society

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“I’m Having Their Baby”

The Oxygen Network will be presenting a show entitled “I’m Having Their Baby” on July 23rd, 2012. The show highlights women who will be giving their children up for adoption. The adoptive parents include gay couples, infertile couples, etc. The interesting part is that we see the story from both sides. Oxygen shows us what the birth mother experiences along with the adoptive parents. I believe that it will be interesting to see how the families of both sides feel regarding the adoptions.

I believe that this is a show unlike any other on television at this time. Adoption is rarely discussed, especially from both points of view. Since abortion is such a charged topic, adoption seems to follow. Women who chose to give up their children are looked down upon at times, depending on their situations. Sometimes, society feels better about a woman choosing to give their child up for adoption that abort the pregnancy, but sometimes the situation is reversed. It is even more interesting that adopting a child is seen as a noble cause or creating a family, but giving a child up is looked down upon. Isn’t what a woman does with what is inside her body up to her?

I definitely see birthing a baby to give to someone else as an interesting body project. Anyway, I’m looking forward to this show! Will anyone else watch with me?

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Do These Pants Make My Ass Look Bisexual?

Why does what I’m wearing define my sexual orientation? I’m a 22-year old female, and I often change the way I dress, even on a day-to-day basis. I may feel like wearing a tight skirt, heels, make-up, and jewelry and shaving my legs on Monday. On Tuesday I might wear sweatpants and a T-shirt and throw my hair in a messy bun, and on Wednesday I may wear a baggy pair of guy’s jeans with paint stains on them, a tank top, and skater shoes but do my hair in a cute way. I enjoy dressing in any way that makes me feel comfortable, and I usually do.

But recently, I got a girlfriend, and even though I dress the same way I’ve always dressed, with my same unique style I’ve always had, I’ve heard some interesting comments, even from people that I know care about me and aren’t trying to be offensive. But if I’m dressed up (and meet society’s beauty standards) I’ll hear people say things like “Are you really a lesbian?” or “I don’t understand how you’re gay” and when I dress down, or “more like a guy” I hear “You’re such a lesbian.”

And I’m not even a lesbian! I’m bisexual!

I feel as though society often judges people as being gay or straight based on what they’re wearing. A recent conversation with my (straight, male) roommates went like this:

Roommate 1: “What are you wearing?”
Me: “Jeans.”
Roommate 2: “She has a girlfriend, she can wear what she wants.”
Roommate 1: “She’s only half-gay.”
Me: “What does that have to do with it?”
Roommate 1: “Well sometimes you dress like the straight half.”

First off, I consider myself a hundred percent gay and a hundred percent straight, and I hate it when people call me “half gay.” It’s not like I find women attractive half the time; I find attractive PEOPLE attractive ALL the time. Second, how come I can only wear “whatever I want” because I have a girlfriend? It’s not like my girlfriend dresses me. Could I wear girls’ jeans if I was a lesbian? Could I wear guys’ jeans if I was straight? Why are my roommates only saying things now? Don’t the same rules apply now as when I was single? Or am I “more gay” when I have a girlfriend?

It’s also weird to me that clothes can make you look gay (“He’s totally gay, look at his pants.”  “I can’t tell if he’s gay or if he just dresses really well…”  “She looks like a dyke in those pants.”) or even make you look straight (“Can you believe he’s gay? He dresses so straight!”) but I have never heard of clothes making you look bisexual. If bisexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are all valid sexual orientations, why don’t our clothes make us look bisexual? Where can I buy pants that make me look like I date boys and girls?

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Virgin are we?

So I’ll definitely put myself out there I am a virgin and I am 22 years old. And yes I am waiting till marriage. That being said I am tired of the, what seems to me, random depictions of virgins. In the movies usually the virgin is one prophetess or religious deity like in the movies Immortal and Conan the Barbarian. Or people in generally think that all virgins are prudish, stuck up, extra conservative, and hyper religious. It’s as if within the push for the feminist movement that means that have as much sex as you please and make the choice to have sex. What if you do not make that choice are you then against feminism. I thought the whole point of feminism is to respect women and the choices they make with their bodies (themselves). But more so it is lets show the men we can have as much sex as they can. I personally am not interested. It is as self there are two different secs the women who chose to wait and rock purity rings and the women who engage in sexual intercourse looking down on those that don’t. Of course I know that this goes both ways. But I feel as if women need to know that both options are viable and for this to happen sexual education needs to occur. Sex is everywhere and women are constantly being pressured to engage in something they might not be ready to yet. So where is the dialogue for those who want to wait and those who do not.

I think it is equally annoying to have certain body movements legitimatized by bodies who have sex and those that don’t. Just because I can wind and swirl my hips a certain way doesn’t then mean I have sex. Or if I can’t dance for anything doesn’t mean I am a prude. We create so many binary for ourselves that it is difficult to claim to be a feminist is daunting if as a part of that it means you have a body that participates in sexual intercourse. And to add on to that if you are any other ‘color’ than white your body is then hyper sexualized and expected to participate in sex. And if you are not that you are linked to being a prude. And fyi a prude means “a person who is excessively proper or modest in speech, conduct, dress, etc.” It comes from the french word meaning “worthy or respectable women”. But we take words and add our own derogation connotation to them and look down on the people that fit the altered rhetoric of the word. Lets change our words and connotations or words. In thus doing we change the frame of our world.

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What is up with all the breastfeeding hate lately?

Facebook is deleting personal pictures of Mom’s breastfeeding and calling them obscene.

Moms are being ordered to cover up in malls and Target if they are breastfeeding.

Isn’t breastfeeding what women are encouraged to do?  Hasn’t the healthy party line been to breastfeed for at least the first few months to build immunity in babies?  Some communities are encouraging women to breastfeed to help curb childhood obesity.  There are proven health benefits for both the child and mother.  So, women are being told to breastfeed on the one hand and then told they can’t do it anywhere but in their homes on the other.  If they want to breastfeed in public, they must hide themselves away in a bathroom.  How dare they offend anyone with the view of their children breastfeeding!

Maggie Gyllenhaal breastfeeding

Women spend their entire lives held up as sexual beings, as objects.  But where does that end when a woman becomes a mother and wants to breastfeed her child?  Hasn’t the image of “the mother” become one that is without sexuality?  Maybe breastfeeding blurs that line for some.  We see this attitude in breast cancer awareness campaigns crying to “Save the boobies!” as well.  Women’s worth is in their sexuality and if they use their breasts to feed their children (some might say the breasts most primal and “natural” purpose) they are being viewed under that same sexual gaze.  Is our society so sexually repressed (and obsessed) that we can’t separate breasts from being sexual objects?

Part of the British campaign to encourage breastfeeding

Many breastfeeding moms are taking to activism to try and bring awareness to the issue.  Recently on etsy, an innovative breastfeeding mom created a crocheted “boobie beanie.”  They can be made in any skin tone and nipple shade, to match your own.

The Boobie Beanie!

Other mom’s are holding “breastfeed-in’s,” at facebook’s corporate headquarters or at local malls.  Celebrities have also taken to the cause, breastfeeding in public and allowing the paparazzi to take pictures of them with their children.  In Britain, they even had a celebrity campaign to encourage breastfeeding.  Unfortunately, until we as a society can move past this constant sexualization of breasts, I fear things will still be difficult for breastfeeding mommies.

Mayim Bailik breastfeeding on the subway in NYC.