Breastfeeding as Subversive

Abstract

The US military has frequently been a focus for feminist scholarship. Much of this scholarship concentrates on the masculine character of the institution. Although the associations between masculinity and the military are significant, little scholarship has examined women's embodied experiences or the representations of women in the military context. This essay addresses this gap in the literature by using a textual approach to explore the visual elements of a controversial image picturing two US Air Force servicewomen breastfeeding in uniform, which was released by the Mom2Mom Support Group in the summer of 2012. Specifically analyzed are how the photograph's representations of the maternal body function to subvert patriarchal aspects of US culture in two ways: by disrupting conventional understandings of women's relationships to the military and by challenging the border between motherhood and sexuality in a sphere where both are often rendered invisible. This analysis argues that aversive responses to the image can likely be attributed to its subversive nature, which threatens US national identity and the traditional division between the male soldier and the female body.