LAS CRUCES, N.M. — A firefighter may be under fire after after a portrait of his wife breast-feeding their infant son while wearing his uniform surfaced on social media last month.
While details surrounding the Las Cruces, N.M., firefighter’s fate remain unknown, he was said to be under investigation last week and could face disciplinary action because of the photo, according to KFOX-TV, a media partner of the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News.
City and fire department officials said the matter is a pending personnel issue and declined to speak about the matter.
Meanwhile, the El Paso-based photographer who took the portrait said the controversy surrounding the portrait is overshadowing its message.
“The message is that you can be a full-time breast-feeding mom and work a full-time job and do both really well,” photographer Tara Ruby said, adding the firefighter’s wife was “standing as a model for all the moms that actually are firefighters that are breast-feeding.”
Ruby, who has made a career out of photographing breast-feeding mothers in uniform, further suggested that the city and fire department are portraying themselves in an anti-breast-feeding light.
“They’re not supporting the normalizing of breast-feeding ... or supporting anyone coming in and breast-feeding in uniform,” she said. “It just seems like it’s a double standard. There’s fireman costumes for Halloween — and that’s OK? Or is it strictly because she was breast-feeding and that’s the problem?”
The photo gained national attention sooner after it was posted in late February on Ruby’s business Facebook page, she said. By early March, she began to hear rumblings that officials were upset with the portrait.
“In the last couple of weeks,” she said, “we realized that this is something they were seriously upset about to the point where they were trying to discipline him — and we don’t understand why.”
According to city spokesman Udell Vigil, the fire department’s policy on uniforms does not address spouses, or specifically say if a spouse is allowed to wear a uniform. The policy also appears to be ambiguous about when a firefighter is photographed in uniform.
“Depending on the specifics of a situation, it may or may not be a violation of (city) policy,” Vigil said, if a firefighter or their spouse were photographed in uniform for a portrait that was not commissioned by the city.
Still, the photographer said she believes the firefighter should not be punished or face disciplinary action because his wife was pictured in his uniform. “My question back to the Las Cruces Fire Department would be: What’s the difference between a son walking around with a fireman’s uniform on at an event? If the firetrucks come out, they let the kids try on the uniforms. They put the uniforms on, walk around and people take pictures of them.”
When asked to comment on the photographer’s anti-breast-feeding assertion against the city and fire department, Vigil said: “The (city) has no policy regarding breastfeeding.”
Ruby later pointed out that she received overwhelming positive feedback for her photograph of 10 active-duty military mothers breast-feeding their children. The photo was taken in September 2015 at Fort Bliss and immediately went “viral” after Ruby posted it on Facebook. She and the image gained international attention and praise, including from the Army — and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton later shared the photo on social media.
“The response has been completely overwhelming," she said.
"If the Army supports this,” she added with a laugh, “why can’t the Las Cruces Fire Department get on board with this?”
Follow Carlos Andres López on Twitter: @carlopez_los
