The clerk ringing up your shoes has her boobs halfway out of her pushup bra — to look or not to look? — but nursing women feel compelled to hide in toilet stalls to breast-feed their babies.

What’s wrong with this picture? There’s as much sense to that scene as there is to giving your daughter silicone implants for her 16th birthday.

It’s always been a mystery to me why a woman would shy from breast-feeding a baby any time, or anywhere, that baby wanted to eat.

Modesty is a virtue, indeed, but there’s nothing worse than an infant’s wail.  And a reasonable person might think that stuffing a nipple — whether it’s attached to a breast or a bottle — in a hungry baby’s mouth would be a reasonable solution.

Like the mom who testified before the Legislature this week.

Danielle Erickson told senators she was “discreetly” breast-feeding her 3-week-old daughter at a Kearney Wal-Mart last spring when two clerks gave her an unwelcome tip: “You know, we have a bathroom for that.”

The admonishment sent the woman sobbing to her car, presumably never to bare her breast in a Wal-Mart again.

Nebraska is now in the sorry company of North Dakota and Idaho as one of three states that don’t legally protect the right of women to nurse their babies at big box retailers.

Or at the mall. Or in a restaurant. Or on a park bench, at a swimming pool, in an art museum.

We shouldn’t need a law that allows women to breast-feed in public.

But apparently we do.  Thus LB499.

I’m all for anything that makes people think before they act like idiots, although I have my doubts that a law will change the attitudes of the ignorant.

And it’s not as if women are getting cited by police, as though they were topless dancers who forgot to put on their pasties.

It’s more a matter of simply having the right. Something tangible to mitigate the mortification of being called out for engaging in the most natural of human behavior.

I’m not sure what I would have done if store staff had chided me for nursing one of my children in public, which I did until they were old enough to perform toddler gymnastics on my stomach.

A part of me thinks we just need to equip young mothers with a little more attitude.

Someone questions your right to breast-feed in the food court? Gives you a nasty look?  Flash some more skin.  Offer to pose for a picture. Ask if they’re hungry.

Put them in their place.

Some women are more comfortable nursing in private. Fine. But if they’re stuck in bathroom stalls for fear of ridicule, anything that will bring them off the toilet seat is a good thing.

We live in a world where C cups sell everything from chrome polish to tortilla chips. Want to check out some cleavage? Just open your eyes and walk down the street.

The female form is a thing of beauty and of function. Women shouldn’t be ashamed of looking good. And they should feel even better they can put their fleshy fashion accessories to practical use.

Studies on breast-feeding prove a smorgasbord of benefits: fewer ear infections in babies, fewer fat kids, fewer cases of ovarian and breast cancer in their mothers.

When I was a nursing mom someone told me about a study that even linked higher IQs with the amount of time a baby was breast-fed. The theory: the more you nurse the smarter you become.

And the smarter you are the less likely you’ll be to scorn a woman who chooses to publicly nourish her child with the most perfect food for a human infant.

And besides, there’s a simple solution if you have a problem with it.

Don’t look.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.