Breastly Dramas

I go to the theater with a newborn baby. The theater is at the university. It's opening night. The vice chancellor is there, along with other important guests. I sit in a seat near the aisle so I can escape quickly if my baby starts crying when she wakes. She wakes, and I offer her my breast. She happily suckles for the rest of the play. I sit in the half-light with my huge breast out, my daughter latched on. It feels curiously subversive. For what other reason could I sit in a theater with one breast "exposed," unless performing maternity? It means mother and baby don't disrupt the "real" performance, and yet some other meaning is being disrupted, something to do with the way I've been trained to behave in public.

- Alison Bartlett, adapted from Thinking Through Breasts: Writing Maternity.