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Olivia Wilde Finally Opens Up About Her Controversial Breastfeeding Photos, ‘I Did Not Intend To Shame Women’

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 10:05 PST, Jul 7, 2016

Olivia Wilde is finally opening up about her 2014 controversial breastfeeding photos.

In 2014, just a few months after giving birth to her first child, son Otis Alexander, Wilde agreed to appear in a spread with her baby boy for Glamour. In one of the photos, Olivia is seen sitting in a diner-style restaurant booth wearing a Roberto Cavalli dress and a complete face of makeup. At the same time, she is breastfeeding her child.

While sitting in the booth, Otis became hungry, and doing what most mothers would, Olivia began breastfeeding him. The photographer captured a picture of the touching moment and included it in the spread, never expecting that it would generate backlash from readers.

Now, more than two years later, Wilde is opening up about her controversial breastfeeding photo shoot, and her choice to breastfeed her son.

“I’ve learned a lot about [the breastfeeding] debate since that photo shoot and certainly since becoming a mother,” Wilde, who is pregnant with her second child with fiancé Jason Sudeikis, told Yahoo! Beauty.“One thing that is very clear to me is that it should be every individual woman’s choice what she wants to do. But once she makes that choice, she should be publicly permitted to do that in whatever way she needs to. Certainly there should be no pressure on women to breastfeed, or they are made to seem like they are terrible mothers. I think that’s really unfair.”

Wilde added, “It was an interesting experience because that photo shoot came out of a very organic moment of having to feed my son because it was just my choice to breastfeed. But I did not in any way intend to shame women who had chosen not to breastfeed for whatever reason. It’s a complex issue, but the one thing that’s not complex is that people should be allowed to breastfeed wherever they want, whenever they want.”

In the same interview with Yahoo! Beauty, Olivia Wilde said she plans on raising her children in a judgement-free home. Wilde said she also hopes to teach her son about feminism, and how all people, both male and female, are equal.

“I hope to raise a child who values people for what’s within them and yet I hope he experiments with his own identity and who he wants to be,” Wilde said. “I look forward to helping him feel that type of confidence I felt when growing up. On a superficial level, I just experimented with every hair color underneath the sun, every type of makeup look. I’m grateful now that my parents let me go through my own process of self-discovery and I think you can’t restrict kids in that way. They have to make mistakes, play, and then figure it out in the end.”

Wilde continued, “I like to think he’s already a little feminist. And he is. He’s a really good guy. I want to promote the idea that the definition of feminism is equality and it’s something that’s not difficult to teach children because they are born with that sensibility. They are only taught to separate people and value them differently once they get older. Luckily, I’m just embracing the perspective he was born with.”

What do you think about Olivia Wilde’s breastfeeding photos? Leave your comments below.

[Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP]

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