At the beginning of May, Maÿlis, a young mother is slapped by another woman while she is breast-feeding her six-month-old baby in a queue at a relay point in Bordeaux.
Still in shock, she decides to tell about her assault in a video posted on Doctissimo's Instagram thread.
In a few days, the video goes viral and thousands of women are mobilizing on social networks to support it by posting photos of them breastfeeding their child.
A petition in support of Maÿlis launched in the wake even collects more than 26,000 signatures.
In 2018, another mother was accused of breastfeeding her baby while she was in a waiting room of a CAF in Amiens. She finally had to leave the place. Stories similar to these two women, there are still too many. In France, however, breastfeeding in public places is not illegal. So why are so many young mothers forced into hiding to breastfeed their babies? Or do they sometimes experience situations likely to traumatize them when they risk discreetly pulling out a nipple in public to appease their child's hunger?
For Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, philosopher, professor of political science, equality-diversity officer at the University of Reims, and author of “Seins. In search of liberation ”(Éditions Anamosa), this injunction to conceal women's breasts and their nipples refers to a millennial social reality. “Women in our patriarchal societies are not in possession of their bodies. They have always been locked into two functions: sexual and maternal. It is a way of preventing them from doing what they want with their own body and in particular their breasts, which are the emblem of these two functions. Their breasts must remain in the private sphere, ”she explains. A societal yoke which is still far too anchored in mentalities since, according to a study dating from 2015,41% of women in France find it “embarrassing” to breastfeed in public spaces.
