Someone Sprayed Breastmilk on a Festival Crowd, and We Have Qs

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Breastmilk festival mom
(Photo: Getty)

When you have a baby in the house, life can be hectic, and sometimes you need to take time for yourself to remember that you’re an individual human with your own personality and not just a parent. For some, that means an uninterrupted afternoon curled up with a book, and for others, it means going out to see friends or a movie. For this party-mom, however, taking some me-time meant going to an electronic dance music (EDM) festival and letting it loose on the dance floor.

And when we say she let loose, we mean it. Take a look:

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you; she did, in fact, whip out her breast and spray breastmilk, more than once. We told you she was letting it loose! The video, which was taken at the Dirtybird Campout festival in Southern California, was shared on Twitter in early October by the account for So Cal EDM Events, and so far it’s been viewed more than 10 million times.

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Now, on one hand, we’re inclined to think this is kinda gross. She literally sprayed bodily fluids towards an unsuspecting, non-consenting crowd. Her fellow festival-goers didn’t ask or agree to be sprayed (other than the person who knelt down to catch the breastmilk drops in their mouth—did you catch that part?). Getting a drink spilled on you at a concert or festival is par for the course, and breastmilk is an actual food as opposed to other bodily fluids…but it’s definitely not the same thing. This wasn’t accidental, for one thing.

And yet, it’s too easy to shame this mom for being free and open and having fun. She’s obviously comfortable with her body and her sexuality and she’s living in the moment. If you’ve been to similar festivals, you’ll know there’s a lot of things that happen there that are much grosser than this (so. much. vomit). She’s also not hurting anyone, and if she was drinking alcohol or using drugs during her time at the festival (we don’t know for sure but it seems likely), she would probably be pumping and dumping that milk anyways.

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Plus, she does have quite a bit of space around her, so she definitely isn’t drenching anyone—she’s not being intentionally mean or malicious. And the people who did notice what was happening seemed more shocked and awed than angry. Besides, we all agree that as a society, we need to be less uptight about breastfeeding and lactation, right?

It’s so easy to judge, and this is definitely a shocking video, but call-out culture is so harmful, and it’s always better to choose compassion over judgement. So what do you think: is this mom having innocent (if very surprising and nontraditional) fun, or is her behaviour just not OK?

(One final comment: It’s possible this person isn’t, in fact, a mom. As this story illustrates, if you follow a certain protocol of medications, you can make your body lactate without ever having been pregnant or giving birth.)

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