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When Jenny Tamas was growing up, she never saw women breastfeed.
"Besides seeing the odd photo in National Geographic here and there, I never, not ever, saw women breastfeeding," she wrote on Instagram. "And I think that's one of the main reasons I am such an advocate for breastfeeding – in a sense, it's my apology to all women."
She's sorry because, before, she was filled with ignorance and judgments:
"I used to believe breastfeeding moms did it for attention, I mean why else would you pull out a boob in public? But if you're never exposed to something, how can you learn about it? Normalize it? Grow because of it? And then somewhere in those pivotal years of learning about my body, I learned something that I am still trying to unlearn: that my body and my breasts, are for one purpose only – to turn him on."
It's that lie, she wrote, that "has been one of the most destructive" she's ever known. "It's scarred me and an entire generation of girls."
So when she breastfeeds her own daughter, Lilly, she is apologetic. Like the countless other moms trying to normalize breastfeeding today [4], she has promised not to let her child be "one of those girls." She's sorry, yes, but she's also filled with pride.
Jenny concluded: "I am a part of motherhood, yes, but also a part of breastfeeding, which requires unspoken acts of self-sacrifice as I say goodbye to my once succulent perky breasts, that I used to believe were only for him, and say hello to something different."