ah, the good old double bind

[hammercock]

Is the ‘Mom Job’ Really Necessary? DR. DAVID A. STOKER, a plastic surgeon in Marina Del Rey, Calif., has a surgical cure for the ravages of motherhood. He, like many plastic surgeons nationwide, calls it a “mommy makeover

Comments

[miss_chance]

So, of course, I'm well tapped into all of the pressures we face as American women about being slender and young. But, interestingly, somehow I have managed to miss any of the "fetishising of motherhood" pressures or messages. You would think that as an almost-40 years old woman who has never shown any interest in having children I would have gotten some pressure, flack, something, from someone, or some media pressure telling me I'm not sufficient somehow for that choice. I guess I'm just lucky. I mean, sure, I've seen the crazy far-right railing against the "willfull childlessness" of some "selfish" women, but that has as much personal impact on me as the people who are standing in the desert, protesting the US Government's treatment of space-aliens.

As I write this, though, I have a interesting thought:
I am *quite* aware of and suceptible to all the various pressures about looks, youth, body-fat, etc., and have to put conscious energy into maintaining my center and grounding and sense of self in that context. So was my mother. Because it's something I'm prone to be vulnerable about, I am hit with the onslaught of the message. But I've have just never in my life ever thought that I would like to, or should have children, so I don't even notice any external pressure about it.

I think we have to carry within ourselves the seeds of doubt in order for the media messages to have any power.

...

And, for the record, my relationship with weight loss has been similar to yours in that the only way I could come to the point that I could manipulate my body weight was when I came to be comfortable with myself at my highest weight. Once I knew I could look good and be "accepted" at that weight, and once I could stay stable at that same weight for an extended period of time, only then could I begin to change. I wouldn't say that I utterly removed the "seeds of doubt" about my body, in fact they're more like fully grown trees than seeds, but perhaps it was sufficient to learn to see the forest.

[hammercock]

By the fetishizing of motherhood, I mean more than just whether one feels personally pressured to reproduce. I do want children and my parents have never pressured me about when I'm going to make them grandparents, thank goodness. What I find disturbing are things like the endless speculation over which celebrities are pregnant (if I never hear the phrase "baby bump" again, it'll be too soon), how much weight they have or have not gained, the constant scrutiny of their parenting skills (Britney Spears comes to mind). I'm also bothered by the scrutiny focused on non-celebrity pregnant women, like complete strangers thinking it's okay to just walk up to a pregnant woman and put their hands on her and ask intrusive questions, or to give her shit about whether she's having a glass of wine with dinner, as if being pregnant somehow makes a woman's body public domain. And yeah, the nutbars telling women that choosing not to become mothers is selfish are invited to fuck right off as well. Then babies and baby gear are fetishized in a way that freaks me out, almost like it's some weird kind of porn (in a non-sexual way, but you probably know what I mean).

This culture puts motherhood and babies up on a pedestal, but it's so freaking superficial. The neocons and religious crazies want women to have BABIES OMG BABIES, but they don't want to support women's health, prenatal care, postnatal care, proper education and nutrition...look at the way Bush just vetoed S-CHIP, for instance. Their commitment to mothers and babies begins at conception and ends at birth; they want to tell me how to live my life, but they don't actually care about my wellbeing or that of my (currently hypothetical) children. Ugh. Creepy.

And, for the record, my relationship with weight loss has been similar to yours...

*nodnod* I was thinking that it comes down to whether you're doing something out of self-love or out of self-hatred. While I was at war with my body and struggling with hating myself, I was never going to make any headway. Once I became more comfortable with myself and my body and was more able to shrug off other people's judgments, that's when I was able to look more clearly at my situation and my options for dealing. I had to learn to have compassion for myself (in many ways, not just about the state of my body) before I could make long-term positive changes...and it's still hard to maintain them in the long-term. Just gotta keep at it.