The lactating feminist

Mon, 26 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

I was born too late to actively participate in the women's movement -- not that it would have mattered anyway, since I was born in Jamaica, where you are still either "Miss" or "Mrs." and never "Ms." I didn't get to burn any bras, either, but I wonder how many people would have torched their bras, had they been LaPerlas or even Victoria's Secret numbers, instead of those old-fashioned bullet-breasted ones so readily available at the time. I've always considered myself a feminist, even when the mark of a really popular girl at my Southern Baptist liberal arts college was to say, "Oh, I'd never call myself, you know, a feminist," as if it were the c-word. In seventh grade, I even sported an "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" button on my Catholic school uniform.

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.

Salon.com > Roxanne Beckford Hoge

The lactating feminist