A new mom on vacation with her family in Mexico was told to cover up while breastfeeding her baby — and her creative response has gone viral.
Melanie Dudley, a mother of three from Austin, Texas, was at a restaurant when she started to feed her 4-month-old baby.
“I was on vacation in Cabo San Lucas with my entire family and a man asked me to cover myself,” she told Yahoo Lifestyle. “I’m usually discreet but we were seated in the back of the restaurant.”
So Dudley asked her husband to hand her a cover and instead of covering her chest, she tossed it over her head.
Someone snapped a picture of the strange scene and a family friend, Carol Lockwood, shared it on Facebook.
“A friend’s daughter-in-law was told to ‘cover up’ while feeding her baby, so she did! I’ve never met her, but I think she’s AWESOME!!!” Lockwood wrote.
She also commented that it was 90 degrees out and “extremely humid” out at the time.
The photo of Dudley has been received 100,000 likes and shared 181,000 times since it was posted on July 31.
The photo has garnered mixed reactions, with some saying they feel a woman should try to be discreet while breastfeeding in a public space, while others argue that mothers should be free to feed their child anywhere without being called out for it.
This certainly isn’t the first time a woman has been called out for breastfeeding in public. In June, an Alabama woman called out a local restaurant owner for trying to cover her up with a dishrag while she breastfed inside the establishment.
Last month, a mother who was breastfeeding at the Richmond International Airport claims a security guard told her it was “indecent exposure” and that she needed to go into the bathroom the feed her son.
