Two days ago I opened our daily newspaper to find a large colour ad for our local utility company, featuring a happy bottle-feeding family: beautiful (of course), blond-haired (of course), wedding-ringed (of course) mom bottle-feeding an apparently sleeping and gorgeous baby, mom and dad looking adoringly at one another on the couch together, handsome dad with his coffee cup in hand.  The written message of the ad is "Living just gets a little easier with fixed rate electricity from . . . "

While you can see I am critical of the total lack of diversity displayed by this ad and so many others, what really upset me of course was the prominent bottle-feeding image.  As I said to the breastfeeding advocacy committee of which I am a part, just ONCE they couldn't show a mom nursing?!  Oh no, that would be indecent!

I am going to write an "educational" type letter to the company and I am asking for the help of anyone here who has been successful in getting a company or organization to change their ways.  I know from previous posts that some of you have had wonderful successes in that regard, and I would like to know specifically what you said in your written communications that you felt was most persuasive to those companies; what was/were the thing or things that caused them to change their minds, in your opinion?

I anticipate speaking of the benefits of breastfeeding to individuals, families, and communities, the risks of artificial baby milk, and the predominance of bottle-feeding images in our culture (news media, books, toys, wrapping paper, actual bottles, etc.)  But I would like to know what you think is "key".

I also have a nagging concern regarding pointing out that bottle-feeding images are everywhere:  they might say in reply, "everyone else is doing it, why should we care, why swim upstream?"

I will leave it to you whether to reply on or off list.

Thanks very much.

Barb Strange

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