Hayley Derryberry wants the City of Iola to take “the journey to normalcy” when it comes to breastfeeding.
The owner of the former Derryberry Breadery is imploring council members to examine city code that prohibits a woman to breastfeed in a drinking establishment.
The code in question comes from Chapter 3, Article 4 and states that “permitting any person to remain in or upon premises who exposes to view any portion of the female breast,” shall be prohibited.
The issue with the code was realized when she recently hosted a breastfeeding brunch. “According to the code, this event technically wouldn’t be allowed,” she said.
Kansas state law protects a mother’s right to breastfeed any place she has the right to be. It also states it is Kansas public policy for mothers’ choice to breastfeed to be supported and encouraged to the greatest extent possible.
“The state’s regulation says a woman may breastfeed anywhere. Our city code does not and that supersedes what the state says,” added Derryberry.
She noted that some people may not find issue with the code merely because they doubt it would be enforced. “My thought is, if we’re not going to enforce it, we shouldn’t have it,” she said.
Derryberry fears that a business owner or customer could use the city’s code as a justification to ask a woman to leave if she is breastfeeding. “You could have a disgruntled employee who wants to see the place shut down and could use this,” she said. “Or if someone is unhappy with your business and wants to cause trouble for you, they could invoke this code.”
Calling the current code “antiquated,” Derryberry says that society needs to go beyond just making breastfeeding allowed. “We need to make it normal,” she said. Changing the code, she argues, would help protect breastfeeding mothers and make them feel more comfortable. “It starts with normalizing the female breast and representation of it,” she said.
Derryberry added that the argument of “needing to protect children” from seeing bare breasts in public isn’t a valid one. “Most kids don’t even think twice about it. Especially if they have a big family or a mom who has a baby,” she said. If breasts were seen as normal and not taboo or sexualized, this wouldn’t be an issue she concluded.
“When parents say ‘don’t look at that’ to their children or ask you to cover up, that’s when kids start correlating it with something bad,” she said.
In addition, Derryberry is worried that the code would also limit visual representations of the human anatomy. She acknowledges this is probably a harder choice for the city council to make. At her breastfeeding brunch, she made cupcakes that looked like breasts. “I don’t think that would be allowed with the current code,” she said. “I can tell it was probably put into place to stop bars from showing pornography or having strip clubs.”
She hopes that the code can be adjusted to allow non-sexual visual representation, which would allow art depicting nude figures to be displayed.
“I’d like our community to become a place for visual and performing arts,” she added. “I think we’re going to move toward more of a tourist destination with the new state park opening. When tourists come to town, they like to see art.”
Derryberry believes that visual representation of the female form helps normalize it. She notes how she felt uncomfortable when she first started breastfeeding and believes that is due to the sexualization of breasts. “If a person walked in on me in the bathroom, I found that they were always apologizing to me,” she said. “It was then I realized that I was making THEM uncomfortable.”
