Bette Midler is not the wind beneath new parents’ wings right now.
The “Beaches” star received quite the Twitter lashing after she offered a dismissive take on the baby formula shortage Thursday night.
The shortage has left store shelves across the nation bare of baby formula thanks to COVID-19-related supply chain issues that worsened after Abbott Nutrition, a major formula manufacturer, recalled select lots of Similac, Alimentum and EleCare products.
The lack of availability has caused stressful situations for families who rely on baby formula — for a crowd of reasons — to feed their infants.
“TRY BREASTFEEDING!” Midler tweeted Thursday night. “It’s free and available on demand.”
Her flippant solution to a complex problem was in response to a tweet from MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, who emphasized the severity of the situation by noting that the “baby formula shortage reveals an amazing secret oligopoly” of three companies owning “90%” of the market.
People on Twitter were quick to point out how truly ignorant Midler’s comment came off.
Yet, after many laid out plenty of understandable reasons why breastfeeding isn’t an option for all of those who are caring for babies, Midler doubled down on her stance.
“No shame if you can’t breastfeed, but if you can & are somehow convinced that your own milk isn’t as good as a ‘scientifically researched product’, that’s something else again,” the Grammy-winner tweeted Thursday. “The monopoly news is news to me, tho, no lie.”
She then offered another glib solution for those who can’t breastfeed in the form of a snarky and unhelpful hashtag,
Given that not everyone has access to wet nurses, plenty of Twitter went off.
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