Remember Emily's Wonder Lab? It was a major girl-power moment in 2020 where kids got to learn science from a pregnant female engineer.
Emily Calandrelli became a hero to many little ones in that moment. Now she's being a hero to women by calling out the unfair treatment she received at the hands of male agents from the Transportation Security Administration in 2022. Emily, a newly minted mom of two, was traveling for the first time since welcoming her son. While going through TSA screening at Los Angeles International Airport, she was stopped by agents who weren't educated on the agency's own policies on how parents can travel with breastfeeding supplies.
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The back-and-forth with the male agents was getting nowhere, so Emily asked for a female agent. She was denied access to a female agent. The male agents continued to question her condescendingly, and Emily thinks this treatment is not the kind of thing any mom should face.
Emily took to Twitter to share the details of the experience. Although she initially deleted her story because she was embarrassed by how emotional the situation made her, after hearing from other women with similar stories, she decided to retell it in greater detail.
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"Yesterday was my 1st trip away from my 10wk old son, who I'm currently breastfeeding. I'm going through security at LAX. I brought my pump and 2 ice packs – only 1 of which was cold (I won't need the other until I come home, when I'll have more milk)," she explained.
"I didn’t currently have any milk but I was planning to get a last second pumping sesh in before my ~5 hour flight. Two male TSA agents told me I couldn't bring my ice packs through bc they weren't frozen solid. (This is the key part of the story)."
"I asked to speak to someone else & they had their boss come over & he told me the same. He said 'if you had milk on you, this wouldn't be a problem,'" Emily shared.
"He asked (*multiple times*) 'well WHERE is the baby.' He said if my child was with me, it wouldn't be an issue."
At this point, Emily was both frustrated and uncomfortable. She asked to speak to a female TSA agent, but that request was denied.
"I asked multiple times to speak to a female agent and they wouldn't allow it. They escorted me out of line and forced me to check my cold packs, meaning I couldn't pump before my flight for fear it would spoil," she shared.
The agents, as Emily suspected, were misinformed on their policy. She noted where the TSA website outlines its policy.
"But guess what? They were wrong. TSA rules specifically state that you are allowed to have gel ice packs (regardless if they are fully frozen!!) for medically necessary purposes. And emptying my breasts on a regular schedule and providing food for my child IS medically necessary," Emily said.
As Emily learned from making her story public, this is not uncommon for moms to face.
"Moms flooded my DMs with their own horrible TSA experiences," she noted.
"It is infuriatingly common to encounter @TSA agents who don't know their OWN rules around bringing breast milk / formula pumping equipment on planes."
"Yesterday I was humiliated that I had to explain to 3 grown men that my breasts still produce milk when I'm not with my child," she wrote.
"Yesterday I was embarrassed telling them about my fear of mastitis if I didn't pump. Today I'm furious. @TSA."
"And to make things worse, as I was escorted out, the @TSA Agent says 'and don't try to sneak it back through a second time, we'll just make you toss it out' – like I was a petulant child, trying to sneak a toy through security (rather than a mom trying to feed her kid)," Emily noted.
"There's so much pressure to breastfeed, but @TSA makes it impossible. It's yet another system in place that makes it harder for women to get back to work after they've started a family. The lack of training at @TSA is unfairly punishing and harming women."
