women – Life and Lims

Perfectly imperfect mothering

So it’s another Mother’s Day. This year is my 19th as a mom myself, so I’ve become accustomed to my children (and husband) scurrying around trying to figure out how to show me particular love and gratitude on my official day. But this year is the first for me to contemplate the reality of my own daughters becoming mothers: my oldest is getting married in two weeks, and somewhere down the line she will become a mother herself.

I could write a book (well, I have, actually, years ago when my oldest was little and I was just discovering truths more experienced women already knew) about mothering, but today I’ll try to share just a few words about my feelings this day, this week, this month.

I’ve realized even more than before that two opposite truths can coexist perfectly fine, and usually do: I can feel I’m doing an amazing job as a mom and I can feel I’m doing a terrible job as a mom. And while those generally go back and forth, sometimes I can feel both at once. And they’re kind of both true. I’m a person of faith, a Christian, and I believe I’m the daughter of a Heavenly Father and that I have a Savior, Jesus, who taught vital truths for me to follow, set an example, and most importantly suffered and died for my sins and weaknesses and general mortal-ness. So I can feel in that very weak mortal-ness that I’m not doing nearly as well as I’d like to be, being like that perfect example that was set. But if I just try to remember that I’m not expected to be doing great, not expected to be perfect, that the whole point of Jesus atoning was to make up for my huge insufficiencies, I feel a lot better.

This applies so well to the daunting job of mothering. I like to speak to reality, to the challenging, painful, imperfect realities that we all experience day to day. And it’s true that I can lose my temper, that I can get annoyed with my kids, that I can say things I wish I hadn’t and not say or do things I wish I had but just couldn’t summon up the energy to do. I think everyone today is painfully aware of our realities, of the ways we fall short, of the ways we don’t at all seem to fit in the glowy, pink, Hallmark Mother’s Day Mother role. So I’ve seen a lot of friends or others speak to this reality, this feeling that we just simply don’t measure up. And that’s true. We don’t. We’re not perfect, we’re not all the same, in the same Mother mold. Our own mothers weren’t, and we aren’t as mothers ourselves.

But it’s also absolutely true that we were born to be mothers. God created us to be mothers, and He knew we wouldn’t be perfect as people all-around or as mothers, specifically. And He was OK with that. He allowed us to have this experience of motherhood in part so we could become better through the crucible that it is, and that all of us interesting, different, unique souls could rub up against each other in all our roughness and smooth out our edges together. Most importantly, our Heavenly Father didn’t send us to Earth to do smoothing without any help. I firmly believe He is heavily involved in our lives and that if we turn to Him and the Savior, we will be lifted and all the stupid things we do will be made better somehow.

So this Mother’s Day, I honor my mom not because she was perfect or I grew up in the perfect home, but because she was herself and did a great job of it. Her mothering was what I needed. I feel good about my strengths and how I’ve put those to good use day in and day out with my four daughters. When it comes to my many weaknesses, I will try a little harder not just to be better but, even more than that, to remember that I am not expected to be perfect, that God will fill in the holes. I will try to remind my daughters above all that God is aware of them and that they have a Savior, and He will be there with them in everything they do, no matter how imperfectly they do it. I think I’ve done a good job teaching my oldest to turn to her Heavenly Father for help, day in and day out, especially for the times when maybe I wasn’t the best of help as her mom. So today, I feel confident that my daughter, with all her amazing strengths and, yes, her not-strengths, will be a great mom. She’ll struggle, she’ll flail around a bit, but she will be awesome. She’ll have moments of that high when mothering seems truly like a gift from God and her little ones almost like angels, and she’ll have days that are blurry from lack of sleep and dark from feelings of inadequacy.

In short, she’ll feel like mothers everywhere. And I thank God for that.

To my pregnant and postpartum friends: take that weight off your shoulders, not your belly

I am about to turn 45 and haven’t been pregnant for almost 13 years now, but I have a number of wonderful younger friends who are still firmly in their childbearing years. I am writing today to them.

Dearest friends, I see your adorable posts on social media and am thrilled with all the sweet experiences you are having now, just as I remember enjoying a decade and a half ago. I can’t help but “like” your comments and pictures of growing bellies and ultrasounds and new babies. What an amazing period of life you are in — and difficult and challenging and exhausting and … the list goes on. The joy is equaled by the fatigue and all the other challenges that can come from pregnancy and taking care of an infant.

But I’m going to say this with all the kindness and tenderness I can show in the mere printed word (hopefully you know me well enough “in real life” to be able to hear me saying this): please stop worrying about your weight.

I have seen your posts over the course of months and been concerned for you when I’ve noted multiple comments about how much weight you’ve gained (in exact number of pounds) and how you were already planning during your pregnancy to lose it post-delivery (yes, I see your Pinterest boards too). I’ve worried a little for you when you talked about your weight a mere two weeks after giving birth.

cathy pregnant — This was me just before giving birth to my third child. Do celebrities ever look like they’ve swallowed a torpedo?

Believe me, I was there. Three times. I gained the exact same number of pounds each pregnancy: 38. And each was different. I started out about 25 pounds overweight with my first and ate pizza almost nonstop and didn’t exercise at all. With my second, I started out maybe 10 pounds overweight and exercised for about the first six months and ate a little better. With the third, I was at just about an “ideal” weight starting out and exercised up until a couple of days before delivery (I looked pretty ungainly, I’m sure, with my huge belly on that elliptical machine, but it felt good). I still gained the same amount of weight each time. And every single time postpartum, I breast-fed my girls and counted calories (keeping them to a reasonable amount for nursing) and exercised after six weeks had passed after delivery. On the last one, I got back down to a really good weight for me six months after my baby was born.

I went into all that detail to show you that, yes, I’ve been there. And for me, losing weight postpartum was work. I felt the pressure. Yes, I hated seeing the pounds pile on during each month of pregnancy, especially after working so hard to take them off during previous ones. I feel bad saying that now because I wish I hadn’t been worrying about something so superficial as how I looked while I was growing the amazing human beings I’m now proud to call my daughters. But the (sad) truth is, I would feel the same way again even now if I were to be pregnant again. I struggle more now with my weight since I’m older; it’s even harder now! And I struggle with the struggle. I want to be healthy but I don’t want to allow myself to be caught up in our society’s “religion” of thinness, of image, of appearance. I am working to be kinder to myself and try to separate myself from the bombardment by media and culture that tells me how I look is a huge component of my worth.

Because this is the truth, one that goes completely opposite to the messages we see and hear all the time in our media-saturated culture: My worth is not tied in any way to how I look, whether it’s how much my body weighs or how many wrinkles I have (or that aging neck that’s manifesting itself) or how gray my hair is.

And that’s true for all of you. Even though society is pretty much shouting from the rooftops (and our ever-present computers and handheld devices) that we’re supposed to be thin, that it is possible (because, hey, look at the celebrities!) during pregnancy, except for a cute “bump,” and then entirely thin (no more bump) immediately after giving birth, and thin all the rest of our lives, that is just A LIE. Pregnancy changes us. Life changes us. And we’re all different anyway. We all have different body shapes and shouldn’t be worrying about trying to fit our square or triangular or hexagonal pegs into round holes. People come in all different shapes and sizes and colors. Make the best of your own shape, size and color. Take good care of your body. Value it for what it can do for you, for the part it plays in who you are as a whole. Treat it kindly and with respect. But don’t spend a disproportionate amount of your time and energy trying to make it what society says it should be. It’s only going to make you more exhausted than you already are, and when you are pregnant or taking care of a baby, you have NO ENERGY TO SPARE. You know this.

So, my dear friends, stop posting about your weight and size. Stop worrying about it. Take gentle loving care of your body and your psyche. Delete your Pinterest “Fitspiration” board. Those things are just plain dangerous. And please keep posting those baby pictures. I can’t get too many of those.

Rolling on in to middle age

Recently I took my girls roller skating. The 12-year-old had been going somewhat frequently of late and had gotten pretty good but the 7-year-old and 15-year-old (my child with Down syndrome) hadn’t been in ages and were like baby deer out on the rink. But they got better and enjoyed themselves during our two-hour visit.

As for me, I love donning the wheels and racing around the rink. It was my weekend social activity when I was a tween, and decades later, I still can hold my own. It’s an interesting/frustrating kind of challenging to “race” around when the rink is full of little kids — it’s like a slowly shifting obstacle course. So I was excited when the DJ announced it was backwards-skate time. I can still do it, after all these years, and since most of the little people jamming the floor could barely move forward, let alone go backwards, the time meant I had a much emptier space for skating. Yes! Only difference at this stage in my life is that I wasn’t just focused on my skating: I was also looking around to see where my kids went. And that meant loss of focus on the specialized form of backwards skating. As Queen sang so often when I was skating socially, I bit the dust. Big-time. And falling when going backwards means a particularly spectacular, unbroken-by-arms fall. OUCH. I got up and kept on going and my lack of focus had me back on the hard floor pretty quickly. I could feel my brain shaking around in my head, so I decided it was time to remove myself from the floor for a while.

A little while later, my perceptive and sensitive 12-year-old looked at me with concern and said, “Mom, people were laughing at you.” I realized then that it just didn’t matter. It didn’t bother me at all. I told her so. Maybe it’s because they’re a bunch of kids and it doesn’t matter to me if a bunch of snotty kids are laughing at me, or maybe I’ve finally started reaching a point where it doesn’t bother me quite as much what other people think. I just told my daughter, “You know what? It doesn’t matter to me. I was having fun. Don’t you worry about what people think about me.”

It’s made me think more about how I’m at an age where I can and should stop worrying about what other people think. I’ve read so often about how older women say they live so much more freely and contentedly because they just don’t care about how they look or what other people think, and it seems like a great thing to me. But as our society holds on so tightly to youth and beauty, allowing/encouraging women my age and even into their 50s and 60s to still look “traditionally” young and beautiful, i.e., desirable, sexy, etc., I wonder if that transition into that delightfully free mindset will take even longer.

‘Cause here’s the thing: how long do any of us really need to be beautiful, to have that be one of our defining characteristics? On one hand, I felt uncomfortable in my skin, didn’t feel thin and pretty, when I was growing up, but then around the age of 17 or so I grew to appreciate that I was attractive, that a fair number of guys considered me pretty. And I realized I could use that, I could “work” it. I could flirt, I could be cute and attractive. I could just have fun dating. My attractiveness was a tool, one of the arrows in my quiver. The quiver also included my smarts, my talents, my wit, my personality, my character. But my “beauty” was almost of equal value at that stage in my life as any of my other arrows. I carried around that awareness of its presence for a long time, even past its “usefulness” in “securing a mate.” (That’s a topic for a whole other blog post, methinks.) Two decades into my marriage and my parenting life, it’s honestly just not necessary or important, definitely not like the other valuable arrows I have cultivated. But everywhere I look in our society, I still see messages that tell me my beauty should be treasured above all, should be curated, should be preserved. There are plenty of options for that preservation, after all, and whole multi-billion-dollar industries begging for my attention and money.

No, society today is not at all supportive of a gracious and peaceful acceptance of aging, of losing youth and “beauty.” We don’t get to just comfortably slide into older age. We fight it, we see others fighting it, we are encouraged to fight it. But eventually, whether we get to slide comfortably and willingly, or we fight it the whole way, all of us who make it to old age will be old. We will lose our youthful appearance. What if we actually just accept and embrace the inevitable instead of fighting it tooth (yellowing) and nail (thinning and cracking)? What if we came to appreciate all the other things that make us who we are and stop worrying about the thin veneer of attractiveness, of appearance? What a world that would be! Think of the inner peace! Think of all we could do in the world without using up our (yes, finite) energies on something ridiculous like how we look!

So I’m encouraged a bit by my reaction to my ridiculous-looking falls at the roller rink. Maybe I am just starting to accept the fact that I’m middle-aged. Maybe I’m starting to not worry so much about how I look and how I think others think about me. Maybe. Because I’d like to use my limited energies on the things that matter the most to me, and there are lots. My family, my friends, worthy causes deserve my full attention. And all they need of my appearance is my smile. I still have that, and the only thing I need to do to keep it in top condition is keep using it.

Guilt and mothering: like peanut butter and jelly

So Mother’s Day in the United States has just passed, a day in which millions of women received handmade cards with paint-stamped body parts in shapes of hearts and various forms of breakfast, either in bed or at the table. It was a day in which mothers smiled and were gracious about the efforts of their young progeny, same as pretty much every other day of the year.

It was also a day that induced or amplified all kinds of emotions in women of all ages and stages of life, ones who have children and those who do not. So let me address one of those emotions that tends to rise to the surface yet again for some mothers on the second Sunday in May: guilt.

Yep, one of my obligatory Mother's Day photos, in which at least one kid is making a funny face. — Yep, one of my obligatory Mother’s Day photos, in which at least one kid is making a funny face.

Here’s one scenario of feelings that can play out that Sunday, particularly if one attends church, where people stand at the pulpit and talk about their angel mothers: I am not good enough. As a mother, I do not sound at all like the description often made of those amazing moms whose stories go down in the history books of being completely self-sacrificing, completely loving and giving, completely kind and always up for listening to a child’s ramblings, no matter how constant or stream-of-consciousness they may be. These women never seem to snap, never seem to request a break just for some peace and quiet, never ask for “me” time, never tell a kid to come back later.

If, for some reason, a woman doesn’t hear those kinds of talks or they just don’t bother her, then there’s still the rest of the day to barrel through, which invariably also means her husband and children are eager to make her happy. If you’re like me, someone who can get overloaded and overstimulated seemingly far too easily, and you just made a T-shirt quilt for the high school band director so her senior daughter and fellow seniors could have a personalized gift to give him before graduation, and you hosted a before-prom dinner for 16 students at her house the night before Mother’s Day (just as two examples), you probably just want to be left alone for an afternoon and evening to sleep and collect your thoughts again (and gear up for more events and to-do-list items begging for your attention). But your children and husband know it is their DUTY to MAKE YOU HAPPY that day. To them, just leaving you alone and letting you sleep, etc., translates into profound failure on their part, because MAKING YOU HAPPY means being with you every moment, attending to your every supposed need and loving on you.

So as a mother, you’re stuck. Either you take the needed time to just be alone and manage to rest up enough so you can forge on with your selfless mothering duties for the rest of the week, month, year, and lifetime, for all those other days for which you are supposedly celebrated and venerated on the one Sunday, OR you suck it up and spend time with the kiddos doing things they enjoy because they think it’s stuff you enjoy and that will make them happy.

Let’s just say that mothering guilt will inevitably occur. No matter what, you’re back at that familiar rock and hard place.

Let’s just posit this idea: women generally are and want to be selfless when it comes to their families, except for those women who truly are just bad mothers (they do exist, you know). They do make sacrifices, some seemingly bigger or more story-worthy than others, at different levels that are unique and personal and necessary for each (some even sacrifice too much, honestly, more than is good for their own mental and emotional health). So the reality is that there’s going to be at least some level of guilt on the day they’re celebrated, at some moment or hour during that day. There’s going to be guilt because there’s guilt 365 days a year; there are just a few new twists on it on Mother’s Day, in addition to the regular ol’ garden-variety guilt.

How about we just declare the day “Mom, don’t feel guilty” day? How about we ban guilt for one day? It’s a bold and wacky idea, but maybe we can give it a try. It might be very liberating.

Issue of body image is not a trivial one

So I’ve noted a few occasions recently in which I’ve just felt I had to explain why I feel strongly about the topic of body image (particularly as it pertains to women). Those occasions have been offhand comments or posts or cartoons or what-have-you that indicate that the desire to change how our society perceives women (as objects or bodies) is trivial or silly or not as important as other issues that could garner support or activism, etc. (such as some of the ignorant comments I saw about the Representation Project’s “NotBuyingIt” campaign and hashtags that call out sexism and demeaning portrayals of women in the media, most recently during the Super Bowl, and don’t get me started on Sports Illustrated teaming with Barbie this year!).

I’m not saying there aren’t SERIOUS, very troubling things happening all around the world (wars, disease, repression, abuse, sex trafficking, crimes specifically against women and particular ethnic or religious groups) and that we in the United States and other less-troubled places can’t mobilize to do something to help. But even as we may realize that our problems in the West are “first-world” troubles, it doesn’t mean they are trivial or not worthy of attention and activism.

I’ve never considered myself “a feminist” (a word that over the years has certainly accrued a lot of not-necessarily-positive connotations and associations), nor am I a “liberal.” I tend to be mostly conservative politically. I care deeply about social justice and helping to improve people’s lives but I have more conservative views as to how those things should be accomplished (because my experience has shown certain methods to be more useful and successful than others). I am a stay-at-home mom who does some freelance work from home and haven’t worked outside the home full-time since the early years of my now 20-year-plus-long marriage. Those facts, along with my religious beliefs, might indicate to outsiders that I am not big into “women’s issues.” Those outsiders, though, if coming to that conclusion, would be wrong.

Beauty Redefined is a great resource for learning more and fighting back.

I care very much about my fellow women and how we get to function as real people in society. (I care about men being allowed to be fully functioning members of society as well, but historically in our culture, they’ve been given these rights for centuries, so they’re mostly “all set.”) The fact of the matter is that our Western, 21st-century culture diminishes the wholeness of women every single day, everywhere we turn. Media from every angle throw back very limited, definitely-not-varied, two-dimensional views of the ideal female, reducing 50% of the population to mere objects. These images and opinions are so deeply embedded in our psyches that we essentially have all tacitly agreed that they are truths. These beliefs lead men to treat women they know on some level and in some degree as less-thans, expecting their wives/girlfriends/daughters/sisters to be shaped and sized a certain way at the very least, and they lead women to act as if they are 75% (or more) what they look like and 25% a collection of their personality traits and actions.

These false beliefs have been and are continuing to be so thoroughly perpetuated that though we may pay lip service to the notion that they are false, we act as if they are true. Extreme examples are the continuing massive growth in cosmetic surgeries, particularly among “normal,” “average,” everyday women (not celebrities, not the rich, not people you might consider to be particularly vain). In the interviews I conducted with women in Utah who are moms and generally have a strong foundation of faith and have always been taught they are daughters of God worthy of love and respect for who they innately are, I was amazed how many felt bad enough about their “outsides” to undergo surgery, which is always risky, costs a pretty penny, and is just unnecessary. While I understood the feelings that led them to make the decisions they did (for getting breast augmentations or full “mommy makeovers,” for instance), I felt sad that our culture creates, fosters and intensifies those feelings of insecurity — all over their breast size or perkiness or the size of their waist or hips.

Yes, this may seem a minor issue: what does it matter if we care a lot about how we look? Here’s a short breakdown: it causes us as women to spend precious time and energy and brainpower on something that simply doesn’t matter very much. It takes those resources away from the things that really matter: our spouses, our children, our friends, our families, our work, our joys, our passions, our life purposes. And how many of us have time and energy to spare?

Focusing on our appearance reduces us to objects. Statues and photographs and machines are objects. They’re nice to look at and they might even get things done, but they aren’t human beings, with glorious origins and endless potential and utter uniqueness. Humans are imperfect, frustrating, very different from each other. But we’re so interesting and fascinating and have so much to offer! Is that true, can it be true, about mere objects? No way.

When we consider each other (or ourselves) objects, we treat each other (or ourselves) differently. We don’t expect the best, we don’t reach towards our limitless potential, we don’t care for each other as precious souls who deserve respect and love and fair and equal treatment. Men in our society, who are swimming in this media ocean of images and objects, are prone to some level of treating women as less-than themselves, because men aren’t reduced to objects nearly as often or as prevalently as women. Pornography is one more extreme example of how women are reduced to being objects, even parodies of womanhood, and it skews men’s attitudes and actions toward the women in their lives even further.

I can’t possibly explore all the angles here. There are tons of scientific studies, books, etc. that speak with authority on this subject. Suffice it to say, this is not a silly or trivial topic. It’s one that must be shared and discussed and changed. How women view themselves and how they are treated (as whole, real, full and complex individuals with unique gifts and talents and attributes) is at stake. I wouldn’t call that minor. It’s a huge battle to fight because the messages that pick women apart and reduce us to body parts, that make us less valuable than men, are constant, ubiquitous, and insidious. They’re so prevalent as for us not to even notice them anymore. If you pass the same billboard featuring a bikini-clad woman biting into a huge, juicy hamburger every single day, you’ll begin to tune it out and not even realize the damage it’s doing. But that message is still burrowing its way deep into your every cell.

I would love to make things better in so many ways, in so many places, for so many people. Right now, what I can do is write and speak up. I can say, “Hey, look at that billboard. Isn’t that insulting? Maybe we can even get it taken down. Maybe we can get the advertiser to stop objectifying women.” I can’t change the world. But maybe I can change your mind and remind you that you are far more than just what you look like.

Media portrayals of women won’t change until we demand them to

… and that means women need to teach girls to expect better of the media

The latest Photoshopping news item to grab online attention is proof that a magazine tweaked a cover photo of Jennifer Lawrence. Rightly so, people were outraged.

Question is this: will this just die down and go away and be forgotten? It’s already been a couple of days since the story hit the ‘net and I don’t hear much talk about it anymore. People’s attention spans are short, and the next juicy item follows behind so quickly. Today, it’s all about the Duck Dynasty gay-comments issue with Phil Robertson. Tomorrow, who knows?

So, really, since human nature, at least in our 24-hour-news-cycle age, means we’ll forget most outrages in a matter of hours, will this information change anything?

Sadly, I doubt it.

Here’s what needs to happen, though: both women and men need to consciously work to keep this topic in the forefront of their minds. And they need to act. We all need to stop buying and reading the magazines that Photoshop women (which is pretty much all of them, even the health and fitness ones). Stop watching the movies and TV shows that make women secondary characters and, then, feature them only as sexual beings, as scantily-clad “pretty props” or set dressing. With the media, the only way to make a change is to vote with your pocketbook. Stop feeding the beast. And speak out, directly to each media company, and discuss with friends and family.

After years of living in a world saturated with media images portraying women as sex objects and set dressing, it’s taking a while to get older, more experienced women (and men) to realize what’s been happening. We need to keep getting the word out to them (I firmly fall into that category: at 43, I’ve been marinating in this lopsided, demeaning, and oppressive culture for decades).

At the same time, once we older people get the idea, we absolutely must teach our younger family members and friends to see the truth. The media loves the young folks: they’re the ideal demographic, so everything is skewed to their supposed tastes. So if we’re going to get a message out to the media, we must make sure the young people understand it, get it, and act on it.

It would take many, many blog posts to “prove” just how damaging this Photoshopping nonsense is to girls and women, and not only to females, but to males. It changes everyone’s expectations and core beliefs for the worse. There are plenty of resources out there that talk about this. Beauty Redefined is a great one, but there are others (check out BR’s posts related to “recognizing” what’s happening to get a good start). So this little post is just another part of the call to action. Don’t just cheer internally for Jennifer Lawrence’s ideals (not liking Photoshop, wanting to get rid of body shaming, sending a better message to young girls about image) — take a stand and do something. Write to magazines and ask that they stop Photoshopping. Stop watching movies that relegate women to sex objects. Talk about the topic with young people, both boys and girls, and keep it in the forefront.

The media won’t change without huge pressure to do so. Be part of that change. It takes one person at a time, but one person and another and another all add up. Take that first step. Hey, even reblog/post this. Let’s just bombard people with this message. Maybe someday, maybe even by the time my teen daughters are mothers of teens themselves, our culture won’t be marinating us in negative portrayals of women anymore. It could happen.

(For ideas on “resisting” negative body-image messages in the media and our culture at large, read Beauty Redefined posts related to that topic.)

AND AS AN ADDENDUM, another great resource from a woman who’s “been there, done that” when it comes to being ultra-toned. Taryn Brumfitt at Body Image Movement says this (in a blog response to fit mom Maria Kang): “I AM a health advocate. I run, I lift weights, I eat healthily but I also have a cookie with my soy latte and knock back the odd burger or yiros when I feel like it. It’s called balance. And whilst I am getting on my soap box (I’ll just be here for another minute) health is not dictated by your looks. Health is physical, emotional and spiritual and so much more that is not visible and not always obvious to others” (emphasis was added by me). She also told the Daily Mail: “If what you value is your health then you’ll treat your body like a vehicle, not an ornament.” I LOVE that.

Value your body for what it can do, not for how it looks. I think it’s pretty simple.

If breast is best, why do we never see anyone actually feeding their babies?

nursing — Courtesy of Twitter/News 6, via Yahoo

So a few hours after reading this news item on Yahoo, I find myself not being able to keep quiet about it: once again, breast-feeding moms are finding themselves being asked to stop feeding their babies in a public place. This time, it was at a Chick-fil-A in Tennessee. Honestly, though, the location is pretty much not important. What is important is the fact that it keeps happening.

Disclaimer: I am not a breast-feeding activist. I only gave birth to three daughters and breast-fed them all up until they were about a year old. I adopted one daughter after them and just bottle-fed. I enjoyed nursing my girls, but it was a heck of a lot of work and was literally draining. It was really, really tough to be THE on-call food for the babies. And my girls didn’t nurse for 20 or 30 minutes every four hours, giving me a solid break in between. They would nurse for a shorter time every two to three hours, making it feel as if they constantly needed me, just for sustenance (let alone all the other needs an infant has). It was exhausting and a HUGE invasion of my personal space. It made me kind of crazy. Even so, I breast-fed them. It was healthiest for them, which was important to me, and it was nearly free, whereas formula is super-expensive.

I never went to a La Leche League meeting or consulted a lactation specialist or read a book about breast-feeding or anything. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just fed my babies. And here’s why I feel the need to weigh in on this news item: it is a pain in the rear to breast-feed a baby in public. My oldest child is 17 and the youngest that I nursed is 11, so it’s been a decade since I’ve been in the situation of needing to feed a fussy child while out and about. No matter how well you plan and feed a baby before leaving the house, etc., there are darn sure going to be times that baby has to eat while you are outside of your house. And here’s the plain truth in our society even now: you almost never see a woman publicly nursing her baby, whether it’s at a store of some type, a restaurant, or a park. But that doesn’t mean they’re settling in to a nice, quiet, private room designated for nursing at any of these places, because VERY FEW public places have rooms for mothers to feed their children. There are more and more family bathrooms available different places, at least, which is definitely helpful, but still not a lot of spots for nursing.

What does this mean, then? There’s nowhere to go to “privately” breast-feed a baby. Restaurants, especially not fast-food restaurants, do not have somewhere to go if a baby gets hungry fast. So you either pack up and leave, with the baby wailing all the way home, before you’ve gotten to eat yourself, or you stay and feed the baby. But since we still so rarely do see anyone else breast-feeding in public places (whereas you can see plenty of women and men handing babies their bottles out and about), none of us feel comfortable with the notion, even breast-feeding moms themselves, in many cases.

Now that’s plain ridiculous. But here’s why: people who’ve either not been around breast-feeding mothers very much or who have absorbed our upside-down society’s notions that baring a little portion of breast while getting a baby latched on or off is somehow public indecency either outright make comments or ask women to leave or “cover up” or they stare or make weird faces at them because they are uncomfortable.

The problem is not that women are being inconsiderate and not “covering up”. The problem is that in our backwards, inside-out, upside-down society, it’s somehow acceptable for women to wear teeny tank tops and blouses that are so low-cut they show a solid third of a breast, and no one bats an eyelash. No one asks a woman showing a ton of cleavage to leave a public place. But if a woman doing her best to “discreetly” breast-feed her baby happens to show for a split second a good portion of her breast (maybe even her nipple, for heaven’s sake!), then it’s lewd.

And that’s what has my hackles up. Because when I see other people posting about this topic, and still so many people, EVEN WOMEN, EVEN MOTHERS, comment that they think these women should be more careful about “covering up,” I know we have a big problem in our culture. Women stage “milk-ins” to raise awareness whenever these news items pop up. A lot of commenters say these are unnecessary. I’m thinking, however, they’re still very necessary. We need men, women, and children, of all ages, to see mothers breast-feeding their children, enough that they become comfortable with it. Because most people clearly aren’t comfortable with it. And it’s not because it’s dirty or lewd or filthy. It’s because they just don’t see it happen often enough.

If nursing moms still need to stage “milk-ins” or “nurse-ins” to finally get our generally very-non-prudish society comfortable with a really healthy and natural activity, then I support them all the way.

Glad to read about others’ experiences with mental illness

So I was appreciative this week to receive a book to review called Pros of Prozac: A Faith-Based Memoir of Overcoming the Stigma. Given my experience in book reviewing and my personal interest in mental health issues, this book was a welcome read.

It’s a little slip of a book, just over a hundred pages, which the author says is mostly intentional, so someone interested in the topic can just get a quick overview of her experience. So I read it in one sitting this afternoon. Beca Mark writes about her experience with postpartum depression after the birth of her first child, struggling with mood and depression, and finally deciding to seek professional help and take medication for her depression. It took 15 months to choose to take Prozac, and Mark discovered two things: one, why did she wait so long while suffering so much? and two, she realized that she had actually been struggling with depression her whole life but hadn’t known it until Prozac made her feel really good and really herself.

Mark’s experience is actually what I would call fairly straightforward. She was really struggling, and then struggled with just the concept of taking medication because of the stigma it has in our society (and the real lack of open discussion of the topic in her otherwise close-knit, very large family), and then finally decided to give in and take the medicine. And in fairly short order, she just felt a whole lot better. And she has felt consistently better in the years she’s been taking it, which I’m guessing is probably about five. She makes clear that it hasn’t made her life easy-peasy or super-simple or solved all her problems. It has simply made her more able to think clearly and be motivated and to just be her best self. As I put it, it’s helped her to be able to cope in the way that most “normal” people (i.e. those who don’t have depression or other mental-health struggles) do.

Mark says this is a faith-based memoir, but it’s really not very heavy on the faith angle. I think her beliefs and the culture that surrounds those faith beliefs give a frame to her story, but even those who don’t consider themselves very religious can find a lot of value in her story. All in all, this is really a simple tale, and one that seeks simply to provide some basic information and encouragement to those who may find themselves struggling emotionally but feeling hesitant to accept that there might be a “label” for what they’re experiencing and that medication might help. Our culture at large still places stigma on mental health issues, as well as taking psychiatric medication. And individuals within faith communities may very well sometimes compound that stigma by saying that if a sufferer could just be more self-reliant or more faithful, they wouldn’t suffer.

I heartily support Mark’s goal to contribute to the general discussion and bring this topic “out of the darkness” into the light of day. The more those of us who do struggle with emotional challenges really talk openly about this and show that we’re pretty normal, typical, “good” people, and not weird or weak or something negative, the more others will be better educated, aware, and accepting — and supportive. And, even better, the fewer the number of people who do suffer from mental health issues will feel marginalized or hesitant to seek treatment. Mark really doesn’t want more people to suffer in silence and without treatment. Why should they? It’s pointless to suffer when there is help.

In applying Mark’s story to my experience, I find that mine is a bit more complex. (She does say that mental illnesses are complex in cause, etc.) Because I have bipolar issues, finding medications and treatments to keep me on an even keel can be trickier. Antidepressants help the most, but they tend to “poop out” after a year or two. I’m in that spot right now, I think. I have been on a number of different medications over the years, and it hasn’t been as “simple” (that’s relative, I know) as being able to get on Prozac and stick with it for years. I would like that a lot if it were that comparatively simple.

When it comes to the faith angle, I just wrote that there really isn’t a lot of it in here, so this book is really accessible for everyone. I wouldn’t have minded seeing more, personally. I have written about how my faith informs and is affected by my mental issues, too, and I don’t think Mark really digs into that as much as I have, even.

But bottom line: a good read, particularly for those who are “new” to the idea of having possible emotional struggles, and one that’s simple and straightforward and encouraging. Kudos to Beca Mark for putting her story out there and just being honest. The more of us who do so, the better.

The Victoria’s Secret people have fallen to a new low

Given my views on our society and the feminine “ideal,” it should be fairly clear at this point what I think about Victoria’s Secret. The whole way that brand markets its products just makes me shake a little with indignation. I haven’t set foot in one of those stores in years. I just won’t support that company with my dollars. And let’s be clear: the “fashion show” that VS puts on on television once a year is just soft porn that’s received a stamp of cultural acceptability.

Victoria's Secret But here’s the thing: the show is now being marketed to families. Yes, somehow this spectacle of impossibly thin, tall models with unnaturally large breasts who are showcased in sexy bras and angel wings (really?) is now somehow becoming a family event. Wha? Even though most rational people would not consider this family entertainment, it’s hard to ignore how the show is being packaged and advertised. The runway models wearing itty-bitty push-up bras and panties adorned with bling galore (can someone say Bedazzler?) are being accompanied by musical entertainment. This year, it’s Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars. Just who is Justin Bieber’s audience? Teen and tween girls. And Rihanna’s? Same. The producers are clearly aiming to snag the eyes of young girls and prepubescent boys, not just the obvious men of all ages and teen boys.

Is anyone else outraged by this? It’s bad enough that men are going to watch this “acceptable” porn on network television and just reinforce the feminine body ideal. And it’s bad enough that women are going to see it as well and have yet another opportunity to compare themselves unfavorably to what’s honestly a runway full of genetic aberrations. Now, young girls and boys are being indoctrinated into the religion that worships the female body ideal as well.

Just turn off the TV or switch the channel.

Speak up about the real value of women

It would be difficult for anyone to argue that women aren’t being demeaned as objects in pretty much every single corner of society. It happens so much and is such a thoroughly pervasive message in media that we’ve almost forgotten to be angry about it. We just take for granted that it’s happening.

Well, I think it’s time for women — and men — to stand up and show some anger about this phenomenon. It’s time to stop the saturation of our culture with images of sexualized women.

Pink ribbon — You can’t slap a pink ribbon on everything and say it’s “supporting” women.

I’ve been writing off and on about this topic, and I’ve nearly finished the book I’m writing, which focuses on the topic from a faith-based angle. But nearly every day, I see something else that makes me want to shake my fist and just DO something, SAY something. Yesterday it was a USA Today article about how breast cancer is being sexualized. Wha?? Yep, it’s true. I suppose I’d already kind of subconsciously noticed it myself, but the article really clarified the point. I also had just noticed a full-page ad in an in-flight magazine when I was traveling over the weekend: it showed a photo of a very trim, fairly young woman with smallish but nice breasts (a point I feel inclined to note, since most of these kinds of photos show women with larger-than-life breasts) dressed in an itty-bitty white bikini. Flat abs, no fat, no cellulite, no blemishes. And the ad had the nerve to have been run by plastic surgeons touting the message that they can do great reconstruction on women who have had breast cancer. Aaaaiiiieee!

Let’s think about this honestly. Is the average survivor of breast cancer going to look like a 20-something model? Ah, nope. She’s going to have scars, could be some pretty big and ugly ones, depending on how much surgery had to be done. She might be thin (thanks to not being able to eat much during chemo), but not necessarily in the “attractive” way. It might not even be possible for reconstructive surgery to get her back to “normal.” A friend in her 50s recently told me about her experience with breast cancer, and she said that after having a double, radical mastectomy, she was told by surgeons that the process for giving her breasts would be lengthy and, as she put it, “barbaric.” And then she wouldn’t even be able to have normal-looking breasts: they wouldn’t be able to give them nipples. She turned down the surgery; no point in going through all that to have substandard breasts.

Nope, these kinds of demonstrations of support for breast cancer aren’t help. They are simply marketing opportunities painted in pink. The article quotes Karuna Jagger, executive director of advocacy group Breast Cancer Action, as saying, “The implicit message in these campaigns is that it is breasts that are sexy; sexy is what is important; and we should care about breast cancer because it takes those lovely, sexy breasts out of the world . . . Every October, the stunts just gets more bizarre and further removed from what’s needed for this epidemic.”

Why can’t we just stand up and say, ENOUGH, ALREADY!? Sexy, young, thin, well-endowed female models are used to sell almost everything. I work out at the gym every day and can see a bank of about five TV monitors showing different networks while I exercise. I read or listen to music, but I can’t help but glance over at the monitors and see what’s going on. At any given time, I see several images of unrealistically-shaped young women, on commercials or the news or various programs. The anchors on news networks are thin and usually young (at least in comparison to the men, who can be any age). Innocuous game shows feature models showing off the prizes. Soap operas feature cute young girls and some older women who have often had various work done (at the very least, Botox and injections to plump up their lips or cheekbones). All the commercials feature women. Products for men and commercials aimed at men feature sexy models, scantily clad. Products for women and commercials selling those products for women feature women; most of them are for hair color (get rid of gray) or skin creams that aim to reduce wrinkles and make skin look younger and fresher. Car commercials even mostly feature women: young, trim models.

It’s all about sexualization. When will all women say, Enough. No more. I refuse to be sexualized, to be objectified, any more. It starts at home and with our circle of friends, even just on Facebook or Pinterest. Stop pinning the “fitspiration” pins. I don’t. I like to exercise, and it’s a vital part of my daily routine. But I refuse to put another photo in front of me that has a ridiculously skinny teen or 20-something clad in a sports bra and tight boy shorts, touting her amazing workout that will make all of us look just like her. It’s ridiculous. We should be laughing, not trying to emulate those girls! Stop posting about how you feel fat or ugly or that you look old. Don’t expect yourself to look your regular self two weeks post-baby, either. Stop focusing on how you look, period. And don’t focus on how your friends look. Support them as they do great things with their lives, as they work on being their best selves.

Love_heart — Women’s important body parts aren’t our breasts or backsides. They’re our hearts and hands.
Photo by Louise Docker, via Wikipedia

Focus on YOU, women. Allow the men in your life to focus on who you are inside, too. Teach your daughters to be who they are, and teach your sons positive language about women and not to focus on appearance. Yes, be healthy. Try to eat mostly well. Exercise regularly. But don’t make how you look the end-all, be-all. Don’t let yourself be objectified. Don’t let the media and the marketers and the porn producers dictate how you feel about yourself or how society views you. Gently remind friends that they are “more than eye candy,” as Beauty Redefined enshrines in billboards, or that they are more than just numbers on a scale.

We women are amazing creatures. We nurture future generations. We lead society. We do great things. Let’s show ’em what we’ve got! We’re not about our body parts, unless we talk about our brains, our hearts, or our hands. Let’s join those hands and speak up.