How Formula Companies Hijack Women's Spaces and Conversations

Never forget: the success of a formula company is based on how effectively they can manipulate women.

We’ve been digging into the insidious and increasingly sinister ways formula companies are marketing to American women online. In other countries where the Milk Code is pushed to its limit there are television commercials that emphasize formula as a modern, Western, and scientific solution to feeding your baby. And to a degree, that’s still the old school way of doing things: touting the virtues of a product in order to sell it. 

In the US, formula companies need to be savvier and trickier to recruit new moms. It’s not the product itself that disrupts breastfeeding, it’s the marketing of the product that undermines the health of mothers and their babies. Online formula advertising dollar leeches into women’s spaces, conversations, and psyches through social media all in the quest to make more money. Here are some of the ways they do it:

Co-Opting Women’s Supportive Language for Each Other