The Mirror Test

I often think the mirror test is a great way to gauge how equitable a social practice or attitude is. For instance, all my life, complete strangers (usually men) have always exhorted me to smile. Once I told a friend that this was sexist. He disagreed. I asked him how often he gets told to smile, and asked what he thought the reaction of most men would be to having complete strangers shout "smile!" at them on the street. He agreed that it's pretty sexist. In this case the mirror test brings something that you already know to your attention: that women are expected to smile more than men and to be open to the commands/suggestions of complete strangers.

But recently I thought about a new application of the mirror test that illustrates something about the constellation of attitudes surrounding breastfeeding and mothering in general. Imagine if a mother was observed in a public place with a small infant (we'll say it's a boy), and when the baby got hungry and demanded to be fed, she pulled a bottle of formula out of her diaper bag and took him to the bathroom to feed him. I think people would be shocked and appalled at the thought of a mother sitting in the bathroom stall feeding her child. They would say things that suggested she was a bad parent for exposing her child to such an unsanitary environment. Especially for the purposes of eating.

Contrast this with the many, many people in our culture who think that breastfeeding shouldn't be allowed in public, and suggest that the mother take the child to the bathroom to "do that." Why would it be acceptable for a breastfed child to eat in the bathroom? Do we really view breastmilk as being so closely akin to pee and shit? Because if that's the general idea, then I think I'm starting to get a sense of why it's such a repulsive idea to so many people...