UPDATE: March 2, 2016, 3:17 p.m. PST This story has been updated to clarify that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes facilities available, upon request, to breastfeeding mothers on Oscar night.

At Sunday night’s Academy Awards, Best Supporting Actor nominee Tom Hardy was asked by an L.A. Times reporter why he was out in the lobby. “I’m just waiting for my wife (Charlotte Riley) to finish breast pumping in the bathroom,” he replied. “She has to do it every hour.”

At the same event, pregnant women were lavished with praise: Emily Blunt “glowed,” Chrissy Teigen “stunned” and Anne Hathaway was “blossoming.” But once they stop being magical vessels of new life, even A-list new mothers are out of the spotlight and into the bathroom.

Image: Us magazine

The Academy says it has for years allowed breastfeeding mothers access to a multi-use nurses' station off the main lobby of the Dolby Theatre, which is equipped with a partition and a refrigerator for milk storage. Private bathrooms are also available nearby. Though this accommodation was not communicated to attendees beforehand, lactating mothers who inquired — celebrities or not — were granted passes that allowed them to use the space.

However, accessibility is not just about the existence of a space. A woman who needs to pump needs to pump now, because her body demands it. The extra step of having to find an informed staffer to help can be a deterrent all on its own. And discovering a general use nurses' station can invite additional questions of hygiene, specifically, whether the environment is conducive to produce food for a baby with a developing immune system.

Despite these available services, an attendee to the 2014 Oscars told me she was responsible for arranging a dressing room for one A-lister to pump in that year. She could not say which celebrity. In 2013 Adele told a reporter that she was “running to the toilets…to pump and dump. Which loads of people were doing…All these Hollywood superstars, lined up and breastfeeding in the ladies.” And in 2006, the L.A. Times reported that Capote producer Caroline Baron had “put a call in to the Academy wondering how she would get a breast pump past security.” The reporter noted that the Academy was “used to accommodating people…including those who might need to get to the bathroom frequently and quickly.”

Image: JESSICA SHORTALL & LAURA LEGG PHOTOGRAPHY

There is a clear institutional and cultural assumption at work in these examples: If a woman wants to be at the Oscars while she is making food for her baby, it is considered an “accommodation” for her to be directed to a bathroom to do so, whether she is a powerful celebrity or someone who invisibly staffs the event: the publicist, the bartender, the cleaner refilling toilet paper in the restroom.

One might be tempted to write off a non-bathroom lactation room as a diva-level request. Many women used the Academy's accommodations — exactly how many wasn't clear — but it's also not clear how many women knew of it, versus those who simply used marked bathrooms. An Oscars attendee I communicated with say she did not see any signage for or evidence of lactation facilities. She did not wish to be quoted by name, for work-related reasons.

Consider the toilet plume, an “invisible cloud” of “fecal bacteria and other microorganisms” that can be released into the air when a toilet is flushed. I have been unable to find a pediatrician who recommends a gentle misting of E.coli as part of a newborn’s diet.

If you’re unfamiliar with pumping, you might wonder why women don’t just hook up to their pumps in the lobby or green room. I asked Rachel Sklar, a New York-based writer and entrepreneur, about this. She told me, “Even as a mom who will breastfeed proudly pretty much anywhere, I'd balk at pumping in public. It's not just that it is personal...The pump has a bunch of parts, and you have to be careful to keep the sterile parts sterile. You have to find an outlet. Then…you have to detatch the (pump), cap the bottles and pack it all away, hopefully without spilling all over yourself.”

Some perspective: The Dolby Theatre, home to the Oscars since 2011, is wheelchair accessible and allows service animals. It has a TTY line and American Sign Language interpretation for hearing impaired visitors. Large print programs are available on request. Guests with special needs are allowed to bring in their own food. These are all genderless accommodations. However, the Dolby does not list any lactation accommodations on its website. I talked to Kristina Whitsell, a freelance electrician and rigger who has “been all through” the Dolby Theatre. Whitsell did not see any dedicated, permanent lactation rooms in her work at the theatre, and she noted that “attendees wouldn’t have access to backstage, and the lobby [doesn’t] have anything other than restrooms, a gift shop and concessions.”

However, the Dolby hosts many events other than the Academy Awards; any changes made to the existing venue would be limited, and would have to be requested and implemented on a case-by-case basis. In my search for Academy policies for 2016 or any other year, I was unable to locate evidence of the Academy announcing dedicated lactation space available to attendees.

Image: JESSICA SHORTALL & LAURA LEGG PHOTOGRAPHY

Pumping doesn’t require extensive space or amenities; all you really need is a locking door, a chair and an electrical outlet in a small office or storage room — with dedicated signage to make clear where this space is. There are also options like Mamava, a company that makes portable lactation pods for offices, airports and sports venues. Mamava cofounder Sascha Mayer told me, “Women need to feel comfortable to be able to produce milk. There’s a real indignity to being half undressed, hiding in a bathroom stall.”

This year, the Oscars faced heavy criticism about its diversity problems. On the red carpet, Academy president Cheryl Boone-Isaacs declared commitment to inclusion on all fronts, to “making sure that we are being inclusive with all the activities and initiatives that we do.”

The lack of visible, accessible, sanitary accommodations in this one area – in venues as diverse as airports, performance venues, sports arenas, conference centers, and, yes, the Oscars – is exclusion by discomfort, and it sends a message to new mothers: Your need is not mainstream enough to force us to uniquely accommodate you. This might not be intentional; often a lack of awareness is at play. But breastfeeding rates are at their highest in a century, and celebrity mothers have become very public about breastfeeding. In 2016 Hollywood, ignorance provides thin cover.

The message of these stories will reach this year’s glowing pregnant celebrities, who are, of course, the breast pumping new mothers of next year’s awards. It will tell them what they can expect, and what they should accept. And it will reach beyond that.

Women and men, regardless of income or fame, are reading about Charlotte Riley’s trip to the restroom this year, presented by news outlets simply as a charming story of a supportive husband. We don’t know why Charlotte Riley pumped in a restroom instead of behind a partition in the theatre nurse’s station, but her story is part of a public narrative that represents other lactating mothers. Managers and customer service workers who read about pumping in restrooms will absorb yet another proof point that it is acceptable to send their own employees and customers to a restroom to pump. And breastfeeding mothers will absorb a message, too: Accept it, these stories say, to the teachers and soldiers, the lawyers and bartenders, the assistants and executives. Be grateful for what you get.

But accommodation needs to get more accommodating.

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