Vicky's supports breast, but not breast feeding

The Sun News | 07/02/2005 | Breast-feeding mothers meet to protest Victoria's Secret

Posted on Sat, Jul. 02, 2005
Breast-feeding mothers meet to protest Victoria's Secret
S.C. legislator Limehouse pushes for public-nursing bill

The Associated Press

MOUNT PLEASANT - About 25 nursing mothers protested outside a Victoria's Secret lingerie store supporting the right of women to breast-feed in public, one of them holding a sign that said "The Secret's out ... Victoria supports Breasts, but not Breast-feeding."

Meanwhile, state Rep. Chip Limehouse plans to introduce a bill protecting the rights of mothers to nurse in public places, as do laws in about three dozen states. Limehouse, R-Charleston, wrote a similar bill in the late 1990s, but it never passed.

"The legislature wasn't in a progressive frame of mind," he said. "Well, no longer do we have to worry about being progressive. We just have to catch up with the rest of the country."

The protesting mothers nursed their children outside the store at the Towne Centre shopping center on Thursday.

Several weeks ago, Lori Rueger asked to use a store dressing room to nurse her 10-week-old daughter, but said she was asked to go to the public bathroom at another store, a setting nursing moms call unsanitary and uncomfortable.

"I don't understand. In a state like South Carolina, where values and families are so important, why this is even an issue?" asked Jania Sommers, who has two grown daughters but came to support the mothers.

"It's crazy that a national company who sells women's bodies says it's not OK to do with your body what God intended it to do," she said.

Officials with Limited Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret, denied that Rueger was asked to leave earlier, but said she "became combative" when a clerk "suggested she might be more comfortable" in the restroom.

"As far as we're considered, this is a misunderstanding, and we're sorry it's gotten to this," company spokesman Anthony Hebron said. "We've always been very accommodating to our customers and will continue to do that."