Breastfeeding Austin Woman Reacts Head-On When Asked To Cover Up

AUSTIN, TX — On top of all the challenges they face, many new mothers often endure the indignity of being confronted by people who, for whatever reason, find the sight of a breastfeeding woman offensive. One Austin woman recently turned such a confrontation on its head.

As captured in a cellphone photo, Melanie Dudley complied when asked to cover up while breastfeeding — but by covering up her face with a cloth as if to shield herself from the complaining interloper as her baby continued to quietly nurse in a makeshift fortress of solitude.

Carol Lockwood shared a photo last week on Facebook of Dudley, who is the daughter-in-law of one of her friends. Dudley, 34, who also has 4-year-old twins, told Yahoo Lifestyle the move to cover her head was a spontaneous reaction.

“I was on vacation in Cabo San Lucas with my entire family and a man asked me to cover myself,” she told Yahoo Lifestyle about the breastfeeding incident. “I’m usually discreet, but we were seated in the back of the restaurant.”

In her post, Lockwood captioned the photo by conveying how she's "SO over people shaming women for nursing" in explaining her posting the picture with the cloaked mom's permission. Lockwood noted it was a man who asked the woman to cover up on a day when "...it was 90 degrees and extremely humid, and, no, she wasn’t in a Muslim country disrespecting traditions."

Lockwood's photo of the stressed-out mom has been widely viewed since its posting — with 113,000 reactions and 200 shares at last check — with Dudley emerging as something of a nursing-class hero. As for unidentified man who took umbrage, let's just say his walk down mammary lane was not his breast moment.

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