Making of "Opinions"

J came up with the exchange from panel 2 onwards and figured it would work well in a mom group situation.  I have personally done breastfeeding, pumping and formula, so I wanted to focus on the shaming issue rather than one vs another.

J suggested I make the other lady a cow because that's just a funny visual.  Some people have questioned her "udder" placement, but my thinking was that if all the other animals in the universe have "human" anatomy, why would the cow be any different?  Also trying to draw her feeding from her udders could start looking a bit.... weird.

Initially I had the cow saying "Aren't you worried about chemicals" because this seemed like a ridiculous thing for her to be saying as chemicals are in everything.  I ran the roughs passed my friendly Facebook mom group and the feedback was that she needed to be nastier.  There's an old study about breastfeeding babies doing better in school.  It's been largely debunked I think, but the stigma still remains.  The idea of a stranger suggesting to someone that they somehow don't "care" about their children is abhorrent, so that seemed like the perfect thing for her to say!

The other feedback I received was from friends who had the opposite problem -being shamed for breastfeeding!!  From what I understand, this is quite common from older generations worrying that babies are "going hungry" without formula.  They suggested I could even things out by flipping the script in the bonus panel.  Always keen to squeeze a weird animal fact in there, I researched other weird ways animals feed their young.  Turns out some birds produce something called "crop milk" that they feed their chicks.  One such bird is the flamingo, which I had conveniently already introduced in the hyena comic!

The very last change was in the 4th panel.  I initially had Fran looking directly at the cow mom, but J said it would be funnier if she'd just nonchalantly gone back to what she was doing.