Milk Truck Saves Breastfeeding Mothers From Public Harassment (VIDEO)

'The Milk Truck' Saves Breastfeeding Moms From Harassment

Public breastfeeding is legal in most states, but mothers who try to do it are sometimes made to feel like boobs.

Artist and mom Jill Miller wants to change that with The Milk Truck, a modified pink, red, and blue ice cream truck with a giant breast on top that serves as a mobile safe place for women who want to feed their children without dealing with society's sneers and jeers.

Miller, an artist and faculty member in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, created The Milk Truck last year as a way to help hungry babies eat by providing a supportive environment for women to nurse their babies.

"I wouldn't say every woman in Pittsburgh has been asked to cover up — that would be totally overblowing it," Miller told NBC News."But there were these stories I would hear that seemed almost like urban legends."

Those stories include that of Dawn Holland, a Georgia mother who had an incident at her local Applebee's in September. The manager insisted she nurse her 20-month-old son, Connor, in the bathroom, even though the state is one of 45 with laws that allow women mothers to nurse anywhere.

Miller's Milk Truck works like this: Whenever a nursing mom feels discouraged, harassed, or unwelcome to breastfeed her baby in public, she summons The Milk Truck by tweeting her location @PghMilkTruck. The truck then arrives at the location of the woman in need and provides her with a shelter for feeding her baby.

"The woman feeds her child, the shopkeeper who harassed her feels like a dweeb, and the truck does what it does best -- creates a spectacle. (Which is, incidently, the very thing that the shopkeeper thought he was trying to avoid. Alas, some people have to learn the hard way.)" Miller wrote in her successful Kickstarter proposal last year that helped her raise more than $15,000 for the cause.

The Milk Truck has traveled as far as Toronto and Miller sees the day when there are similar trucks around the country.

Not everyone finds the idea so titillating.

After the Milk Truck made its debut last year, she got an email from a man who had something to get off his chest. "What an insane cause you chose to rally behind. ... Pointless!" he wrote, according to NBC News.

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