FORMER Labour MP Tristram Hunt has been forced to apologise over a breast-feeding gaffe.
Now the director of the V&A, one of London’s top museums, he apologised after a mum complained she was told to cover up after flashing a “nanosecond of nipple” while breastfeeding.
She then used social media to show the irony of the incident during World Breastfeeding Week at a place filled with naked portrayals of women.
The twitter user going by the handle @vaguechera said it was the first time she had been asked to cover up in more than three years of breastfeeding.
She went on to post a series of amusing tweets showing images of several of the V&A’s topless sculptures.
“On the upside, I had a lovely day at @VandA exploring depictions of breasts thru the ages and making lovely mammaries. I mean memories,” she wrote.
One caption on a picture of a sculpture with fully exposed breasts said: “‘I will throw you out of this museum with your naked breasts!’ ‘But I’m made of marble!’ ‘Oh sorry you’re fine then.’”
Hunt, who stood down as MP in January to be director of the museum, replied: “Very sorry. Our policy is clear: women may breastfeed wherever they like, wherever they fell comfortable and should not be disturbed.”
The incident comes after experts said the UK must change attitudes to breastfeeding as it currently has one of the lowest rates in the world with only one in three babies breastfed for the recommended six months.
It is not the first time Hunt has become involved in a controversy – in February 2014, he crossed an authorised University and College Union picket line at Queen Mary University of London to teach his students about “Marx, Engels and the Making of Marxism”. He said he was not a member of the union but claimed he supported the right to strike and picket by those who had been balloted.
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