How are we still living in a time where breastfeeding is something that some people find distasteful?

Alas we are, and one of those people who isn’t a big fan is Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev.

Take a moment to Google that country and we’ll move on.

The president’s daughter is 20-year-old artist Aliya Shagieva, and it’s her Instagram posts that have raised the ire of the country’s more conservative citizens.

The Independent reports:

Posted on Instagram in April, it ran alongside the caption: “I will feed my child whenever and wherever he needs to be fed.”

But after she was attacked on social media and accused of “immoral behaviour”, she took the image down.

“This body I’ve been given is not vulgar, it is functional,” said the 20-year-old artist. “Its purpose is to fulfil the physiological needs of my baby, not to be sexualised.”

“When I’m breastfeeding my child, I feel like I’m giving him the best I can give. Taking care of my baby and attending to his needs is more important to me than what people say about me.”

Kyrgyzstan is seen as a socially conservative, majority Muslim society, and that is also true of the president and his wife:

President Almazbek Atambayev [below] and his wife Raisa disapproved of their daughter’s picture, Ms Shagieva said.

“They really didn’t like it. And it is understandable because the younger generation is less conservative than their parents. My mum received messages from her ‘friends’ about me.”

Shagieva definitely bucks the trend, living as vegetarians in a meat-eating country and falling pregnant before marriage.

Artists, right?

If you hoped that 2017 might be the year women’s bodies stopped being policed you’re in for a surprise.

[source:independent]