods.

  9. I think it’s total rubbish (I could swear here) that they removed that photo, I don’t know if it is purposely to cause ‘drama’ or just someone blindly following bad guidelines. I also find it sad that someone reported it?!
    I just hope that something good comes out of it and encourages more people to share pictures to help society realise that breastfeeding is normal and there is no need to get offended about a bit of boob.

  10. Drives me mad when I hear of some of facebook removing breastfeeding pics while leaving things that are actually offensive in place.

  11. It’s sad that some people just can’t accept breastfeeding as a natural act. It is, after all, what women’s breasts were made to do!

Comments are closed.