Inside Alyssa Milano and Wendy Williams's Breastfeeding Debate
Alyssa Milano appeared on The Wendy Williams Show on Wednesday, and the breastfeeding advocate clashed with the talk show host, who has been open about the fact that public nursing makes her “uncomfortable.”
Milano, who has shared online a number of photos that show her breastfeeding her 16-month-old daughter, Elizabella, has often spoken out in defense of a mother’s right to nurse in public. “I’ve been posting pictures of my breastfeeding journey since Elizabella was a little baby,” she told Williams on the show. “I was surprised by the reaction and that I was then put in the position of being a breastfeeding advocate. … It was kind of shocking that [people] were that opinionated about something that is supposed to be so incredibly natural.”
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Alyssa Milano posted this photo, which shows her nursing her daughter, with the hashtag #normalizebreastfeeding. (Photo: Instagram/Alyssa Milano)
But Williams said she is one of the people who finds public nursing inappropriate. “I don’t need to see that,” she said. “I just don’t want to.”
The talk show host, who has a 15-year-old who she said she breastfed for two weeks, added that she believes breasts are sexual, and that if she were nursing, she would do so in the car. “They are more sexual than a feeding thing, and I don’t know why I feel this way,” she said. “I’m a mom also, but breastfeeding is only a particular amount of time. The rest of your life, your breasts are sexual things.”
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Wendy Williams and her son, Kevin Jr. (Photo: Instagram/Wendy Williams Show)
Milano — who also has a son, Milo, who is 4 — disagreed. “Biologically, they are not made for sexual things. That’s what we’ve done to them,” she says. “You have to realize that all over the world, you are not the norm. … You’re lucky the baby’s not here — I’d whip ’em out right here and feed on your show!”
She also challenged Williams to explain why it’s OK to show a picture of Miley Cyrus covering her breasts with only a pair of suspenders, but not OK to show yourself breastfeeding. “It makes me very uncomfortable,” was Williams’s explanation.
The two also spoke about the pressure to lose baby weight, which Milano said she didn’t feel from Hollywood but from herself. “I felt a personal pressure,” she said, citing the pre-pregnancy clothes she was anxious to wear again. Still, she said, she’s not yet where she wants to be. “I always take my time losing the baby weight, because there are so many more important things to be going through,” she added. Milano said she gained about 55 pounds while pregnant with her daughter, and weighed 172 pounds when she gave birth. Today, she says she’s lost all but 5 pounds, by first cutting out carbs and sugar, and now following the Atkins diet.
Despite the initial disagreement about nursing, the two were able to come to one consensus toward the end of their chat. Explaining why she was more comfortable with showing breasts in a sexual manner than in relation to nursing, Williams told Milano: “I think that once you become a mother, [it] does not mean that you take away your sexuality,”
Milano agreed, saying, “We shouldn’t change who we are once we become parents.”
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