YouTubers Trollstation are known for their pranks but their latest video actually provides a valuable insight into people’s views on breastfeeding in public.
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Actress Amina Maz kicks off the 6-minute video on a platform at Elephant & Castle Tube station in London, explaining: “Today we’re doing a breastfeeding experiment. Let’s see if people find this uncomfortable.”
Aboard a busy Tube carriage Maz begins to “breastfeed” her baby (it’s actually a doll hidden under layers of blanket). Quickly a fellow passenger starts giving her a hard time — but he’s actually an actor, James Slattery. He accuses her of “exposing” herself and demands that she move to a different carriage.
Slattery starts off the exchange, which is being filmed by a hidden camera, by saying: “Excuse me… you’re not breastfeeding, are you?”
Maz replies: “I am… do you have a problem?” to which Slattery says: “I’m not trying to be argumentative or anything but I feel a little bit uncomfortable about it. It’s just a thing that’s been passed down in my family.”
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“There should be a designated carriage on here for it. I just don’t want you to do it in front of me. Why could you not make express or something before you came on here? I just feel uncomfortable,” he continues.
“My baby needs to eat,” Maz replies.
Other passengers then join in and the majority of them take Maz’s side. One woman asks James, ‘Why don’t you move onto the next carriage?” and another tells him, “You should probably move away.”
At one point a man moves seats to sit between Maz and Slattery, telling the latter that he is “behaving quite aggressively.”
Eventually the entire section of the carriage joins in, before the hidden camera is revealed and the passengers realise the whole thing was a prank. “We’re making a movie, so you’re a hero,” the man who sat between the actors is told.
The man said he found the exchange “a bit tense” and explained that he works in the mental health sector and “it’s our job.”
A female passenger said she thought Slattery’s reaction to the breastfeeding was “despicable.”
Watch the video in full below:
Do you feel comfortable breastfeeding in public? Have you ever experienced negativity for doing so? Let us know.
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