zondag 21 september 2014

Sunday stamps: Mammals



Het thema van deze Sunday stamps is 'zoogdieren'. Het liefst zou ik postzegels willen laten zien van onszelf, de mens is per slot van rekening een zoogdier, maar helaas heb ik er geen in mijn collectie. 'Helaas', want het blijft scheef dat voor flesvoedingsfabrikanten ongebreideld reclame wordt gemaakt: op geboorte- en felicitatiekaartjes zie je volop melkflesjes, maar vrijwel nooit een kind aan de borst. Met als gevolg, zo is mijn en anderen hun ervaring, dat veel pasgeboren moeders niet gemakkelijk buitenshuis borstvoeding durven geven, en vaak ook zelfs thuis niet als er anderen bij zijn. Er heerst blijkbaar toch een soort taboe op, en door die onzichtbaarheid vergeten mensen dat borstvoeding gewoon normaal is...
In Nederland zijn niet eens officiële postzegels over 't onderwerp uitgegeven, in tegenstelling tot bijvoorbeeld Luxemburg, Polen (met een voorloper hier), San Marino (ook minstens twee keer, zie hier en hier), Oeganda, Algerije, Guatemala, Griekenland en Nicaragua.

Dus vandaag maar een ander zoogdier op postzegel, een van mijn meest favoriete: het vogelbekdier. Een zoogdier, dat zwemt en eieren legt!
Deze Australische postzegel stond al heel lang op mijn verlanglijstje, dus ik was heel blij toen ik 'm ontving. En sprong een gat in de lucht toen onderstaande envelop in de bus kwam, met nog meer vogelbekdierzegels!

This time the Sunday Stamps theme is 'Mammals'. I'd prefer to show stamps of ourselves: we human beings are mammals, too. The word 'mammal' comes from the Latin word 'mamma' which means 'breast', and the Dutch word for mammal, 'zoogdier', means 'breastfeeding animal'.
But alas I don't have any stamp of breastfeeding people. 'Alas', because I think it unfair that there is a lot of implicit advertisement for the formula industry: on birth- and congratulations cards for newborn children and parents there are a lot of bottles to see, while I hardly see similar cards showing a baby being nursed. To my and other's experience, many newborn mothers feel uneasy when nursing outside home, or even at home in front of friends or relatives. And by the fact that 'breastfeeding' seems to be banned from public views, it has become a kind of taboo. Despite of the fact that mother's milk is the normal feeding for a child, by this invisibility many people forget that...
Here in the Netherlands there never have been issued official stamps showing breastfeeding, while in other countries there are beautiful stamps on the subject, for instance Luxembourg, Poland (previously this one), San Marino (also at least twice; see here and here), Uganda, Algeria, Guatemala, Greece and Nicaragua.

So for today I choose an other mammal, one of my all-time favourites: the Platypus. This nursing hairy animal lays eggs! This postage stamp was on my wish list for a very long time, so you can imagine how happy I was when I received the stamp above from Australia. And I 'jumped a hole in the air' (Dutch expression) when I received the mail you see below, with even more Platypus stamps!



5 opmerkingen:

  1. All the other images of platypuses that I've seen have been with them on land. To see it swimming on the stamp was a pleasant surprise.

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  2. The stamps on your package are great! Thank you for joining in this week.

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  3. I find what you say about breastfeeding very interesting. When I was in Amsterdam recently, we saw a woman walking down the street with a baby in a sling and breastfeeding! We found it odd, but apparently it's not so strange for the Dutch!

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  4. Nice choice! Not that you have a penchant for platypus (and for humans as well, I know).

    As I have no kids, I'm not sure if mothers feel uneasy when nursing their babies in Spain. But, if I look at my friends and relatives, I don't think so.

    I don't want to say that the taboo doesn't exist. Certainly there are some people who dislike this image (why?). However, in Spain is really really common to see it in buses, in gardens, in cafés, while speaking with unknown people... Some associations of mothers have made a lot to discard any negative part of the fact of nursing their babies. For instance, organising collective breastfeeding on parks. I like specially the name of one of these associations: "Mamare". "Ma mare" means "my mother", in Catalan, and "mamar" means "be breastfed". Don't you think it is a perfect name? ;-)

    In Spain the Holy Mary of Milk is rather common in art. Regarding the stamps, Correos issued one of them for Christmas last year: http://www.correos.es/ss/Satellite/site/coleccion-1363186316142-galeria_sellos_filatelia/idiomaFilatelia=es_ES-detalle_emision-sidioma=en_GB-tituloPrincipal=Issues+Spain+A%25C3%25B1o+2013

    I'm sure there are more stamps, but I can't recall them now.

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  5. platypus is so unique...i wish i've seen one in the wild but watching them swirl around in a huge tank looked pretty impressive too

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