Boys and Girls, Celebrity Parents, and Stupid Tabloids

I've frequently blogged about my determination to bring Wild Man and Bear up to be who they want to be, even if that means they want to be boys who wear dresses (for the record, I'm too lazy to go through my archives to link to these posts, but they are there). So, even though I try to stay away from tabloid stuff, I was really bothered by recent headlines like, "Is Angelina Jolie Turning Shiloh into a Boy?"

I am upset by this article for a number of reasons. I mean, first, who cares? (And yes, I get the irony of that statement, since clearly I care enough to read the article online). Second, the headline really gets to me. Why do must the author assume that the mother is to blame? Seriously, why is the mother who has all the control when it comes to dressing her daughter? I mean, obviously, the mother is the one making all the fashion choices in the family. Clearly neither the father nor the child have any say in what the child is wearing. And there is absolutely no way a little girl would ask to have her haircut short. Nor is there a possible logical explanation for the haircut other than the fact that her mother wants her to look like a boy (um, I don't know, these people do have 6 kids. Maybe they don't want to brush the kid's hair every single day.). Beyond that, the language really bothers me. Yes, I know it is all subjective, and it is a tabloid--or sort of. The blog I link to often includes some decent articles on parenting. I'm not surprised to see this sort of thing on "Life & Style," but I am a little bit on this particular blog (although perhaps that says something about my own naivete).

That said, I really dislike how we continually have to point out when a "boy" doesn't look like a "boy" or when a "girl" doesn't look like a "girl." I also think the evidence the authors offer is just odd. So Shiloh likes to be called John? I have a 3-year-old, and Wild Man routinely announces, "Mommy, we're playing a game today. Now you must call me X." Typically he wants to be Gloria, the hippo from the movie Madagascar, with whom he is completely in love. He had everyone call him Gloria for an entire month last year. And he also likes to wear my high heels with C's ties and occasionally he asks to wear "sparkles" (make-up). I've also painted his nails, at his request. Do I think this means he wants to be a girl? No, I don't. But if I did, would I care? Only insofar as I would see it as my job to help him make that transition so he could be a happy and fulfilled individual. Here's the thing: kids experiment. One day, Wild Man wants to be a mommy and nurse his dinosaurs, and the next day he wants to be a superhero and fight the mean guys. So I applaud Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for allowing their kids to be who they want to be, knowing that they and their children will have to deal with stupid articles like this one.

The Joys of Motherhood

I've been thinking about what it means to be a mother a lot lately. Part of this stems from the fact that I am a mother, and I am about to become the mother of two. But it mostly stems from the media's obsession with celebrity mothers. I confess, I am no different. I love looking at pictures of babies and children, and I am quite happy to collude in the media's infringement upon celebrities' privacy by looking at pictures of Gwen Stefani and her boys or Heidi Klum and her brood.

Lately, though, I've noticed something that I bothers me, as a mother, a woman, and an academic. Many, many celebrity mothers are commenting that they've never been more fulfilled in their lives since they became mothers. They are overwhelmed by the love they feel for their children and feel more satisfied by motherhood than anything they've done professionally. Halle Berry and Michelle Monaghan are two examples of celebrity moms who have recently waxed poetic about motherhood.

On some level, I get what these women (and celebrity moms are by no means the only moms to express such feelings) are saying. I love Wild Man in a way that I have never loved another person. The love I feel for him is vastly different from the love I feel for C. I also take great pride and pleasure in my role as his mom. I love being with him, and I thoroughly enjoy watching him grow up and become his own person. In fact, my favorite thing about being a mom is watching him learn and grow and change, things that I often have very little to do with. That said, I find this tendency, which is so often exhibited by celebrity moms, to wax poetic about how profound and changing a mother's love can be a little disturbing. For me, it promotes the message (as do sites like People's Celebrity Baby Blog) that all women inherently desire to be mothers. Such stories tacitly remind women that they are, indeed, unfulfilled as women until they become mothers, and that really bothers me.

It bothers me because so many women become so wrapped up in what a mother is "supposed" to be that they forget who they are or who they want to be. My own mother had a huge crisis of identity when my sister and I moved out. She, a woman who had worked outside the home for years, had several hobbies, and a great relationship with my dad, didn't know what to do when she didn't have to be someone's "Mom" every single day. She became depressed and completely withdrew from life. She finally went to therapy and is now in a great place, but she has acheived that sense of calm, in part, because my brother still lives at home and likely will for the rest of his life (my brother is deaf, and while he is fully able to live on his own, he depends so much on my mom--and she on him--that he will likely never move out). She "mothers" him every day, so she has maintained the part of her identity that she feared losing.

It seems that the idea that nothing is so fulfilling as motherhood only perpetuates these kinds of identity-crises that many, many women experience. I wish we could revise this perception of motherhood a bit. Again, I find motherhood fulfilling--more fulfilling than lots of things I do--but I also find it hard, frustrating, tedious, and, dare I say it, at times boring. I find more work as fulfilling as motherhood, but I find it fulfilling in a completely different way. I wish more women would say just that: motherhood fulfills one part of me, but it does not complete me, any more than my work completes me. Both make me a more complete person, but neither mothering nor my work makes up the total of me.

Here is another unrelated, but tangential thought that has been running through my head.

A few years ago, author Ayelet Waldman appeared on Oprah, and she stated that she loved her husband more than she loved her four children. Waldman was publicly chastised for being a bad mother and recieved death threats for making these statements. Clearly, she was a "bad mother" because she loved someone more than her children. I was not a mother when Waldman made these statements, but even then, I felt that I understood them. I have since made similar statements to my family and friends, and most seem a bit taken aback until I explain myself. As I just said, I love Wild Man in a way that I do not love C, and I know I will love Z in a similar way. But, in a way, I love C more than I love Wild Man and more than I will love Z. Here's why: I see my time with Wild Man and Z as fixed, as finite, in some strange way. Yes, I will always be there mother and I will definitely always be there for them in every way possible, but they will not always need or want me to be a daily part of their lives. I firmly believe my primary job as a mom is to help my children be the best people they can be, and then, I have to let them go and discover the world for themselves. I want to be in my life forever, but I don't want them to be the center of my life forever. I think that is unhealthy and wouldn't allow them to be their own people on their own terms.

In contrast, I do plan to have C in my life forever. He and I have willingly joined our lives, and I am committed to sustaining this relationship for the long haul. By saying I love him more than my children, I am saying that this is the relationship that I value the most in my life. At some point, our kids are going to grow up and leave us, and at that moment, I don't want to look across the table and wonder "Who the hell is this person?" I figure I have 18 or 20 years with Wild Man and Z; I want to have a lifetime with C. For that to happen, I have to put our relationship first, and I think our kids will recognize and, ultimately, appreciate that.

The Sexiness of Pregnancy

I logged on to People.com this morning (yes, yes, I know; I'm colluding in the celebrity nature of our culture.) and saw this headline: "Jessica Alba on Pregnancy: 'I Never Felt Less Sexy." This comes after Vanity Fair's recent interview with Angelina Jolie in which she declares "[Pregnancy] makes me feel like a woman. It makes me feel that all the things about my body are suddenly there for a reason. It makes you feel round and supple, and to have a little life inside you is amazing. . . I’m fortunate. I think some women have a different experience depending on their partner. I think that affects it. I happen to be with somebody who finds pregnancy very sexy. So that makes me feel very sexy.” This got me thinking; does the average woman (and no, I don't think either Jessica Alba or Angelina Jolie are the average woman) feel sexy during pregnancy?

I enjoyed my pregnancy with Wild Man (for the most part), and I suppose I felt sexier for a period. But by the end, which I think is really the part that most women remember the most vividly, I felt far from sexy. Is it now fashionable to spin pregnancy as sexy, or is it, indeed, sexy for some women?

Give me a flipping break

Ok, so I occasionally break from my previous pledge to stop reading celebrity gossip. When I saw the headline entitled "Paltrow Suffered Postpartum Depression" I wanted to read it, thinking great, another celebrity is going to openly talk about PPD making it less taboo for "ordinary" women to talk about it. Then I read the column. I don't mean to sound uncharitable or unsupportive, but if the source of Gwyneth Paltrow's PPD after her the birth of her second was that she was unable to indulge herself in the same therapeutic techniques she followed during her first pregnancy, I am so not sympathetic. If everyone got PPD as a result of not having regular acupuncture and massages (yes, you read that correctly), we'd all be in a hell of a lot more trouble.