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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

The invisible mother
If everyone is staring at my boobs, why do I feel that I'm disappearing?
By Amy Halloran
[07/26/99]

Tom and Nicole and Colin and Kathryn
"Eyes Wide Shut" provokes literary couple Colin and Kathryn Harrison to spar over marriage, passion, jealousy and the lure of dangerous sex in a vanilla world.
By Colin Harrison and Kathryn Harrison
[07/23/99]

Column
Y'all take care now
30,000 feet above Jackson, Miss., I came to believe it was time to start a novel.
By Anne Lamott
[07/22/99]

Gen X's change of head
To the women who came of age in the '60s, oral sex was an act of great intimacy. To their daughters, it's about as intimate as shaking hands.
By Shari Thurer
[07/21/99]

The modesty debate
Wendy Shalit: Stop pressuring young women to have sex!
Leora Tanenbaum: Every girl is a potential "slut."
By Lori Leibovich
[07/21/99]

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Lately, however, it feels like much of the work of feminism has been done. I'm in my early 30s now, and pretty happy in my life. Young women seem to have a world of choices open to them, and all is right with the world. We can now do and be anything -- at least in the United States.

Anything, that is, other than use our breasts the way they were intended to be used.

Also Today The invisible mother If everyone is staring at my boobs, why do I feel that I'm disappearing?

The facts are dismal. Far too few American women nurse or keep at it for very long. I think part of it is out of a desire to get their "old" life back, which is, of course, a fantasy on par with guys thinking that their pizza will be delivered by two lusty coeds with a lot of time on their hands and a desire to get really good at giving oral sex. Yet in an effort to relieve the guilt of those women who choose not to, or maybe just as a good old-fashioned American response to breasts being used for something other than to sell cars, people are working themselves into a lather about women who feed their babies in the presence of others. A Southern California writer brought suit against Borders Books for kicking her out of a store in which you're invited to sit, read, drink coffee, listen to music -- anything except lift your sweater to feed your baby. And there's been a flurry of news about "Breastfeeding Gone Horribly Wrong," which is usually a story about the failure of medical professionals to provide any kind of support and guidance to mothers, but presented as a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to make human milk. Not very, if you have support and information and can get past the first six weeks.

I was not given away by anyone at my wedding and I fought rape and sexual harassment and I kept my own name after marriage (I'm changing it now, as a gift to my dear husband and child. He, of course, thinks I'm only doing it on the advice of an attorney.)

But it turns out that the most radical feminist act I've recently undertaken has been to nurse my child in public.

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