People love asking moms about their baby making plans.
“Are you done?”, “Are you planning on more?”, and my favorite phrasing – with all the negative overtones-, “You’re done, right?!”.
And in case it isn’t awkward enough when friends and family asks these questions- us moms also hear this from strangers, like our cashiers.
I cannot help but wonder why people feel like they should ask someone about their birth control plans? That is what it is, after all. They may as well ask if we are planning to have some unprotected sex again. And the truth of the matter is, whether I am or not, it feels too personal and like something that is no ones business but the people who’d be making (or preventing) the baby.
And the thing is, there is no right answer. I mean, one person may want to hear you say “YES! I’m so done!” and they will sigh in relief, laugh and make a comment on how full your arms are already but that same answer to someone else will make them look at you in surprise and question why you want to make a permanent decision right now and they will talk about all the wonders another child could add to your life. While if you tell someone you are not sure or maybe you are planning one more (as I found out when I had 2 girls and people would ask if I was planning a third) you can get comments like, “Oh, you got to try for that boy, huh?”. As if my whole plan in life is to be a baby making factory until a preferred gender one arrives. Would I love a boy? SURE! But would I make the decision about how many kids I want to have and how my family will look and feel and function for the rest of my life over the 50% chance of a certain gender? uh, no. If I have another child that will be based off a bit more than hoping for a gender.
In the end, though, it just isn’t anyones business. Unless, of course, you are the person I’d be making that baby with- then it’s completely your business. That’s the only exception.
So moms (or those of you who are not parents yet who have people questioning your child baring plans), don’t feel pressured to respond. If someone asks you your plans for your sex life, it’s ok to just not answer them. If that person is willing to put you in the awkward position of having to answer such a super personal question, it’s ok to just smile or even wink and not respond and let the awkward silence roll into another conversation. Or come up with a witty come back (which I’d be thrilled to give examples of here if I were at all witty and could think of things like that).
Today I was reading an article my friend posted on Facebook from a few months back where a 14yr old was given $40,000 worth of cosmetic surgery (ears pinned back, nose job and chin reshaped) because of bullying. I found this horrific and a shame, since the bullying will probably just continue in other ways since kids just find other reasons to bully- like bullying a 14yr old peer for having had cosmetic surgery. Also, though, the lesson the mother just taught her daughter, that beauty is more important than being you and having other peoples approval of how you look is worth any cost. When I saw the before and after photo’s of the article all I could think was, “This girl had not even grown into her face yet. I bet she would grow to be a gorgeous looking girl either way!”. I then had to challenge my own thought because does it even matter if she grew to be gorgeous? Why should it matter so much and who decides what it means to be pretty anyway!?
When I looked up the definition of pretty, I found it is not even that great to be pretty. Attractive in a delicate way? Well, I don’t want to be delicate. I’m a woman, not a rose. Oh, and I love the emphasis on not being attractive enough to be beautiful either. So, maybe pretty should be an insult?
“Oh honey, you are just so pretty!”
“Pretty? Pretty!? You mean I’m not beautiful! That’s it, I’m off to go eat a container of ice cream and call around looking for plastic surgeon recommendations! After all, I’m a liberated woman, damn it, and If I choose to be beautiful then that is my free chose!”
Of course, as they always are, my kids are in the back of my mind with all of this too. How do I raise my three daughters to be confident women with so much up against them? Even their own mom fails regularly in this department. While I emphasize health, my goal is partly attractiveness for motivation to lose weight. What kind of example is that to my girls? And when I tell them how much I love their hair, or eyes, or skinny minny belly buttons- is that sending them a message that their looks are priority, when there are so many other defining factors that I feel are more important to focus on?
I read one paragraph of this article that hit me hard and really turned my focus to my own kids. “As my friend writer Jaclyn Friedman once said to me, the problem isn’t that girls don’t know their worth—it’s that they absolutely do know their value in society. Young women know exactly how ugly the culture believes them to be. So when we teach girls to simply “love themselves”, we’re implicitly telling them to accept the world as it is. We’re saying that being beautiful is something worth having when we should be telling them a culture that demands as much is toxic.”
What do I need to do to help shift this focus? I’m a big follower of the Pigtail Pals blog and facebook page but I still feel a bit of loss and confusion in how to direct my words and actions to give my girls the best chance possible to overcome the over emphasis put on (young and older) women’s looks. I know it starts with challenging my own world views and that the more I strip the illusion of pretty from my own eyes- the more I can positively shape my girls view.
I remember a few years back my friend, who is an RN nurse, was telling me about how she went into a 4th grade classroom to talk about good health and do basic wellness checks with them. This included having each kid privately weighed. When it came time for kids to get in line to be weighed (the kids lined up in the classroom and waited for there turn there, while the scale was set up in the hall), nearly every girl in the room moaned with dread. When it came to weighing the children, the girls were just as horrified by being weighed as they were in the classroom. Even girls who barely touched 40 lbs covered their eyes and told her they didn’t even want to know. While I am sure they are are doing exactly as they have seen their mothers do in doctors offices and their own bathroom scales, I was amazed at how early this idea of weight being a negative factor in who one is sets in. I do not want my daughters feeling horror around a scale. If they need to be weighed, I want them to bounce on, bounce off and go back to doing more interesting things that affect their 10yr old lives more, like climbing trees or riding their bikes, with no thought or care for what that scale even said. It should not define them. It should not affect their day or their feelings.
Do you know what I think is pleasing and appealing to my senses? A child having fun, unaware and oblivious of a world that judges us on the outside. Teens of all body types, all kinda of noses, all kinds of ears and chins- laughing and being proud of who they are because they rock. Do you know what I find unattractive? A child or teenager thinking they should look and dress in a way that is “sexually alluring”. Yuck! How unnecessary is it for our kids to think that is how they should look? What happened to “confidence is attractive” concept because I much prefer the definition of attractive to be someone who is confident. Confident that they are rocking their unique to them features. Confident that their laughter brightens up a room or that they are intelligent enough to awe anyone they want. Confident that they are kids and they rule. Because lets face it, Kids rule!
Despite how many advertisements and commercials I have to see of photoshopped women, I do not want our society to decide what I think is attractive. I certainly do not want it deciding what any of my daughter’s self esteems should be. I pray to God that my daughters will be too busy loving who they are and goofing around with their friends to be thinking about plastic surgery when they are 14. I hope to God that by the time they are teens we are seeing more and more of a healthy balance of women types on TV and in magazines and that we put some standards on advertisers for how much editing they can do.
Please know, this is not an anti-skinny message. There a many naturally skinny women in the world and they are awesome. Just like there are many naturally curvy women and many naturally in the middle of those two types. We are all women. We are all fantastic and none of us should be having to work and think about pretty or attractive like we all probably do. JSPhotography is doing an incredible body image project where she is photographing all kinds of women and let me tell you, it’s awesome and empowering and fascinating! I love looking through her photos and seeing what brave woman stood up in front of her camera this week. But it still brings me back to this thought. Why does it matter if we are pretty? Why is our self esteem so tied into this concept of attractiveness? Why can’t we be more focused on our intelligence, bravery, sense of humor, achievements?
And then I see my oldest daughter gravitating the one naked (where do their clothes go?) barbie and I wonder how it is effecting her. I hope, like so many say, that they are meaningless toys and that with enough positive talk and influence that they are just harmless play things but I cannot convince myself that there is any truth in that. When even the toy isles (maybe even more so than any other part of a store) is saturated with messages about body image and portraying so much “attractiveness” that only comes in one or two bodies- I just cannot be made to believe that it is all harmless play. 
I know I’m at a start of a long journey. A Journey to clear and fix my own mind. A journey to setting good examples, using good words, portraying healthy self esteem for my daughters to see. A journey of figuring out toys and what we want to expose our daughter to and what we want to allow but filter and what is crossing the line (Bratz and Monster High… are crossing the line!). I don’t want my children’s lives to be filled with sexualized toys and ideas. I want them to have fun and not worry. I want them to be healthy and happy. I want them to have role model parents who love life and love good health and love themselves without worry of what others think because we know who we are without others validations.
A Warrior Mom 