Breast milk

So, a lot of people were annoyed with my advice about concealing breast milk in the office refrigerator. The letters ran in this Sunday's magazine, along with a short response from me promising a longer exposition in my blog.

I'd said in my original answer that storing obvious breast milk in a workplace refrigerator was "seriously inappropriate," and if I had it to do over again, I'd delete the "seriously." But it is inappropriate*. Which doesn't make it morally wrong--just unwise as a matter of impression management. Most of the women who wrote in were, rightfully, irate about the difficulty that women, particularly mothers, have in being taken seriously in the workplace.

I am all about that, in both this and my other job.

And as far as I'm concerned, in a culture that is markedly ambivalent about public breastfeeding, discretion is the wisest choice in the workplace. Forcing the two-years-to-retirement-dude in Accounts Payable to confront his ambivalence about the female breast isn't really going to improve your quality of life. Better you should fight for lactation rooms, more generous parental (not just maternity) leave policies, improved work-life balance for everyone.

But for me, the final point is that body acceptance and discretion can co-exist. I support toothbrushing, and even flossing, in office bathrooms. (Heck, I support pooping in office bathrooms!) But I wouldn't leave my toothbrush out on my desk, or floss in my cubicle. The bathroom is where we care for our biological selves. The cubicle is where we care for our economic selves.

So my advice remains the same: keep your breast milk in one of those awesome little cooler bags, not in a clear bottle. Not because it's disgusting (as many respondents rightly pointed out, if breast milk is the most disgusting thing in your office refrigerator, you work in an unusually tidy office), but because it's private. Many folks took issue with my phrase "bodily fluids," and noted that cow's milk, too, is a bodily fluid. Undeniable, but given that the job of a cow is to produce milk, the immediate empirical evidence that she has done so is unlikely to tarnish her professional credibility. For working, nursing mothers, the situation is more complex. Full gender equality and body acceptance haven't arrived yet. Until they do, what would you like to be the image that would first pop into your colleagues' minds when someone says, "Jean is so productive!"?

*In most workplaces. Organizational cultures vary tremendously.