Pittsburgh's 'Milk Truck' Brakes for Nursing Moms

It's hard to miss this truck.A powder pink, double-D, fiberglass breast points heavenward from the roof with a round, red, glowing light, top and center. Inside, it's outfitted with chairs, marble-design linoleum flooring and a pink shag rug. The Milk Truck is designed to host Pittsburgh women in want or need of a nice place to nurse their babies. To that end, it's equipped with a special navigation system that will allow women to track its location and summon it with a call, text or even Tweet. But for now, it is mainly off the road--except for accepting invitations to appear at events--while organizers apply for nonprofit status in an effort to gain grant money. Tara McElfresh, who volunteers as project manager, says the would seek enough to keep the truck moving and responding to client requests most days of the year. In the time being, she says the main goal of the almost 11-foot-tall vehicle with a large breast on its roof is to make a public spectacle of itself. "Driving around and being seen gets people to say, 'What is that?' and it gets people talking about breastfeeding and nursing in public," she says. "There are a lot of women who don't even know they have the law behind them and that they can nurse in public." Breastfeeding in public is legal in every state and many employers are legally required to provide their workers with lactation breaks. But plenty of women still report feeling harassed or uncomfortable when they try to feed their babies in a way that health officials have proclaimed as the most nutritious. Spurned at Whole Foods Last summer, for instance, a Utah woman named Angelina Love began blogging about being spurned when she tried to breastfeed her son in her local Whole Foods. That led to an Aug. 20 national "nurse-in" at Whole Foods stores and an official apology from Whole Foods Market, based in Austin, Texas. McElfresh and the Milk Truck's designer, Jill Miller, attended the nurse-in at the Pittsburgh store, making their case so amply that the store manager signed on as a sponsor of their truck. The Milk Truck was also on hand Dec. 28, when breastfeeding lactivists around the country took aim at Target stores after Michelle Hickman of Houston said she was harangued in late November by two female Target employees when she tried to nurse her baby in a quiet corner of the store. To support the handful of demonstrators, the Milk Truck's volunteers brought out comfortable chairs and a rug at a Pittsburgh-area Target store. After the 250 or so national nurse-ins, Target Corporation, based in Minneapolis, issued a statement saying it welcomed breastfeeding women in their stores. "Additionally, we support the use of fitting rooms for women who wish to breastfeed their babies, even if others are waiting to use the fitting rooms," said the statement. Miller, a Carnegie Mellon University instructor, conceived the idea of the Milk Truck after the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh asked her to do a piece for its recent Biennial 2011 exhibit, which ended Jan. 8. The mother f two young boys, Miller has been exhibited internationally, mainly working in video and photography. She is no stranger to controversial art themes, covering subjects from an individual's right to privacy to how we perceive art as opposed to reality. Eric Shiner, director of the Warhol Museum, calls Miller "a super rockstar, contemporary, feminist powerhouse."