After my last post, a friend suggested (not very nicely) that it was unfair of me to trivialize Disgrasian's latest critique of HBO's Girls, and, because I really do have great respect and affection for Disgrasian in general, I decided actually to read their piece. I firmly maintain that no matter what, even if it were the most trenchant analysis of televisual text I have ever read in my entire life and career, the mere existence of Another Reading of Race in "Girls" participates, wittingly or not, in the "Girls" Is Racist meme, which is a creature driven (as I argued last) by a mean-girls-style social imperative to limit young women by subjecting them to greater scrutiny and holding them to higher standards than we do men of any age. (I would like to acknowledge that this mob concern with racial representation in this one particular show is unfair to a number of people besides the show's creator and writer: it is unfair to the writers of Disgrasian, who have long shown a concern for racial representation in popular culture in general, and so are motivated by something other than mob/meme momentum, but end up contributing to it nonetheless; it is unfair to all the very, very literate people out there who do not care for the show or for Lena Dunham's public persona, whose casual and completely legitimate aversion now bears the weight of a position, because the show and its creators have been turned into things on which one must weigh in; and it is unfair to someone like me, someone who only kind of likes the show, who finds it wittier than most things on TV but who cares about many—MOST—things much, much more than she cares about this show or its creator, and yet finds that in offering some resistance to the meme she has become something like Lena Dunham's champion—which, in the perverse terms of the meme that equates Lena Dunham with white privilege, leads people to suggest that she is defending "white privilege" and is therefore "racist." This, people, is exactly why the You're Racist meme is so pernicious and should only be handled under adult supervision.)
So anyway. While we're talking about fairness, let me say that the Disgrasian piece does not fall directly into the pattern of diagnosing the show's characters with whiteness, which is what I was talking about last time. Instead, it offers a formal analysis of the use of characters of colors, arguing that they remain slightly rendered and in the margins, the better to set off the full "three-dimensionality" and meaningful lives of the white protagonists. This is an actual reading, so when I guessed last time that the post would fail to recognize the writtenness of the text it took on, well, that was not fair. And yet, I disagree deeply with the reading, so I guess I'll explain why. I would like to be on the record as having respectfully disagreed with the fine folks gallantly attempting to perform a critical analysis in the midst of this pop cultural shitstorm.
The Disgrasian critique would work if Girls was a bildungsroman—if each of these characters were, in fact, a model of a full and complex subjectivity that appeared to blossom and develop through experience over time, or at least had the potential to, and that potential were set in relief by the cast of marginal and background figures who distinctly lack that fullness. Have you read nineteenth-century fiction? This is that. Race works this way all the time. But Girls is not that. (I think Hannah probably imagines that this is the genre of her life, and the show rather savagely denies it of her.) Girls is a satire, and it employs devices more appropriate to satire: instead of "full characters," we get caricatures (which can also be complex, as they are here); instead of life stories, we get haphazard picaresque trajectories. The episode where the stoner girl offers to "organize" the nannies at the park, and then loses her charges, and then channels this into a flirtation with their father? Picaresque. Absurd. Even infuriating, when you consider that the universe would not have magically opened a similar path to any of the other nannies had they lost their kids. That—THAT—is why the show does not feature a person of color in this character's role, not "exclusion." Because it is a dark, dark comedy about the momentum of white privilege in contemporary urban America, and you can't show it in action through a character who does not possess it.
I know there are viewers out there who identify with the main characters of this show, and others who want to but feel prevented from doing so by their whiteness. To this I say, god help you. Rarely has a television show succeeded in making whiteness look so unappealing, in my eyes—and to do so while emphasizing the enormous privilege that comes with it rather than disavowing it! These girls are sick with their whiteness; it makes them ridiculous; it is what saves their asses, allows them not to work, allows them not to see the racial and classed dimensions of the world they inhabit, but, in this show, it is also what prevents them from being "three-dimensional" or having "full lives." It is a social boon but a formal burden. This takes real skill. The only other show I watch these days that attempts a similar thing is "Louie," which is smart about race and gender not because it offers great female or nonwhite role models, but because it shows how the privileges of white maleness are so ferocious that they will continue to operate even in an oaf like Louie, to the amazement of no one more than himself.
Most shows are glaringly white. One shouldn't have to say it, but there it is. And most of them make you want whiteness, or at least the privileges that come with it. Have you ever watched, say, Modern Family? For all their foibles, they still live in gorgeous houses and never worry about health insurance—wouldn't that be nice? That is what it feels like to want whiteness. Girls is different, despite the fact that some people will continue to want the warped, destructive, embarrassing version of whiteness it puts on display. This is not necessarily any individual person's fault; we're supposed to want these things, to envy them, and then be told if we'd "earned" them, we'd have them—that's how capitalism works. One of the ways this show interrupts this desire, though, is through its use of marginal characters exempt from whiteness. It doesn't give them "stories"; instead, it shows them giving the "girls" of the show a wide berth, the way you would syphilitics. It shows them avoiding whiteness. Why don't the "girls" have any friends of color? Seriously? I am of color, and I put enormous effort every day into not being friends with these people.
It is true that one of the effects of formal "marginalization" is to deny certain categories of person the "full humanness" recognized in other types of people. But that is not its only effect. In this case, I think it has the opposite effect: one gets the sense that the marginal figures of color—the Asian intern at the publishing house, the nannies at the park, even the entirely invisible hotel housekeeper whose tip Hannah cavalierly steals in episode 1—that these characters, were they people, would be living more difficult, less charmed, less absurd, and therefore "realer" lives than the "girls." Lacking white privilege, the best thing they can do for themselves is not allow themselves to become active characters in the story of white people's lives, as much as that is possible. It is not entirely possible. It's a white, white world, after all.
So far, the best thing I have read on race in "Girls" is at the end of this piece by Malcolm Harris. I think it's important, if we are going to "read race," not to limit ourselves to counting the number of nonwhite faces on screen and the number of lines they're given. Whiteness, as a form of power, is much savvier than that, which means we must be too.
So anyway. While we're talking about fairness, let me say that the Disgrasian piece does not fall directly into the pattern of diagnosing the show's characters with whiteness, which is what I was talking about last time. Instead, it offers a formal analysis of the use of characters of colors, arguing that they remain slightly rendered and in the margins, the better to set off the full "three-dimensionality" and meaningful lives of the white protagonists. This is an actual reading, so when I guessed last time that the post would fail to recognize the writtenness of the text it took on, well, that was not fair. And yet, I disagree deeply with the reading, so I guess I'll explain why. I would like to be on the record as having respectfully disagreed with the fine folks gallantly attempting to perform a critical analysis in the midst of this pop cultural shitstorm.
The Disgrasian critique would work if Girls was a bildungsroman—if each of these characters were, in fact, a model of a full and complex subjectivity that appeared to blossom and develop through experience over time, or at least had the potential to, and that potential were set in relief by the cast of marginal and background figures who distinctly lack that fullness. Have you read nineteenth-century fiction? This is that. Race works this way all the time. But Girls is not that. (I think Hannah probably imagines that this is the genre of her life, and the show rather savagely denies it of her.) Girls is a satire, and it employs devices more appropriate to satire: instead of "full characters," we get caricatures (which can also be complex, as they are here); instead of life stories, we get haphazard picaresque trajectories. The episode where the stoner girl offers to "organize" the nannies at the park, and then loses her charges, and then channels this into a flirtation with their father? Picaresque. Absurd. Even infuriating, when you consider that the universe would not have magically opened a similar path to any of the other nannies had they lost their kids. That—THAT—is why the show does not feature a person of color in this character's role, not "exclusion." Because it is a dark, dark comedy about the momentum of white privilege in contemporary urban America, and you can't show it in action through a character who does not possess it.
I know there are viewers out there who identify with the main characters of this show, and others who want to but feel prevented from doing so by their whiteness. To this I say, god help you. Rarely has a television show succeeded in making whiteness look so unappealing, in my eyes—and to do so while emphasizing the enormous privilege that comes with it rather than disavowing it! These girls are sick with their whiteness; it makes them ridiculous; it is what saves their asses, allows them not to work, allows them not to see the racial and classed dimensions of the world they inhabit, but, in this show, it is also what prevents them from being "three-dimensional" or having "full lives." It is a social boon but a formal burden. This takes real skill. The only other show I watch these days that attempts a similar thing is "Louie," which is smart about race and gender not because it offers great female or nonwhite role models, but because it shows how the privileges of white maleness are so ferocious that they will continue to operate even in an oaf like Louie, to the amazement of no one more than himself.
Most shows are glaringly white. One shouldn't have to say it, but there it is. And most of them make you want whiteness, or at least the privileges that come with it. Have you ever watched, say, Modern Family? For all their foibles, they still live in gorgeous houses and never worry about health insurance—wouldn't that be nice? That is what it feels like to want whiteness. Girls is different, despite the fact that some people will continue to want the warped, destructive, embarrassing version of whiteness it puts on display. This is not necessarily any individual person's fault; we're supposed to want these things, to envy them, and then be told if we'd "earned" them, we'd have them—that's how capitalism works. One of the ways this show interrupts this desire, though, is through its use of marginal characters exempt from whiteness. It doesn't give them "stories"; instead, it shows them giving the "girls" of the show a wide berth, the way you would syphilitics. It shows them avoiding whiteness. Why don't the "girls" have any friends of color? Seriously? I am of color, and I put enormous effort every day into not being friends with these people.
It is true that one of the effects of formal "marginalization" is to deny certain categories of person the "full humanness" recognized in other types of people. But that is not its only effect. In this case, I think it has the opposite effect: one gets the sense that the marginal figures of color—the Asian intern at the publishing house, the nannies at the park, even the entirely invisible hotel housekeeper whose tip Hannah cavalierly steals in episode 1—that these characters, were they people, would be living more difficult, less charmed, less absurd, and therefore "realer" lives than the "girls." Lacking white privilege, the best thing they can do for themselves is not allow themselves to become active characters in the story of white people's lives, as much as that is possible. It is not entirely possible. It's a white, white world, after all.
So far, the best thing I have read on race in "Girls" is at the end of this piece by Malcolm Harris. I think it's important, if we are going to "read race," not to limit ourselves to counting the number of nonwhite faces on screen and the number of lines they're given. Whiteness, as a form of power, is much savvier than that, which means we must be too.
I swear, this latest meme where everyone points out the racial limitations of HBO's Girls is the most surreal internet-fueled trend since people started putting misspelled captions on photos of cats. I've had to stop reading these things entirely, because I find them so alienating. I'm informed that Disgrasian—a site that I have always enjoyed—devotes some time this week to the exercise, focusing on the nannies-at-the-park scene. I can only imagine that the astute critic points out that The Privileged, Racially Myopic Stoner White Girl With No Concept Of What It Means To Work For A Living reveals herself to be privileged, racially myopic, stoned, and lacking any concept of what it means to work for a living. Because, yes, that is what happens in that scene. Next, I hope someone writes a scathing exposé of how Bob of Bob's Burgers makes his living by cooking hamburgers. Speaking of which, what about the racial politics of that show? Right? DON'T THEY KNOW BLACK PEOPLE CAN MAKE HAMBURGERS TOO?
Having spent my last precious moments in bed this morning thinking about this whole thing, I have officially lost sleep over it, and I do not have sleep to spare, people. I think reality television has succeeded in making us stupider than ever and as sexist as always. Unlike reality TV, this show does not consist, even in concept, of "people behaving badly (and therefore being bad people)." "Girls" is scripted, you know, the old-fashioned way. Someone writes it. It consists of characters designed to display bad behavior. Their consistently infuriating antics thus makes them well-written characters. Nowhere have I seen this acknowledged. It is not a particularly sophisticated thing to understand.
I don't really know anything about Lena Dunham. She may well be limited and insufferable—aren't most smart, successful 25-year-olds? But rarely do we collectively rally to impugn the success of smart 25-year-olds the way we have around her. You might claim it's because her success is a result of white privilege; I'd find that a lot easier to believe of a society that wasn't about to seriously consider Mitt Freaking Romney for president. I think it's much more likely that it's because she's a young woman who is making a name for herself by some means other than sexiness. Really. That is what I think.
And whatever Dunham's limitations as a person may or may not be, one thing should be clear: they are not the same as Hannah's limitations on the show. In the same way that Flaubert was not Madame Bovary, Dunham is not Hannah. How do I know? For one, that is how writing works. For two, Hannah's character is writing an unpublishable collection of autobiographical essays (the literary equivalent, I think, of reality TV); Dunham is writing a television show that was picked up by HBO and has become the talk of the town. Therefore: Hannah can't write her way out of the trainwreck of her own life, while Dunham is making an extraordinary living writing the trainwreck that is Hannah's life.
The show is funny the way trainwrecks are funny. I think that's why viewers are confusing it with reality TV—it pushes the same buttons by displaying versions of human character in the least flattering light. But someone is in charge here, and instead of crediting her with seeing through and exposing those types of people who think of themselves as "girls," we act like we're seeing through her and exposing her by pointing out all the things that are wrong with the types of people who think of themselves as "girls." Frankly, I think Dunham has been remarkably polite to the press by not overtly acknowledging this weirdly insistent piece of idiocy. When they say, Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of privileged white girls? she responds graciously as if that isn't the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to her, ever. She doesn't say, Of course I do, you moron. I wrote it that way. Which she has every right to do, and I'd bet you $5 she knows that. Did anyone ever corner David Chase to say, Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of gangsters? Or Aaron Sorkin: Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of politicians? I think this should be our new meme. You know The Simpsons? Isn't it just about a bunch of cartoons?
Having spent my last precious moments in bed this morning thinking about this whole thing, I have officially lost sleep over it, and I do not have sleep to spare, people. I think reality television has succeeded in making us stupider than ever and as sexist as always. Unlike reality TV, this show does not consist, even in concept, of "people behaving badly (and therefore being bad people)." "Girls" is scripted, you know, the old-fashioned way. Someone writes it. It consists of characters designed to display bad behavior. Their consistently infuriating antics thus makes them well-written characters. Nowhere have I seen this acknowledged. It is not a particularly sophisticated thing to understand.
I don't really know anything about Lena Dunham. She may well be limited and insufferable—aren't most smart, successful 25-year-olds? But rarely do we collectively rally to impugn the success of smart 25-year-olds the way we have around her. You might claim it's because her success is a result of white privilege; I'd find that a lot easier to believe of a society that wasn't about to seriously consider Mitt Freaking Romney for president. I think it's much more likely that it's because she's a young woman who is making a name for herself by some means other than sexiness. Really. That is what I think.
And whatever Dunham's limitations as a person may or may not be, one thing should be clear: they are not the same as Hannah's limitations on the show. In the same way that Flaubert was not Madame Bovary, Dunham is not Hannah. How do I know? For one, that is how writing works. For two, Hannah's character is writing an unpublishable collection of autobiographical essays (the literary equivalent, I think, of reality TV); Dunham is writing a television show that was picked up by HBO and has become the talk of the town. Therefore: Hannah can't write her way out of the trainwreck of her own life, while Dunham is making an extraordinary living writing the trainwreck that is Hannah's life.
The show is funny the way trainwrecks are funny. I think that's why viewers are confusing it with reality TV—it pushes the same buttons by displaying versions of human character in the least flattering light. But someone is in charge here, and instead of crediting her with seeing through and exposing those types of people who think of themselves as "girls," we act like we're seeing through her and exposing her by pointing out all the things that are wrong with the types of people who think of themselves as "girls." Frankly, I think Dunham has been remarkably polite to the press by not overtly acknowledging this weirdly insistent piece of idiocy. When they say, Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of privileged white girls? she responds graciously as if that isn't the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to her, ever. She doesn't say, Of course I do, you moron. I wrote it that way. Which she has every right to do, and I'd bet you $5 she knows that. Did anyone ever corner David Chase to say, Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of gangsters? Or Aaron Sorkin: Don't you think your show is just about a bunch of politicians? I think this should be our new meme. You know The Simpsons? Isn't it just about a bunch of cartoons?
[Crossposted from my other blog.]
I have been utterly baffled by the extent to which Lena Dunham's show Girls has been misread since the pilot recently aired. I thought it was an intelligent and not exactly coy satire of contemporary whiteness, which is young, urban, university-educated, and family-subsidized, and sees itself as "struggling" on fronts both personal and professional while remaining blind to starker forms of hardship and inequality in an age of economic meltdown. I'm not going to bother to link to the myriad articles and reviews that say some version of, "This show is just about spoiled white girls!" as if that is some kind of revelation. The answer to that is, Um, yes. These same reviews also tend to say something to the effect of, "The characters were almost realistic representations of me—but I'm not racist, so there should have been a person of color in there." To this I say, no, apparently the show nailed its representation of you.
I don't really have the time or the energy to write about this in detail, so I'm grateful that Malcolm Harris has posted an excellent essay on art that addresses modern racism and the failure of critics to keep pace with it. His reading of Girls in this context is spot-on, but his main topic is the amazing "sexual mutilation cake" incident involving Sweden's Minister of Culture. Again, I saw photos of this event making the rounds with comments ranging from disgusted to baffled, but until Harris's essay, I didn't see a single person note that the work of art was not the cake, but the Minister of Culture's cutting the cake to the delight and/or embarrassment of an audience of "respectable" white people.
The thing is, while both of these pieces are smart, neither is subtle. Our failure to see when we are being brutally satirized—when we deflect recognition of our own limitations by convincing ourselves that it is the representation that is limited—is part and parcel of the problem.
Things my baby can do as we enter week 10:
- take a bath without screaming
- say "ooo," "ohh," and "guh" as if they mean something
- smiles
- rage
- spit bubbles
First, here is something I just posted on my other blog, because I'm not gonna type it twice:
( Read more... )
Second, here is a Hipstamatic record of Ruby's routine transformation into her new alter, Angrybaby:
Third, here is Ruby stubbornly refusing to speak English:
I've been relatively MIA from the internet lately due to the distraction of having a baby. More precisely, I've been MIA from any online activity that requires actual thought and two hands to type, which precludes all but Facebook activity. Thank god for Facebook, though, which is where I learned of Jane Magrath's blog Reading for Their Lives, which follows her current research on an archive of 18th-century letters.The latest post (link below) addresses the question of how we understand pain, especially across historical and cultural distance—something I'm especially intrigued by right now, as I've been dealing with the strange task of communicating various new kinds of pain to midwives, doctors, and other health practitioners. The routine question of "On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain you are experiencing?" has ALWAYS perplexed me, but never more so than when asked about mid-stage labor pains. I found myself saying to my poor midwife, "I think about a 6 or a 7? I mean, it's bad, but I just don't know how much worse it's going to get...I need to leave myself room, right?" Really, childbirth felt like a sliding 10. Since then, I've been trying for several weeks to identify and treat a host of breastfeeding pains, which, according to a certain rhetoric, is a non-existent category ("Breastfeeding is not painful!" being the mantra of various breastfeeding movements). While I understand and fully sympathize with the work of this declaration—especially after being dismissed by a (young male) doctor in my quest for treatment with a condescending "Breastfeeding is very painful; get used to it!"—in practice it isolates the person who is feeling pain for various common reasons (shallow latch; infection; in my case, it turns out, some crazy situation called nipple vasospasms). Your pain is initially dismissed ("Can't be the breastfeeding; breastfeeding is not painful!"), and if eventually acknowledged, acknowledged only as an anomaly, frequently one for which you are accountable (breastfeeding in and of itself is not painful, the logic goes, so if you are experiencing pain, it's you, UR DOIN IT RONG).
All this to say that my personal life has recently given me reason to appreciate the seemingly small gesture of someone recognizing your pain—which it turns out is a quite complicated gesture, in addition to being one with profound effects. Read more about it here:
Opium Encounters: Bluestocking Letters and Thoughts on Embodiment « reading for their lives.
( Read more... )
Second, here is a Hipstamatic record of Ruby's routine transformation into her new alter, Angrybaby:
Third, here is Ruby stubbornly refusing to speak English:
- 2 weeks and 5 days: The point of motherhood wherein I figured out how to put on one of those 50-foot-long baby wraps effectively, left the house TWICE wearing the baby, and decided that, under certain conditions, it is actually acceptable for a grown-ass woman to wear slippers as shoes out in the world.
- That night: Between the hours of 9pm and 9am, my baby demanded to be fed an average of once an hour. From my body.
- 2 weeks and 6 days: The point of motherhood wherein I decided that shirts are, at best, optional.
Here is what my lovely baby did not look like last night:
Here is me doing my impression of a Competent Mother:
Here is Daisy Mae demonstrating that her favorite spot is still In My Lap, On The Baby:
In case you were wondering.
Futurebaby became OMG RIGHT NOW baby smack dab on her due date. How on earth did I create a punctual human being? I imagine this is not the first surprise Ms. Ruby has in store for us.
Dear Futurebaby,
As I understand it, if you were to emerge now, you would be a 100% complete Right Now Baby. Something I did not know until my own adventure in pregnancy is that due dates are more like due months, and as your so-called due date is two weeks from now, we have officially entered the zone in which you are pretty much as likely to decide to be born any day in the next four weeks as any other day in those same four weeks.
I am told that first babies tend to decide to come out later rather than sooner. However, I would like to point out that if you are indeed feeling snug and content in there, and not just wet and squashed, at this point your comfort is inversely proportional to my own. I know—it's a while before you are to be expected to think of the needs and desires of others in comparison to your own. But come on out and we can begin the glorious process of turning you into a person. It'll be fun! Seriously, there is so much awesome stuff out here you don't even know about. Like food, and puppies, and sensation. Also, I would like to see your face. You don't even know what a face is, but you have one, and I have one. Looking at a face will add a whole new dimension to these little chats of ours; you'll love it. Come out and I'll show you.
In summary: it's been an interesting ride, futurebaby, and a not entirely unpleasant one. Thanks for being a courteous tenant. And now, please be born. Mama wants a bourbon.
As I understand it, if you were to emerge now, you would be a 100% complete Right Now Baby. Something I did not know until my own adventure in pregnancy is that due dates are more like due months, and as your so-called due date is two weeks from now, we have officially entered the zone in which you are pretty much as likely to decide to be born any day in the next four weeks as any other day in those same four weeks.
I am told that first babies tend to decide to come out later rather than sooner. However, I would like to point out that if you are indeed feeling snug and content in there, and not just wet and squashed, at this point your comfort is inversely proportional to my own. I know—it's a while before you are to be expected to think of the needs and desires of others in comparison to your own. But come on out and we can begin the glorious process of turning you into a person. It'll be fun! Seriously, there is so much awesome stuff out here you don't even know about. Like food, and puppies, and sensation. Also, I would like to see your face. You don't even know what a face is, but you have one, and I have one. Looking at a face will add a whole new dimension to these little chats of ours; you'll love it. Come out and I'll show you.
In summary: it's been an interesting ride, futurebaby, and a not entirely unpleasant one. Thanks for being a courteous tenant. And now, please be born. Mama wants a bourbon.
Remember the dude in the hallway in the last 30 seconds of this video?
That is happening in my uterus RIGHT NOW.
That is happening in my uterus RIGHT NOW.
If you can tell where the crib and changing table fit into this picture—
(Image courtesy of Hodgepodge)
—CONGRATULATIONS, you have won the honor of coming over and helping me ready our apartment for a baby.
We are back in Hamilton, facing maybe the newest kind of new year to date. I'm just at 35 weeks, and starting to feel like I'm carrying a whole person around inside me all the time, though in a cozy rather than creepy kind of way. We completed the first of three all-Saturday prenatal cram courses run by Ontario Public Health yesterday; I think I can safely say it was the first time I'd gathered in a room full of people where one third of the population was invisible.
I am deeply grateful for the extent of Ontario's maternity health care—prenatal, natal, and postnatal. Especially after comparing notes with my friends at home in the States, I appreciate the length of my provincially supported maternity leave, my option to use a midwife with the full support of a hospital, my option to use a certified Baby-Friendly Hospital, and—particularly as we don't have a local network of family support—the availability of nurses and midwives for postnatal home visits through the first six weeks. The existence of an infrastructure like this, it seems to me, makes a huge difference in how individual women are able to navigate the barrage of ideological imperatives that attend reproduction. For example, take the breastfeeding thing. Every new mother I know in North America (and I seem to know exponentially more of them by the day) feels the pressure of a general, polymorphous "breast is best" cultural current. But it seems sadistic to subject women to the blanket expectation that they will exclusively breastfeed in a society (USA, I'm looking at you) that might grant them six unpaid weeks off work (just enough time for one's milk to come in—convenient), where babies are routinely delivered via major medical interventions and whisked off while mothers recover from surgery, where lactation consultants are not covered by health insurance but free samples of formula are readily supplied by hospitals through deals with the corporations that manufacture them. This is what in the classroom I'd call contradictory cultural imperatives, but which here I'll call mixed damn messages.
So, I trust it is clear, I prefer the Canadian system. But a better integrated public initiative presents its own set of challenges, which we're dealing with now. A better instituted pro-breastfeeding policy, for example, means a more centralized, more powerful ideological voice promoting that particular agenda, for better and for worse. Just because one opts into a particular ideological position doesn't make it any less ideological, and the voice of ideology is impossible to converse with. Next week's prenatal class covers the unit on breastfeeding, and we have been promised that we will learn that "all your friends who say they 'tried' and 'couldn't' breastfeed" were LYING, most likely because "they are more willing to put energy into decorating their nurseries than into NOURISHING THEIR BABIES." I am not making this up. And I am going to have to internalize my rage for the duration of this lesson in how women—new mothers in particular—are terrible, selfish people as I try to cull the useful information from the debilitating fantasy of the state's ideal maternal creature. D sent me a link to the tumblr Feeding the Baby, which collects stories from women figuring out how to feed their babies, and the multitude of voices represented there seems a necessary antidote to all the disembodied recommendations and directives.
We did this small-group exercise in prenatal class yesterday where we discussed and listed our fears associated with having a baby—how much it will hurt, the chance of the baby being born on the side of the 401 during rush hour, the seeming likelihood that the nursery won't be painted, that one will drop the baby on its head, etc. I told D last night that, having thought about it, I'm not scared of pain, or of sleep deprivation, or of the pragmatic challenges of keeping a baby alive and well, but I am scared of losing rational perspective while I'm experiencing all of these things. Reason seems to be the number one thing pregnant women and new mothers are culturally exempt from, but I'm not willing to relinquish my claim to it.
(Image courtesy of Hodgepodge)
—CONGRATULATIONS, you have won the honor of coming over and helping me ready our apartment for a baby.
We are back in Hamilton, facing maybe the newest kind of new year to date. I'm just at 35 weeks, and starting to feel like I'm carrying a whole person around inside me all the time, though in a cozy rather than creepy kind of way. We completed the first of three all-Saturday prenatal cram courses run by Ontario Public Health yesterday; I think I can safely say it was the first time I'd gathered in a room full of people where one third of the population was invisible.
I am deeply grateful for the extent of Ontario's maternity health care—prenatal, natal, and postnatal. Especially after comparing notes with my friends at home in the States, I appreciate the length of my provincially supported maternity leave, my option to use a midwife with the full support of a hospital, my option to use a certified Baby-Friendly Hospital, and—particularly as we don't have a local network of family support—the availability of nurses and midwives for postnatal home visits through the first six weeks. The existence of an infrastructure like this, it seems to me, makes a huge difference in how individual women are able to navigate the barrage of ideological imperatives that attend reproduction. For example, take the breastfeeding thing. Every new mother I know in North America (and I seem to know exponentially more of them by the day) feels the pressure of a general, polymorphous "breast is best" cultural current. But it seems sadistic to subject women to the blanket expectation that they will exclusively breastfeed in a society (USA, I'm looking at you) that might grant them six unpaid weeks off work (just enough time for one's milk to come in—convenient), where babies are routinely delivered via major medical interventions and whisked off while mothers recover from surgery, where lactation consultants are not covered by health insurance but free samples of formula are readily supplied by hospitals through deals with the corporations that manufacture them. This is what in the classroom I'd call contradictory cultural imperatives, but which here I'll call mixed damn messages.
So, I trust it is clear, I prefer the Canadian system. But a better integrated public initiative presents its own set of challenges, which we're dealing with now. A better instituted pro-breastfeeding policy, for example, means a more centralized, more powerful ideological voice promoting that particular agenda, for better and for worse. Just because one opts into a particular ideological position doesn't make it any less ideological, and the voice of ideology is impossible to converse with. Next week's prenatal class covers the unit on breastfeeding, and we have been promised that we will learn that "all your friends who say they 'tried' and 'couldn't' breastfeed" were LYING, most likely because "they are more willing to put energy into decorating their nurseries than into NOURISHING THEIR BABIES." I am not making this up. And I am going to have to internalize my rage for the duration of this lesson in how women—new mothers in particular—are terrible, selfish people as I try to cull the useful information from the debilitating fantasy of the state's ideal maternal creature. D sent me a link to the tumblr Feeding the Baby, which collects stories from women figuring out how to feed their babies, and the multitude of voices represented there seems a necessary antidote to all the disembodied recommendations and directives.
We did this small-group exercise in prenatal class yesterday where we discussed and listed our fears associated with having a baby—how much it will hurt, the chance of the baby being born on the side of the 401 during rush hour, the seeming likelihood that the nursery won't be painted, that one will drop the baby on its head, etc. I told D last night that, having thought about it, I'm not scared of pain, or of sleep deprivation, or of the pragmatic challenges of keeping a baby alive and well, but I am scared of losing rational perspective while I'm experiencing all of these things. Reason seems to be the number one thing pregnant women and new mothers are culturally exempt from, but I'm not willing to relinquish my claim to it.
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