New Zealand Herald

3 August 2002

Lucy Lawless, A Woman At Ease With Life

 

Lucy Lawless is a picture of motherhood as she breastfeeds her baby while wearing fishnet stockings.

The Xena star and mother of three looks sexy and at ease in this poster produced to highlight World Breastfeeding Week. And that is the irony of the picture, says the woman who came up with the idea.

Sian Burgess, a breastfeeding advocate for Women's Health Action, says people are bombarded with the "sexual breast".

"We have breasts in the front page of women's magazines but we don't have the functioning, lactating breast portrayed that way." These breasts were portrayed in a
weird, frumpy, hippy or unusual way.

She hoped the sexy poster of the TV star breastfeeding her youngest son, Judah Tapert, would encourage women to breastfeed. Research showed 98 per cent of women wanted to breastfeed when they were pregnant but by the time the child was six months old fewer than 7 per cent were exclusively breastfeeding.