Of utmost importance.

Today’s post is going to feature a few nipples.

No pictures, unfortunately.

Just various stories featuring that particular body part. If for some reason you are uncomfortable with that, please feel free to skip this post.

While browsing the Internet for various news pieces, I stumbled upon one that stopped me in my tracks. It illustrated perfectly how I have been feeling recently. The “star” of this sensation is a 17-year-old girl, who went to school without a bra because of supposed sunburn. What does one have to do with the other? It turns out that she decided to skip the bra because the straps might have been too painful on her reddened shoulders. Or so she says. Instead, she just wore a loose top.

At school, she was called into the dean’s office, who suggested she put on an undershirt. A teacher supposedly heard a boy tell others that the girl was not wearing a bra and that he was making fun of her. The female dean (Can you imagine if the dean was male?) did not think the undershirt was sufficient, so she sent the girl to the nurse’s office for some band-aids to get the nipples covered.

As far as I know, adult women use band-aids in the summertime when they decide to go bra-less. In the instance of the 17-year-old, the girl felt so traumatized and “sexualized” that she broke down and called her mother to pick her up. Naturally, they both felt like the girl was unfairly treated, and the girl requested that her mother goes to the press with this story. And the mother swiftly obeyed.

15 minutes of fame here we come! The girl spins it as if she was being shamed for having larger-than-average breasts. She refuses to accept that she might have been a slight issue. She refuses to accept that the dean and teacher were looking out for HER. The district’s superintendent spoke out that she would consider adding “wearing an undergarment” as part of the dress code rules, but of course, the girl is not happy with that. She feels as if a girl does not want to wear a bra, she should not have to.

Because no one has to do anything anymore. We should all run around naked. Hold that thought. I will return to this.

The potential future solution by the superintendent led me to think of another angering post I read a week or so ago. Remember my post “We march for everything“? In that post, I wrote about teenagers marching for gun control, and there I voiced how they do not always see the whole picture, that they care about fame, and they are often just pawns in an adult game. The day after I wrote that I read an article that these very same students are protesting clear backpacks. They came back from spring break to a new safety precaution at their school – a see-through backpack. Instead of being happy about the fact that someone is actively trying to keep them safe, they decided it was not good enough. What did they do first? You guessed it! They went to Twitter to complain about their new packs.

We are not perfect. Appropriate solutions take a lot of time and research to implement. But in the case of the bra-less girl and these see-through backpacks, it is clear as day that some people do not want good solutions. They want solutions THEY want. Good or bad.

Now I will go back to nipples and nudity.

Let me start by saying that breastfeeding is a natural thing that women have been doing for a very, VERY long time. It is NOT a new phenomenon. But somehow, every now and then, we are made to feel as if it was. (See various photo campaigns from just last year here and here.)

What happened in this news piece? A woman wanted to breastfeed at a McDonald’s and she was told to do so in the bathroom. This fast-food chain is considered a family restaurant and some people might not wish to have their young children exposed to naked breasts and slipping nipples. However, the bathroom is supposedly too gross to take out your breast and feed the baby. The woman compared it to any other person eating in the toilet. What made my eyes roll in this story was that she ended up feeding the baby out in the open, at the mall, on an empty bench, by an escalator. And of course, she was so traumatized by the onlookers that she is now afraid to go out in public.

How is feeding your baby at a public restaurant any different from feeding it in the hall? People are going to look. If you did not want them to, you should have gone into the bathroom. Or covered yourself. Oh, but then she says she is also traumatized by other incidents in which people told her to cover up. So do you care, or not if people see your bare breasts? Please be consistent in your battle for your rights.

It might be a good idea to add breastfeeding stations at shopping malls and bigger venues. However, I feel lost once again. I have been bombarded with articles about breastfeeding being natural, and how it should be celebrated and done in public, because it is beautiful, yet then I see people complaining about not being able to do it privately.

So which is it?

Public, or private breastfeeding?

Safety in schools, or kid’s satisfaction?

Stay golden,

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Disclaimer: The picture used for this post is not my property. Source: here.