Hunker - you've got my vote.
Chardonnay - I noticed this too. I thought (with attachment/parenting baby/wearing hat on) 'what the feck is wrong with that woman? Just hold the baby in your arms you silly moo or get a sling'.
Though maybe she's trying to tone her arms by carrying all that weight around - get rid of her bat wings. Poor woman's having terrible post-baby body gremlins.
Back to the original issue - formula advertising and the sneaky ways Wyeth (who makes SMA) tries to circumvent the code (think Jordan in Hello! a few months back)..... the 'nay sayers' on banning formula advertising always take a peculiarly literal stance on this issue, along the lines of 'well seeing a formula advert isn't going to make you want to bottlefeed if you were already thinking of breastfeeding.'
I've always used this analogy to explain the issue: imagine if c-sections were being offered by private medical companies at prices ordinary women could afford.
Imagine that every time you opened a pregnancy magazine or turned on the telly there was an advert for c-section which idealised it - that didn't say anything about the pain or the risks - to you or your baby. Instead the ads would show lovely, smiling, relaxed mummies holding beautiful babies. The ad slogan would say something like: 'love the birth you have'.
Women would be able to go into Mothercare and there'd be a whole section of the store devoted to products useful for women having operative births - special pants that wouldn't catch on your scar and a huge selection of different types of non-prescription pain relief for afterwards.
'Congratulations on your new baby' cards would show handsome doctors wearing scrubs, holding up beautiful newborns to be admired.
Mummy dolls with little abdominal scars would be sold in Toys R Us. References to birth in children's stories would invariably involve doctors and operations.
And imagine that this was taking place in a society where midwives had lost their understanding of physiological birth and their skills at supporting women through it, so that so that those women who opted for vaginal birth often ended up having emergency c-sections or horrible experiences of labour (errr.... not too hard to imagine this is it?).
Imagine that the c-section companies were making huge profits, some of which they'd plough into setting up internet sites where women would be offered alongside advice on operative birth, subtly undermining information on coping with labour.
Imagine that the vast majority of women were choosing to have elective sections and that many of those who held out for a vaginal birth would go into it with trepidation, in ignorance of what happened in labour or how to help themselves cope. Many of these women would end up having emergency c-sections anyway, partly because of the poor care they'd get from midwives who were only experienced in supporting women having operative births, partly because their own fear of failure would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Women would share their terrible labour stories with each other and say 'don't feel guilty' for opting for an operative birth instead next time.
Women who'd had normal births would keep quiet for fear of making other people feel bad, or would say 'I was very lucky' so that the message trickled down to the next generation that uncomplicated vaginal birth was rare and not possible for the vast majority of women.
And anyone who stood up and said -
"no this is wrong, vaginal birth is better for most women and babies, that there are risks to c-section that women need to understand, that it's wrong for big companies should be making huge profits out of this, that women are being denied the chance to let their bodies do what they are designed to do, that it's leading to sickness, injury and expense to the NHS"
was labelled a 'natural birth fascist' and chastised for making women who really can't have vaginal births feel like failures, and for trying to deny women the freedom to choose how they birth their babies.
Well - that's the way I see it. I think this analogy is very useful.
Advertising doesn't work by a simple 'cause and effect' mechanism - it works through its impact on social mores. Formula marketing normalises and idealises artificial feeding and undermines breastfeeding in the most subtle and destructive ways. It needs to be banned - completely. I'm sick of all the talk about 'choice' - where powerful formula advertising and marketing exists and where formula feeding is a socially entrenched practice, even those women who wish to breastfeed will fail.
Right. Steps down off soap box feeling purged.
That's my ranting over for the weekend!