Hmmm...

Some rambling thoughts...

No, I don't think it's anyone's business that Bristol Palin is pregnant. As a formerly pregnant teenager who made a different choice, I don't think she should be shamed.

Still, I can't help noticing how markedly diferent the rhetoric/coverage surrounding her pregnancy is when compared to young women of color--particularly the reactions from conservatives and evangelicals. To sum it up:

"When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!" ― Thomas Schaller

Via Prof Tracey. (I'm assuming that works in the same way that it's "endearing" that Palin is a mother of five but a poor woman would be treated scornfully for the same?)

At the back of my mind, since I read about this, I've been thinking what if Malia or Sasha Obama was older and pregnant? Can you imagine the tropes that would be trotted out? The "See, I told you sos?" The condemnation--not only of the Obamas, but of African Americans in general--from the very people who are closing ranks around Bristol Palin? I do not think it is an invasion of the Palin privacy to say, yes, those people are hypocrites.

What it comes down to, again, is reproductive freeedom. You see, not only does Bristol Palin have the right, in a legal sense, to choose to continue this pregnancy, she also has a "cultural right" to be a mother. What do I mean? She's a white woman, part of a group whose role as mother is encouraged and rewarded. Not so for women of color who are questioned as mothers, as I noted a year-and-a-half ago when talking about children who were ripped away from their mothers because of ICE raids:

A discourse has developed in this country to support stealing our children away from us that attacks us as immoral, "illegal," or uneducated. I see this raid on a historical continuum with black children sold away from their mothers and Native children forced into "Indian schools" so they could be "properly" Christianized and Americanized. In fact, Americanizers of the late 19th/early 20th century spent inordinate amounts of time threatening to take immigrant children from their parents, telling immigrant mothers how their methods of child-rearing were substandard to those of more WASP-y Americans, probably as much time as 20th century welfare critics spent convincing themselves that poor black women did not really love or want their children--they only had them to get more out of the system--and as much time as 21st century anti-immigration proponents spend convincing themselves that Latinas don't really love or want their children--they just want anchor babies.

At the same time all these theories hurt our children, they hurt us, too. They justify the exploitation of our labor--it's okay if we work long hours in dangerous jobs; our children don't really need us. They justify the exploitation of our bodies--after all we're manipulative women not above using them for material gain. They justify the continual denial of the most basic rights to us.

Bristol Palin's future mothering is not as worrisome to us as that of the girls whom we are taught to think of as typical teen mothers.

To be fair, some conservatives have at least admitted the problem, in their eyes, isn't wholly teenage pregnancy, but unwed motherhood. I guess marriage to (typically) another teenager magically eradicates all the potential problems associated with the pregnancy itself not to mention the poverty that often comes afterward. So perhaps the Palin's carefully tacked on "and will marry the baby's father" changes how news of Bristol's pregnancy is being received, as well. (I swear, I want to tell some people, we can add and subtract; we're still going to know if people had sex/got pregnant before marriage).

Btw, I'm sorry, Sarah Palin can't have it both ways. Her daughter's pregnancy can't simultaneously be "no reflection on her" and proof that she (Sarah Palin) "walks the talk." It is Bristol Palin who's "walking the talk."

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Wow, They Really Can't Win

I never expect to say that too often about thin, rich, beautiful women, but in one area, at least, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I'm talking about post-pregnancy weight loss.

Now we all know the way it works. Celebrity moms already lose hotness points for being pregnant, though part of the sex goddess status is reclaimable if teh guys should so deign to name them a member of the "sexy swollen ankles club," apparently. People anxiously await any change in their figures, then speculate about whether or not they are in danger of becoming "too fat" during pregnancy--the fact that Gillian Anderson decided to wait until after she has her baby to work out merited a number of posts and articles. And my God, just google "Milla Jovovich pregnancy" to see how obsessed people were with the fact that she gained 70 lbs!!!

Within about five minutes postpartum, they are scrutinized for any sign of "pregnancy/baby" stomach. When no such flaw is found, media outlets ooh and ahh over how they got their bodies "back." I mean the Parents.com article linked quotes Jada Pinkett Smith:

Matrix mama Jada Pinkett Smith admits that celebrities are masters of illusion who get a lot of help from nannies, personal chefs, trainers, cleaning services, the works. "All moms struggle. Celebrities just know how to conceal it," says Pinkett Smith, who has two children with husband Will Smith and is stepmom to his first son. "While motherhood is a beautiful thing, it's traumatic to the body and the mind. I had some really down days after my kids were born. I thought I would never recover, even though I had a lot of help." Emphasis mine

Then goes right on to outline how you, yes you, can achieve these amazing results at home.

But now, the same media that praise the "willpower" needed to lose forty pounds in two weeks are pursuing a new angle. Some headlines:Celebrity mamas fuel post-baby body blues: Stars who are bikini-ready right after birth inspire fury in many new moms

"Pregorexia" Inspired By Thin Celebs?
Moms-To-Be, Obsessing Over Weight, Diet, Exercise So Much They Put Baby's Health In Some Jeopardy

Pregorexia is an oh-so-cute-and-appropriate play on the word anorexia, so I don't think I need to define it. The gist of the news coverage? Moms who "under eat" or "over exercise" are "thinspired" by Nicole Kidman, Nicole Richie, Angelina Jolie, and other celebrities who regain their pre-baby physiques in a short amount of time.

I'd like to suggest that perhaps it's not the fact that these women seem to get "back in shape" so quickly that's the problem, but the media coverage (and adulation) of it, the way it has become an expectation, and cultural messages about the horrors of being fat that long precede the obsessive coverage of celebrity moms postpartum.

Don't worry--the same media that are spreading the pregorexia warnings should be instrumental in helping them blow over. In its coverage of the article about the pregorexia threat, AOL gushes,

Stars like Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman have managed to stay fabulously thin while pregnant and seemed to pop back into their pre-baby physique days after giving birth.

And according to Salon, it's not pregorexics but "Growing numbers of obese and overweight women, and mothers who gain more weight during pregnancy than is recommended" who are the real problem. You know... same ol' fatties.

Letting go of the "you can never be too thin" motto is impossible.

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On South Dakota...

Does it bear repeating all the reasons that I, and so many other people who share the radical notion that women should have control over their bodies and reproductive choices, am so opposed to the SD bill? I just don't feel like it right now. Instead, I'll focus on the fact that they would ban abortion in the cases of incest and rape. Religious conservative LaShawn Barber has provided a reason for this: though some violent, hateful man may have meant the attack for "bad," it is possible that God meant a resultant pregnancy for "good." My sister, in her usual pithy way, summed up with the response, "My God, it'd be a double violation."

And it would. How dare some smug, I-know-what-God-wants "pro-lifer" mandate that, not only would a woman have to bear the brunt of a vicious attack, or series of attacks, she would also have to bear the mental and physical anguish of an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy and giving birth to a child who is part of someone who terrorized her? I remember watching some show on which a woman had been forced to carry to term a pregnancy that resulted from rape. She had never bonded with her daughter; the reason, in her words: "Every time I look at that child, I see that man's face." Not all of us have the amazing powers of forgiveness or the miraculous ability to see and interpret God's plan. Not all of us can focus on what He might mean for good when we are hurting so badly.

If you have not been the survivor of a sexual assault--and I doubt that anyone who would support a bill like this has--you cannot imagine what it does to your mind, to who you are. In those horrible, horrible moments, you have no control over what happens to your body. That the state of South Dakota seeks to prolong this feeling of powerlessness and lack of control is inhuman. It bears witness to the fact that they only care about certain lives and about the quality of life of none.

The right to choice should be protected for all women in all circumstances. But this issue, these circumstances, are particularly close to my heart. So, I have to abandon the soft-spokenness, for once and say to the SD House and its supporters:

Get your damned religious agenda, your fucking misplaced self-righteousness, and your generally disgusting ignorance of other people's realities out of my life and off my body.

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