Entries from October 2007 ↓

By Tracee Sioux
Seventeen Magazine and Dove are asking girls to sign a Body Peace Treaty to encourage better body image and self esteem in their readership.

I vow to:

* Remember that the sun will still rise tomorrow even if I had one too many slices of pizza or an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.
* Never blame my body for the bad day I’m having.
* Stop joining in when my friends compare and trash their own bodies.
* Never allow a dirty look from someone else to influence how I feel about my appearance.
* Quit judging a person solely by how his or her body looks — even if it seems harmless — because I’d never want anyone to do that to me.
* Notice all the amazing things my body is doing for me every moment I walk, talk, think, breathe…
* Quiet that negative little voice in my head when it starts to say mean things about my body that I’d never tolerate anyone else saying about me.
* Remind myself that what you see isn’t always what you get on TV and in ads — it takes a lot of airbrushing, dieting, money, and work to look like that.
* Remember that even the girl who I’d swap bodies with in a minute has something about her looks that she hates.
* Respect my body by feeding it well, working up a sweat when it needs it, and knowing when to give it a break.
* Realize that the mirror can reflect only what’s on the surface of me, not who I am inside.
* Know that I’m already beautiful just the way I am.

Seventeen Magazine is specifically sited in the APA Report on the Sexualization of Girls. Their “articles about fitness have centered on the need for girls to increase their sexual desirability through exercise rather than improved health . . . encouraged young women to think of themselves as sexual objects whose lives were not complete unless sexually connected with a man . . .asked girls to achieve rigid norms through consumption of beauty products,” states the report.

Is Seventeen Magazine turning over a new leaf, to encourage girls to love themselves, or trying to halt the fallout of the girl revolution where people finally stop accepting their old tactics of making girls feel bad to sell magazines?

While browsing Seventeen’s website I found a few gems for girls like this Dating Respect Video discussing dating violence and asking girls to expect respect from boys. The weight/stress article focused on health rather than appearance (though the photo was of a very thin model on a scale).

I think Seventeen’s Body Peace Pledge is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, girls will take it seriously. Such a pledge wouldn’t hurt their mother’s either.

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When looking at 6 to 12 week maternity leave policies in the United States one has to wonder:

Do employers and lawmakers hate mothers?

Or do they hate babies?

After you push a human being out of your crotch and feel pressured to return to work before your stitches have even dissolved you have to wonder, Which of us to they hate more?

What causes policies that are detrimental to both mother and child?

Devaluation of motherhood.

What if anti-mother employment policies are a direct result of women criticizing motherhood? Women do it to preserve our hard-won place in public life. Perhaps, the end-result is damaging and harmful to working-mothers and their families because it manifests in anti-mothering employment policy.

I’m playing with the theory that the devaluation of motherhood is a bi-product of feminism and emancipation. An over-correction, if you will.

Follow my thinking here, for thousands of years women were submissive and oppressed. We were told the only thing we were qualified for was mothering. To break out of our narrowly-defined role, we did the only thing we could: we minimized and devalued motherhood.

Consider my family as a microcosm of the whole. In order for me, personally, to break away from my mother’s Church and Society sanctioned stay-at-home-mom role I minimized what she did. The cleaning, the cooking, the nurturing, the caring, the self-sacrifice, the moral building, the breast-feeding, the birthing, the nursing, the educating, the training, the whole mothering bit got reduced to nothing. Nothing important or validating anyway.

Now that I have children of my own I can see that this so-called nothing is really what makes the world go round. The growing of people, nurturing human beings, the next generation, trumps professional achievement. I want both, but the mothering keeps the entire species evolving and thriving according to the scientific Grandmother hypothesis.

To break away, I devalued motherhood and then was shocked, angry and surprised that my husband would dare equate my mothering to nothing.

I think there is ample evidence, in the last 30 years, that men will follow our lead. They’ll resist, but they will eventually follow. We are, as their mothers and wives, the most influential people in their lives. If we led them to devalue motherhood, then it stands to reason that we can lead them back.

Valuing motherhood starts with each of us. Obviously, we have made good progress. Women are not going to run back into their Normal Rockwell mothering roles, it didn’t make us happy then for legitimate reasons.

But, I think it’s a grave mistake to criticize the stay-at-home mom who does choose that role today. The stay-at-home mom reminds us that motherhood, in and of itself, is a valid ambition.

Why would employers and lawmakers hate mothers? It would be absurd to hate the very people they love most. Is it possible that anti-mother employment policies are the result of women devaluing motherhood?

Thoughts anyone?

Clarification: I use the term mothering and motherhood in a collective sense. For instance, though Oprah has no children I think she mothers all women. Likewise, Violet, who brings up some issues about mother’s in the workplace has spent 15 years mothering me, though she suffered from infertility.

Clarification II: This is not meant to be a controversial article on working versus staying at home. I suggest that when we devalue one we devalue the other. It’s meant to offer a solution:

When we value motherhood all women, working or not, mother or non-mother, single or married, benefit from family-friendly (however you want to define family is fine with me) policies.

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Daddy, Daddy I rode my bike all the way to the tree!

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Kiss it. It might turn into a prince.

You kiss it!

I already got my Prince. This is what Daddy looked like when I found him.

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by Tracee Sioux

Let me tell you about two families I personally know who benefit from the State Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIPS, the continuation and expanse of which Pres. George W. Bush vetoed.

Family one has a stay-at-home mom and a restaurant manager dad. He works 6 days a week, Tuesdays are his day off. The restaurant is independent – not a chain – and they don’t offer employees an affordable health plan. He works around 65 hours per week. They have three children. Their oldest child is autistic and must have special therapies and a strict diet. There is no way possible for them to be able to insure this child. There is no way possible Dad’s salary could ever come close to paying for their autistic son’s therapies. Autism isn’t an irresponsible behavior or character flaw. It’s something the child was born with and no one knows how or why. It’s hard for them to cope, but impossible for them to help him without SCHIPS.

Family two has a stay-at-home mom and a dad that works about 20 hours a day. He has a fulltime job in a marketing company AND a fulltime freelance business. You might know her, from Jlogged. Because he works for a small company and is self employed they don’t have a health care plan through his employer. They have three sons. One of their twins was born with cerebral palsy and a seizure condition. To qualify for help he has to stop working at a certain point. He turns down work, turns down promotions, because if they no longer qualify for SCHIPS and disability they will not come anywhere near being able to pay for the lifelong health needs of their child. If they exceed the income limit their son will go without help, without medical help, without the therapies and medication he needs.

If she goes to work there will be no one to take him to all of the therapies and doctors’ appointments. If they move so he can work for a large corporation with health insurance there will be no family support to call for help. When their sick child is in the hospital the extended family steps in to take care of their healthy children. When mom needs a break they trust their parents to take care of their special needs child. If they move, they lose that. So too the family with the autistic child, if they move they lose their familial support.

Can you imagine being a parent who can’t take their special needs child to the doctor? I can imagine it. But for the Grace of God, there go I.

It wasn’t any one’s fault or character flaw – it just happened. It’s biology. No one was being lazy or doing the wrong thing.

We have to stop criminalizing these middle class families. These families work HARD. They work as hard as any other American family. It’s not their fault they have kids with special needs. It’s not their fault they don’t have access to health insurance.

It’s not a character flaw to work for a small company or to start your own business. I thought Republicans were supposed to be into encouraging entrepreneurs and small businesses?

These are not just hard working Americans, they’re very frugal Americans. They don’t carry credit card debt or buy things they can’t afford. Jen’s family as one who digs through other people’s trash – literally. She believes in reduce, reuse, recycle. She’s not above any kind of work nor above any kind of reuse. They go to Church and they give-back their time and money in volunteer work with mentoring and boy scout den mothering. This is how we treat the good guys.

Bush is making it impossible for them to make it. He’s basically saying, You’re on your own. Too bad for you. Americans shouldn’t have to pay for your bum luck.

That’s just not who we want to be.

We only need 20 more votes to override Bush’s selfish veto. Write your congress person Right Here Right Now and tell them this is an unacceptable way to treat hard working Americans and their families.

I’m taking names this year. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, not a big fan of your voting record.

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