Nurse-in 2024!🤱🏻👎👨🏻🦰 Boobs over Bros!
It's our 2nd annual virtual nurse-in against predatory marketing. This time we're coming for the dudes with deep pockets and teenie weenie beanies.
Ain’t got time to read a whole-ass newsletter to find out about our nurse-in? You can sign up to participate here. It’s very easy, one click.
Ok on to the prose!
What have we been doing this summer? Besides fighting the existential battle between screen time, sanity, a thousand hours outside, and reading the comments beneath pieces of viral momworld drama— ORGANIZING OUR MATERNAL JUSTICE CULT TO TAKE COLLECTIVE ACTION AGAINST THE DESTRUCTION OF BREAST MILK, OF COURSE!
First, let me ask you, do you think that when a woman decides she can no longer breastfeed and buys a can of Bobbie that this dude should make money off that decision?
When a women is crying at 3am because she lacks postpartum support and her baby’s latch is painful and she is sleep deprived do you think this man cares about her mental health?
Do you think when a woman is left reeling from a traumatic birth and she’s told by hospital staff that her ‘milk hasn’t come in’ and she should supplement with formula that this dude should profit so he can buy MORE TEENIE WEENIE BEANIES?
Do you think men should create market incentives that rely on the destruction of a world resource AKA BREASTMILK?
Do you think that women deserve the FREEDOM to chose how she’s going to feed her baby without this finance bro turning a buck?
Then we’re in agreement. So you should join our virtual nurse-in on THURSDAY 1st August first to protest all these men, all these men who finance and cash in from Bobbie’s predatory marketing campaign. All you gotta do is sign up on our pledge and two days before the nurse-in, you’ll get a text + email with instructions for AUGUST 1ST (basically, we ask that you post a nursing pic on your grid, we’ll send ya open letter to include along with some hashtags and other goodies).
Ok, but why just Bobbie? What about all the other horrible formula companies?
When I became a lactation counselor and started talking about breastfeeding on social media, I noticed that my profession was misunderstood, disparaged, and sometimes even demonized. An ongoing narrative I see all over tearful videos and angry carousel posts, was that it was the lactation professional that shamed a mother for not trying harder to breastfeed and once she was given permission to try formula she was liberated.
Meanwhile, formula companies position themselves as a neutral and helpful support services, like a meal delivery service. Why make things harder on yourself, mama!
No one excelled at this benevolent corporation pose better than Bobbie. Bobbie, with it’s on-trend color schemes, fonts, influencers, and ~*vibe*~ was definitely the Regina George in a overpopulated cafeteria boring vibe-less baby products. Giant food conglomerates like Abbott or Mead Johnson (who produce the majority of formula in the US) don’t have to stress too much about marketing considering they hold contracts with the federal government (WIC), pharmaceutical companies and hospitals who will loyally use their products.
So Bobbie had to do things a little differently to ‘disrupt’ the formula market. Enter Silicon Valley venture cap money, white labeling an organic Italian formula (that was a word of mouth favorite amongst conscious middle class moms) digital savvy, and a direct play for moms who intended to EXCLUSIVELY breastfeed. Bobbie opened up a new part of the market: moms who knew breast was best, valued high quality ingredients, but for whatever reason (NO JUDGEMENT, MAMA) needed formula to take the pressure off themselves.
Like iced coffee in a pastel Stanley tumbler, the internet ate this messaging up. Influencers flocked to the kewt boutique brand formula and started propagating corporate marketing lines against exclusive breastfeeding to vulnerable moms, even going so far as linking postpartum depression to exclusive breastfeeding.
And we’re not cool with that.
Hundreds of Women Go Boobs out to Protest Bobbie in 2023
Last year, we organized with hundreds to stage a virtual nurse in on Bobbie of other women women posted a picture of themselves breastfeeding with the hashtag #backoffbobbie and and open letter demanding that Bobbie
But we didn’t stop there. Over the past year our organization has grown in numbers and reach— we’ve directly confronted one Bobbie’s founders, disrupted Bobbie’s “educational” seminars which is just more marketing in disguise, we’ve appeared podcasts to spread the word, we even had a SF local go to Bobbie’s offices IN PERSON to let them know breastfeeding moms are PISSED!
This doesn’t end until Bobbie stops marketing their products using misinformation about breastfeeding.
I hope you’re fired up and ready to join us this year!
As always, rmu wins for having the best graphic design !