Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Public and Private

After reading several of the comments to this post, I want to add a preface. I don't mean the following post to suggest that I resent being asked questions about my pregnancy. I typically enjoy questions and I am generally welcoming of advice--after all, I haven't done this before. That said, what I do find troublesome is the judgment that often comes after I answer a question or respond to advice.


No surprise, I've been thinking a lot about the public and the private and the intersections of the two. As a pregnant woman, I am beginning to feel like I exist in the interstitial spaces I write about. In the past 6 months, I've never been asked so many personal questions by friends, family, acquaintances, and complete strangers in my life.

Aside from my stint in the blogging world, most people know me as a fairly private person. I prefer to keep things to myself. When C & I discovered I was pregnant, we agreed only to tell our closest friends and family for at least the first trimester. By the time I was well into the 2nd trimester, I had discovered there is no casual way to tell people I ostensibly work with but rarely see that I was pregnant; in fact, quite a few people in my department still don't know I'm pregnant. I finally just decided to let it filter through the grapevine, which moves surprisingly fast in an academic setting. I was on campus for a meeting last week, and as it is summer and I'm working primarily from home, I had not been on campus in several weeks. Since I had last made regular appearances on campus, I have, well, blossomed, you could say. Several people--and not just anyone mind you, but the heads of the department--stopped and outright stared. One person, whom I respect immensely, essentially cornered me in the bathroom and asked me if I knew I looked so pregnant. Had it been anyone else, I would have been offended, but as I know this person to have an irreverent sense of humor, I laughed and answered that tends to happen at 6 months along. I digress. . .

The public nature of pregnancy has interested me since long before I got pregnant, but I'm really intrigued by it now that I am pregnant. Everyone from close friends and family to perfect strangers in the grocery store seem to think it is acceptable to offer me unsolicited advice on every topic. Now, I have to confess that I have been known to offer a fair amount of unsolicited advice myself, but I try to limit it to those I know well and to topics I know they aren't especially sensitive about. So the question I've been pondering of late and the one leaving me feeling as though all pregnant women exist in interstitality is why do people feel compelled to comment on every aspect of pregnancy? I am all for helpful advice and kind words, but I feel like the moment I became pregnant people began to believe that my brain stopped working. My mother constantly tells me not to do certain things: "Don't lift anything too heavy; make sure C does that for you!" Because I am unable to determine on my own what is too heavy for me to lift. C's mother says "Why are you planning to do it that way? This way worked for us, and all my children turned out fine." Because we are incapable of making our own decisions regarding childcare. Once a lovely woman in the grocery story adamantly reminded me not to eat unpasturized cheeses. Because I am unable to read a package of feta cheese to determine if it was made with pasturized milk. Most recently people have begun offering their advice on our decision to have an unmedicated birth. It seems like everyone I know has an opinion on this, and most of them aren't particularly supportive. In fact, some of the responses have been so unsupportive that I have decided not to talk about it with anyone--and here I go and blog about it. See, I'm constantly breaking my own division between public and private.

So what is it about being pregnant that makes a woman fair game for a certain amount of criticism and scorn, as well as a healthy dose of good wishes and happy thoughts, both from those she love and those she has never seen before in her life? Is it because, for the first ever, I'm physically displaying my personal life? I mean there's no denying I'm pregnant unless I want to try to convince people I've been eating too much ice cream, which I'm tempted to do. Now let me say I am enjoying pregnancy; I actually like the changes my body is going through, and I am reveling in the personality of this little one (heck I already know that s/he rocks out to Sarah Maclachlan and Sheryl Crow and relaxes when read Goodnight Moon.) But I'm less fond of everyone sharing their thoughts on my body and C's and my decisions about everything from childbirth to childrearing. I find myself negotiating the public realm that pregnancy seems to be with a great deal of trepidation, hesitation, and wariness. I'm no longer excited when people ask me questions about my health or my decisions because I've come to learn that most people are more than just politely interested; they see my pregnancy as a time to share their views about pregnancy in general. As someone who is usually all about exchanging ideas and learning from others, I'm beginning to wish everyone would keep their views about my body to themselves.

4 comments:

Amy Reads said...

I find that this also happens with "abnormal" women's bodies. Many a time I've gone to the grocery store and had some random well-meaning member of the upright citizens' brigade tell me, "well, you'll never lose weight if you buy pancake mix" or "really? candy? are you sure you want to do that?"
It goes beyond pregnancy, I think, and speaks to a greater concern regarding the publicity of female bodies.
Or maybe I've been working on my dissertation again, and I've been seeing conspiratorial patterns everywhere.
Amy

M said...

I think you're probably right. I also attribute it to the voyeuristic and celebrity nature of our culture. I mean in a world where you can find out what Paris Hilton eats for dinner it becomes increasingly difficult to know what is and isn't appropriate to say.

flossie said...

Eww. It's too bad you're having to deal with that kind of crap from people...

It does make sense that there would be anxiety about the publicity of women's bodies: as theorists like Michael Warner claim, the body, gender, and sexuality are all taboo in the public sphere.

Pregnancy flaunts all of those things, I guess: your body, your gender, your sexuality. Why then strangers feel they can weigh in on your choices is still a mystery... except that maybe they feel that since you've already transgressed that barrier between private and public (unwittingly!) they can do likewise.

Flossie

PS. Welcome to the blogosphere by the way! I got here via Mommy Phd.

Dr. Peters said...

I agree with what you're saying and I have a response that is long and personal, so I'll email it. But here I want to suggest that the river runs both ways. Frequently women who would not discuss issues of their own body begin to share and ask questions about themselves and other women when they start trying to concieve or get pregnant. You, after all, are a self-proclaimed private person but are publishing your thoughts on this topic. And there are gigantic networks of message boards and blogs and websites in which women discuss their own bodies and other women's bodies and tell birth stories and read birth stories and nothing is taboo. While electronic communication does offer a sense of anonymity, those things frequently happen IRL--it is not unusual for women who are only casually acquainted to get into drawn out discussions about ovulation and morning sickness and epidurals and breastfeeding.
While there are important political issues at hand--I am certianly not dismissing that concern--the fact remains that pregnancy and childbirth is mysterious, even to those experiencing it, and people are very curious and want to talk about it--I think because it makes them somehow feel like they are participating in the mystery.