Target: Breastfeeding Woman a Threat to Safety?

Mary Martinez and her family go into a Target in Harper Woods, Michigan, and while there, their four-week-old baby gets hungry and needs to be fed. No big deal. For a nursing mom on the go, this is an easy situation to handle. No fuss, no muss, really. A baby's gotta eat, and for some women, that is what the breast is there for.

Some people, however, haven't caught on that boobs aren't just for sex any more. As women we are often snagged in that catch-22: Your breasts are there for the function of nourishing a baby, and should be hidden away until you do so; or, your breasts are too sexy, keep them away where the children won't see them! It's a mommy-twist on the Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

A security guard told Mary Martinez that she would have to leave because it was illegal to breastfeed in the Target store. Ms. Martinez, and her husband, Jose, knew that this wasn't the case. In fact, Jose Martinez is a Detroit Police Officer, and they told the security guard that they knew breastfeeding in public wasn't illegal. The security guard called the police on them.

The situation quickly changed from a quiet store where a mum was just doing what her baby needed, minding her own business and not bothering anyone, to a pretty big spectacle. Only, despite what the official statement from Target would have you believe, this wasn't caused by the breastfeeding mother. Target's statement says that, "This specific situation escalated to a point where we were concerned for the safety of our guests, so law enforcement was called." But the only person who was causing a scene was the security guard, who was clearly in the wrong, and painfully unaware of Target's policy or Michigan Law. Instead of calling the police, the manager should have stepped in, apologized, and sent that guard back to training. In the end, the only person who was embarrassed was Mary Martinez, who now feels that she can't go back to that store ever again after the three ring circus that the security guard rallied around her.

Another thing I fail to comprehend is where the Big Scary Threat was coming from. As Kate Harding so amusingly put it at Salon, "I'm sorry, did Mary Martinez whip out a gun and demand that everyone back off while she finished feeding her kid? Take hostages? Tell someone she'd planted a bomb?" This is what comes to mind when someone says that they were concerned for the safety of the other customers: an actual threat of bodily harm, not the possibility of discomfort that someone might get icked-out by having to see a newborn happily enjoying lunch. Target's employee messed this one up royally, and instead of owning up to it the company is trying to play this off with some smooth P.R. talk ... except they aren't that smooth.

Avoiding this whole deal could have been simple. All that had to happen is that Target should have made sure that all of the employees on staff were aware of store policies, because, like the manager said, store policy says that women are allowed to breastfeed inside the store. Then, those employees just had to do something else that is completely revolutionary, especially when women's bodies and what they do with them are concerned: Mind their own business.

Image: breastfeedingsymbol.org