The document discusses the perception of breastfeeding women as "monstrous" due to their leaky, fluid bodies challenging notions of a sealed, autonomous self. It analyzes Rineke Dijkstra photographs of new mothers that highlight their ambiguous, transitional states compared to images of Kim Kardashian that depict her smooth, sealed body. The fluidity and leakiness of breastfeeding women's bodies disrupt social order by reminding us that boundaries can be breached and we rely on others, in contrast to Western ideals that value independence and control over one's body.

1. 1
How might an artist articulate the body and milk of a breastfeeding
mother, when they are persistently viewed as ‘monstrous’?
Women are out of control, uncontainable, unpredictable, leaky: they are, in short, monstrous.
(Shildrick: 2002: 31)
A woman, in conversation with her friend, said that she was uncomfortable with her friend’s
two year old son and lifting up her top to breastfeed. That woman was me and I often wonder
why I felt negatively over her breastfeeding choices. The overwhelming advice to mothers is
to breastfeed, yet Britain has the lowest rate in the world of women still breastfeeding after
a year1 and only a third of British women are still breastfeeding after 6 months (Brown: 44).
The reasons why are complex and differ greatly, especially when region and backgrounds are
taken into account. Physical and emotional issues as well as the breast being highly fetishized
in Western culture (Young: 77), are all potential reasons for stopping. There is perhaps a
dichotomy of motherhood verses sexuality in parts of British culture and the idea that a
woman could enjoy breastfeeding is frowned upon (Young: 85) (Warner 1976: 71). However,
I will focus on two potential reasons: that the milk and body of a breastfeeding woman is seen
as threatening the autonomy of self, and her leakiness is seen to contaminate the order of
our society. Grosz’s ideas on the fluidity of the female body (Grosz 1994) and Shildrick’s ideas
of the ‘monstrous body’ breaching the boundaries of self (Shildrick 2002), will be used to
discuss RinekeDijkstra’s series Mothers, Kim Kardarshian and socialmedia. This essaywillend
with a discussion on the ambiguities of motherhood.
Kim Kardashian has 110 million Instagramfollowers, ranked 5th in number
of followers in 20172, and 59.5 million twitter followers. In 2010 she
tweeted:
‘I’m at lunch and the woman at the table next 2 me is
breastfeeding her baby with no cover-up’
When questioned…
‘My sister breastfeeds! It’s a normal beautiful thing, there’s
nothing wrong with it, but she covers herself up not w her boobs exposed3’
Whilst Kim Kardashian occasionally shows images of her two children on
Instagram, there are curiously no images of her pregnancy on her feed.
Instead there is image after image of her smooth, perfectly sealed, body.
1 Only 1% of British mothers are still breastfeeding at 1 year old. The Lancet, Vol 387 January
30, 2016, p.404
2 http://uk.businessinsider.com/instagram-top-10-people-2017-2017-11/#1-selena-gomez-
10
3 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/kim-kardashian-slams-public-
breastfeeding-days-sister-kourtney-pumps-breast-milk-tv-article-1.180038
Figure 1
Instagram, 29th
Jan 2018

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Figure 1 was posted on Instagram when Kardashian was about 8 months pregnant. According
to her Instagram feed, breasts are acceptable in public as long as they are sexualised: pert,
clean and blemish-fee. Breastfeeding is only allowed under certain rules: at home and in
private.
There are weekly reports of women being made to feel uncomfortable with breastfeeding in
public. Perhaps one of the many reasons is the leakiness of the body of a new mother: milk
has no fixed boundary; it is slippery and leaky, not the solidness of self (Betterton 1996: 133).
Mary Douglas argues that nothing in itself is dirty but something can be considered ‘matter
out of place’ (Douglas: 35) and upsetting to the order of our society (Longhurst: 30). Grosz
uses Douglas’s arguments on dirt to consider why bodily fluids are so problematic:
Fluids affront a subject’s aspiration toward autonomy and self-identity. They
attest to a certain irreducible “dirt” or disgust, a horror of the unknown or the
unspecifiablethat permeates, lurks, lingers,and at times leaks out of the body,
a testimony of the fraudulence of impossibility of the “clean” and “proper”.
(Grosz: 193).
Breastmilk could therefore be seen as a reminder of bodily fluids and that the body can be an
ambiguous, slippery entity. Breastfeeding itself can be uncontrollable: on-demand with no
routines, public or private, at odds with the ‘clean’ and ‘proper’ routines required by our
society. Although all humans leak to one degree or another, Grosz argues that it is female
fluids which are considered the most contaminating for men (Grosz: 206). Fluids are strongly
associated with the body of a breastfeeding woman and seen to be inferior to what is solid
and concrete, which is associated with the male (Longhurst: 31). Grosz uses Kristeva’s ideas
of polluting and non-polluting fluids (Kristeva: 71) and argues that it is specifically female
seepage which is associated with the unclean and therefore infection and disease:
It is women and what men consider to be their inherent capacityfor contagion,
their draining, demanding bodily processes that have figured so strongly in
cultural representations, and that have emerged so clearly as a problem for
social control. (Grosz:197)
The body of a new mother is alsoone that can appear out of control, leaking urine4 and blood,
as well breastmilk. Not only are the fluids of a new mother considered unclean, they remind
us that bodily boundaries can be breached; that the outside and inside can intermingle and
that which is seen to be unclean actually comes from within us (Kristeva: 9).
The breastfeeding body is in a liminal state, it is not quite one thing or another, neither with
child nor without (Longhurst: 33). Perhaps, therefore, the breastfeeding body could be seen
as a type of fluidity which threatens the ‘clean and proper body’ (Grosz: 193)? The enlarged
4 Apparently 25% of US women have a pelvic floor disorder. (Jennifer M. Wu, Camille P.
Vaughan, Patricia S. Goode, David T. Redden, Kathryn L. Burgio, Holly E. Richter and Alayne
D. Markland, Obstet Gynecol, Prevalence and Trends of Symptomatic Pelvic Floor Disorders
in U.S. Women, 2014 Jan: 123 (1): 141-148)

3. 3
breasts, the swelled stomach and the bleeding for months after labour all mark woman as in
a state of flux (Longhurst: 41). Just as the pregnant woman is obviously joined, breastfeeding
alsobreaks the autonomous boundary of skin. Shildrick’s understanding of the pregnant body
could be used to understand the milk and body of the breastfeeding mother. ‘The pregnant
female body itself is always a troupe of immense power in that it speaks to an inherent
capacity to problematize the boundaries of self and other… marks a monstrous insult to the
order of the proper’ (Shildrick 2002: 31). When the ‘monster’ is completely different, for
example hybrid creatures, they pose no problems, but when they reflect back what is partly
us, the ‘monstrous’ becomes an issue.
What we see mirrored in the monster are the leaks and flows, the
vulnerabilities in our own embodied being. Monsters, then, are deeply
disturbing; neither good nor evil, inside nor outside, not self or other… They
disrupt both internal and external order, and overturn the distinctions that set
out the limits of the human subject. (Shildrick 202: 4).
Therefore, monsters cannot be defined as completely negative, they are ambiguous and
challenge the ordered, autonomous life. As British society insists on an autonomous body
which stands alone, with firm and solid boundaries, perhaps we could also consider the
breastfeeding woman as confusing the binary system of ‘self’ and ‘other’ (Kristeva: 4)
(Betterton 1996: 153) (Douglas: 115). Breastfeeding breaks the boundary of self and reminds
us that we are not just ‘me’ there is the implied ‘other’ within us (Shildrick 2002: 46). The
breastfeeding nipple could be seen as a membrane between self and other (Shildrick 2002:
109). Perhaps the power of the breast is neutralised in our society by becoming sexualised?
By the breast becoming asinglefunction only, i.e.for sex,it negates any ambiguity of function.
We do not have to be reminded that we were once completely vulnerable and needy on
another, mother and child blurred into one self. By the breast becoming simply a sex object,
the fluidity of breastmilk is also not a problem. A feminine fluid is under control and there is
no danger of it leaking into our society.

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Figure 2 Julie, Den Haag, Netherlands, February 29 1994 Figure 3 Tecla, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 16 1994
Rineke Dijkstra photographed three women, Julie, Tecla and Saskia, soon after they gave
birth. Julie was the first of the trilogy to be taken, just an hour after birth. She looks at the
camera with a mixture of emotions: fierce, protective, proud, whilst shielding her baby from
the camera and into her body. It is the protective pants and towel which are shocking; they
are reminders that she has just been through something messy, painful and leaky. The baby’s
head is still sticky, with blood and amniotic fluids. His testicles are enlarged, like all new born
boys, and again, reminders of bodies not quite in their normal state (Shildrick 2002: 5).
Tecla stands looking directly into the camera, protectively holding a red, naked baby close to
her, presumably breastfeeding. Her expression is one of shock and her stomach is swollen
with the linea nigra obviously visible, marking her ‘otherness’ (Longhurst:41). There is a
glimpse of a tampon and blood trickles down her leg; her body obviously leaks as she
breastfeeds and bleeds at once. The margins of the body are still open. Her body is arguably
in transition and is neither pregnant nor not-pregnant, it still holds the shape of the child
within her. Her baby is also slightly animal like: red, small, limp and vulnerable. Neither
mother nor child are fully autonomous, they are photographed as one, almost as though the
baby was still in the womb. There is no ‘self’ or ‘other’ in this image: there are no boundaries,
instead there is a ‘formlessness that engulfs all form, a dis-order that threatens all order’
(Grosz: 203). The skin is still a ‘permeable interface’ (Shildrick 2002: 109) before the baby
realises itself as autonomous. Their bodies are fluid, in betwixt and between, neither one
thing nor another. They are ambiguous bodies (Longhurst: 41) (Betterton 1996: 144).
It is curious that Dijkstra composes the mothers like works of art; the blank background
highlighting universal experiences of tenderness and shock. Perhaps these images could be
seen as alternative Three Graces (Dexter and Weski: 11). Instead of representing youth and

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beauty they represent the transition in a women’s life from their past lives to something else;
something less definableand solid, instead slippery and in flux. Although Dijkstra’s images are
composed to communicate a certain message, they could be seen as the antithesis of the Kim
Kardashian portrait of herself and baby. These are highly manipulated, mother and child
infantilised and cartoonized in becoming mice. Kardashian is holding up her child to be
viewed, just as she is being viewed, instead of the protective shielding of the Dijkstra women.
Every margin of the Kardashian body is nicely sealed through make-up and Photoshop, her
skinis as marble likeas the Three Graces. She does not leak,there are certainly no suggestions
of polluting fluids. Her breasts are still just for sex, and not dual functioned, her body is still
what it always was, showing no traces of labour and change. She is still a ‘Grace’ from the
Three Graces, there is no ambiguity for her.
Figure 4 The Three Graces, Antonio Canova, 1814-1817, V&A Figure 5 KK Instagram, 'Baby Chicago' 26th Feb 2018
Perhaps mainstream society will always view women’s post-partum breastfeeding body as
problematic. It is not just that they leak potentially polluting fluids: blood, urine and
breastmilk. They challengethe idea of sealedskin,and hence the idea of the fully autonomous
‘self’ needing no-one else. They and their child blur into one becoming boundary-less
(Shildrick: 46) and could be seen as ‘monstrous’ (Shildrick: 51). They also show signs of being
in transition: the smallanimal-likeinfants, the mothers’ swollenbodies and the traces of fluids
that escape. Dijkstra’s powerful portraits of these mothers are raw yet tender and still have
the power to shock, even after twenty years. An Instagram account, Breastfeedingart, tried
to post Dijkstra’s images three times in early April 2018. Each time Saskia and Tecla were
censored, while the slightly more covered Julie, was allowed to remain. Either an Instagram
algorithm picked up on the nudity of the photographs, or a follower complained. Either way,
the body of a breastfeeding woman is still being censored and fluids (blood and breastmilk)
are highly problematic on Instagram.

6. 6
In those early months of motherhood, I also viewed my own body as problematic, it was at
once me but not me, recognisable but different. I struggled with my boundaries after allthose
years of just being me. Breastfeeding was difficult and the daily labour of looking after
children reminded me that often my time was not my own, it was theirs. I was not
autonomous, just a mixture of my needs and their needs. My art practice reflects the struggle
of the transitional state of motherhood; the changed body and circumstances, the fact that
my children are bound to me emotionally. I hope that my work also captures the joy that
being blurred with your children can bring. Perhaps I do not want to be fully autonomous
again? And perhaps the fluidity of a new mother, both literally and emotionally, is a state that
most of us will always be in. My art practice reflects that we are always slightly shifting; that
life is fluid, ambiguous and messy.

7. 7
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