A mom in the Edmonton area of Canada was "really, really pleased and shocked" when mega-chain Walmart apologized after staff at a department store refused her husbands' request to print a photo of her breastfeeding, CBC Canada reports.
Mom, Kayla Andre, had planned to hold a mass breastfeeding event at the store on Thursday to protest, but received a call from Walmart's Canadian head office on Thursday, "admitting that the staff made a mistake."
Andre's husband had gone to the store to print out and frame a professional photo of her breastfeeding her baby for Mother's Day, but the Walmart staff at a photo lab argued that the picture violated their photo policy against reproducing photos with nudity.
"When he went to go pick it up, they brought the photo out and said unfortunately, although this means a lot to you, we can't print it for you and we cannot sell it to you," Andre said to CTV News. "He said, well why not, and they said because it's nudity and Walmart has very strict no nudity policy."
Andre added that breastfeeding is natural and a normal part of being a mother, calling it "beautiful." She said that after the photo staff at the Walmart deemed the picture nude, her husband "replied with, it's not nudity, it's my wife feeding our child. And they said well if you look really closely, you can see a little bit of something there."
"My photo has no sexual connotation at all and here it is getting denied," Andre said.
"When we look at the policy, I can understand how the associates in the photo centre - a lot of them are new, a lot of them are young - and they're trying to follow procedure," said Corporate affairs director Alex Roberton, the Walmart Canada official who called Andre. He said to CBC news that he became aware of her situation after her husband posted a comment on Facebook.
"In this particular case, we hadn't done a very good job of making sure that procedure was crystal clear," Roberton said. He added that Walmart sent a note to stores across the country on Tuesday to clarify that breastfeeding photos were acceptable and did not contravene the non-nudity photo policy.
"Lots of people were saying, 'You can't do anything, it's Walmart. Nothing's going to change," Andre said. "I'm actually really, really pleased and shocked and surprised that someone from head office ... contacted me and remedied the situation."
Kristen Goa, President of the Breastfeeding Action Committee of Edmonton, said that the event did not surprise her, as breastfeeding is often misunderstood in society and mothers often face negativity over breastfeeding in public.
"I was both annoyed and not surprised because I've been dealing with incidents like this for more than a decade," Goa said. "Censorship of breastfeeding both in terms of personal harassment, women covering up, women hiding in their houses, and their Facebook photos being deleted, all of that is happening all the time. That really intimidates a lot of people when they're nursing their babies."
Andre's husband ended up having the photo printed at an independent lab, so she still received the print for Mother's Day.
Click here to see the photo of Andre breastfeeding that created the controversy, as well as a picture of her and her son.
