'I'm not looking for praise': Olympian Torah Bright responds to bashers of her breastfeeding photo
Australian Olympic gold medalist Torah Bright has fired back at her critics, saying she's "sad" that people were saying negative comments about her recent breastfeeding photograph. In her Mother's Day post, Bright posted a series of photos with her child Flow. One picture in particular sparked mixed reactions from followers, with others calling her "pathetic" and an "attention-seeker". It was a photo of her breastfeeding her baby while doing a headstand and dressed in her underwear. "That’s just f--king weird. What are you trying to prove," one commenter said. "Well done on getting the attention you clearly crave… sad and pathetic," another said.
The 34-year-old two-time Olympic medalist for snowboarding said that the picture was taken to celebrate "the bond between mother and child." She shared on her Instagram stories that for her, "motherhood is pure." "We all do it differently," she said. "I’m not looking for praise. I never need strangers’ praises. I walk this earth to the beat of my own drum, led by my nutrition and search for love and joy… obviously," she said. In another Instagram post, Bright shared a video encouraging other mothers to be there for one another. "Mothers, we need to encourage each other. We need to lift each other up. We need to pay each other compliments, we need to support each other, we need to be each other's biggest cheerleaders because motherhood is so beautiful." She continued, "But reality is we are the only ones who know just how hard those hard moments are. And we need to have each other's back, not compare each other and judge each other because they ought to think so differently and that's why it's so beautiful." Bright is married to fellow athlete Angus Thomson and they have a 10-month-old son. She won the gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and a silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Photo from Torah Bright's Instagram (@torahbright)