Update: In comments, Elaine brings up a good point. It’s a social thing as much, if not more than a sexual thing. A man who is privately excited by the new post-pregnancy curves could still be embarrassed to present a wife who has them. A woman in the job market, responding to the bias against mothers, might wish to erase some motherhood evidence from her body to get a leg up at work.
A gazillion people have emailed me this article in the NY Times (link to Salon, because I couldn’t get the Times to load) about plastic surgeons who’ve zeroed in on the potential of pathologizing the stretched-out and puffier forms the body can take after having a baby or two or more. You have your babies and then off to the plastic surgeon to make sure your husband gets to fuck the same body before you had kids. The package includes a tummy tuck, breast implants (or a lift), and general liposuction, which I do believe has the highest infection rate of all plastic surgery. Turns out the popular notion of the “MILF” hasn’t taken hold with a lot of people who can afford to erase the “M” part from their bodies.
The word “vanity” is getting thrown around a lot, though last I checked, being vain is the only acceptable reason to get plastic surgery, now that a full 95% of women claim to be doing it for themselves and not to fit a beauty standard set upon women or compete with other women for male attention. I would like to quarrel with the idea that women who get the “mommy makeover” are vain. In my eyes, they are economic rationalists of the highest order. They have figured out what feminists have been noting for a long time—that the gap between men and women economically is now more a gap between mothers and everyone else. Once you have a baby, your value on the market as a worker goes through the floor, relatively speaking, and your dependence on male income into the household to maintain your living standard rises, especially now that you have dependents. Even if you have a job, your ability to climb the ladder at work is getting a pinch due to discrimination against mothers.
In other words, your need to maintain your husband’s sexual interest in you is rising at the exact same time your body is losing some of the markers of conventional attractiveness. Is it any wonder that some women buy a little painful, expensive advantage against competitors for their husband’s attention in such an environment? You need to keep him or replace him easily more now that your value as a worker has decreased.
Others have seen this and thought, “More evidence that we have impossible beauty standards,” and that’s true. But it’s also true that this is evidence that we need federally subsidized day care, more worker protections for working mothers, better maternal leave (and maybe even mandatory paternal leave), more flex time at work, and less social stigma on motherhood.
105 Responses to “The economics of the mommy makeover”
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It’s always striking how much stuff gets classified as feminine frivolity and vanity, when it’s actually an essential means to living the life you want in a messed-up world.
Yep Neil, require women to do it and then criticize them for it. It’s the American Way!
It isn’t just the childed who go in for this, either. The pressure is on for the childfree woman to “keep” her “unstretched” body looking 20something as she approaches 40 something and more. It isn’t enough to have a stable career of achievement - women are made to feel like they have to keep looking like they never had kids and never aged to keep their jobs in some sectors. Of course all these women, kids or not, are said to be doing these things out of vanity and frivolity, whether or not they do it to keep a husband or a job.
Ooh. BreastandBelly Blog has a slightly different take…I think she brings up some good points here:
But if a woman doesn’t want a numb SACK of discolored skin hanging over 1/2 of her crotch, we take issue with that? If someone doesn’t enjoy living with the discomfort and often sorrowful daily reminder of her c-section(s) being chafed and irritated and squashed into her underwear and outerwear day and night, she is shallow or vein or a product of a sick culture? And heaven forbid she want to feel active or sexual–we don’t even want to talk about that, right? and what of breasts? sure, its easy to scoff at the assumed desire for tiny, upturned, high-on-the collarbone breasts, but what about so many women who suffer through pinched nerves, burning shoulder pain, spending hundreds of dollars on bras and skin creams for their gouged in shoulder-grooves from the straps digging in, from rashes and sores around their ribcage from elastic digging into their flesh–are they jerkos, too?
I don’t have much use for the Times article, but that blogger made me wonder if I was being too judgemental. Birth can create some body issues that might be disabling, even if they’re “cosmetic.”
Of course, in a perfect world, no one would be pressuring women either way.
Oh here’s the link, sorry:
http://breastandbellyblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-double-standards-disguised-as.html
That article depressed the hell out of me. I can only imagine this mommy makeover trend to become more popular. Given that women are under increasing pressure to become “effortlessly perfect” in every way will only exacerbate this trend. It’s just not enough to get good grades in college, land a great job and husband — women have to do this while maintaining perfect manicured hands, shiny hair, white teeth, a tanned and slim body and makeup that is flattering without looking like you are trying too hard. Hell, none of it should look like you are trying too hard, otherwise you’ll be labeled as one of those vain women. No one takes vain women seriously, after all. Hence, the need for “effortless perfection”.
Now, even motherhood in all it’s body-modifying glory gets no reprieve from the critical eye of the patriarchy.
I agree with you, Amanda. This is not about vanity so much as a desire to remain competitive in this cutthroat world we live in.
It seems like its about power to me. Some of these women probably are acting rationally in the way that Amanda argues: they’re doing what they can to maintain the power they have. Some others are probably enjoying their own power and the disposable income that enables them to defy aging: I don’t necessarily think that not wanting to age is the fault of the patriarchy.
Back in 2001, I worked in an office where the receptionist had had two children while quite young. She’d divorced the husband and given him custody and moved to the big city and spent every night being held up by a barstool in Atlanta’s hippest straight clubs. Her sole ambition was to “unbaby” herself and she went $48k into debt to have extensive plastic surgery. She really looked okay before the surgery and not that much better (of course, I only saw her in professional garb) afterward.
I think it was a lot less about response to patriarchy in her case than it was about reinventing herself entirely, about erasing the small-town girl who’d joined the army to get away from that smal town and becoming an urban hipster.
I mostly shrugged and figured it was up to her, except once I found out about the kids, whom she’d basically abandoned. She spoke of them cruelly, with phrases like “weighing me down” and so forth, and was blithe to the point of sociopathy about having left them to be raised by barely-literate right-wing “Christians” in southern Indiana.
You’ve nailed it, Amanda. The more I advanced in busines, the more gay women I met. It took me awhile to realize that it was kids/no kids discrimination rather than a gay/not gay thing.
I’m kinda surprise that surgery on the vagina and vulva wasn’t mention though.
It’s so sad that women are still being pressured into doing that, and society is still fetishing passive virgins. One does not become loose from sex, unless it’s damaging sex, orgasm makes the muscles there stronger. (Makes me wonder if that decrease tearing during childbirth too.) When a woman is actually arouse, her ‘channel’ become engorged with bloodflow as well, better for both parties. (source, I think it’s the-clitoris.com)
Sigh. This is going to bring about an inevitable argument of “i did it for myself” vs. “you did it for the patriarchy” - well, it’s once again criticizing the choices of other women, which we are averse to doing, but we want to realize all our choices are not made in a vacuum. I don’t really have an answer to this, but I have to lament the idea that more women are undertaking expensive and inherently risky surgery in greater numbers.
And heaven forbid she want to feel active or sexual–we don’t even want to talk about that, right?
Not having had plastic surgery doesn’t keep me from kayaking, cycling, hiking, … or fucking when I please to do so. You don’t need severe surgical body modification to wanna or to get your ass out there and play.
Since when does “active and sexual” have holy bugfuck-all to do with being artificially modified to suit conventional tastes in female bodies?
IN A PATRIARCHY of course!
This comment cought my attention most sharply: “The severe physical trauma of pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding can have profound negative effects that cause women to lose their hourglass figures.”
It’s hard to imagine a more degrading comment about women and motherhood than that. And this is all the more odious because the man who uttered it has presented his contempt for the average woman – that is, just about everyone who happens to be female and over 20 years old – through a medicalized and overly negative description of the post-pregnant body: “…severe…trauma…profound negative effects…”
It sounds like Stoker is describing the effects of a catastrophic brain injury as opposed to the changes that occur in the body of a new mom.
I actuallly brought this up in one of my classes recently. We were discussing disireability, etc. and working out. Several folks got fussy with me for noting (and this is particularly the case among a lot of gay men) that what’s going on isn’t keeping bodies’ “in shape” but in producing bodies sculpted into a particular shape. For some reason, the notion that it was for anything other than “health reasons” was almost insulting.
I just wanna defend plastic surgeons a bit.
It’s not always about vanity, but about looking the way you feel comfortable in.
Transgenders need ‘em. So do burn victims. So does anyone who requires a large amount of reconstructive surgery. And people who’ve had breast/skin/mouth cancers, catastrophic loss of weight, and the like. So do people who have jobs that require them to look a certain way.
You should hug a plastic surgeon the next time you see one. They get a lot more crap than they really deserve…
Oh jeez, ignore the comment above, I missed my dose of sarconal…and reading comprehension…
I *knew* something was up with what I got…
If anyone could possibly doubt that the relationships between feminine beauty and motherhood are culturally determined, talk with women who hail from different cultures, or who have married into them or both.
Co worker 1 is half north asian and half south asian in ancestry, but is a third generation US-born on one side. She is married to an African.
Coworker 2 hails from Africa, and married somebody who immigrated from her own country.
Whether coworker 1 is huge or tiny depends on her particular context. She is “a whale” when visiting her north asian kin, and they are often concerned about her size despite her height. She is “normal, but “could gain some weight” when visiting the subcontinent, where here height and frame are more normal for the population. Her african in-laws wonder about her health because she REALLY needs to put on some weight - perhaps this is why there are no babies yet??? Or maybe she just NEEDS a baby to make her fill out properly and look like a “real woman”.
Coworker 2 laughs and recounts her own “we are praying for you” stories because she’s been married a year now and no kids and what a shame that her husband isn’t feeding her enough! Again, the “have a baby and fill out properly like a real woman” enters the conversation, even though she really doesn’t want to be any bigger than her current (healthy for her) weight.
This is why I call bullshit on such statements as I referenced above. Sexuality and vitality have nothing to do with whether you show the marks of having had a baby or been altered to remove the residuals. In other cultures, NOT having those signs implies that you are 1)sick or 2)barren or 3)not yet a grown woman. What having babies does to a woman’s body MAKES her body vital and sexy.
Turns out the popular notion of the “MILF” hasn’t taken hold with a lot of people who can afford to erase the “M” part from their bodies.
What’s funny about that is that Jennifer Coolidge looks like she’s had a kid or two, even if she actually hasn’t.
Before you dismiss people who might want to feel active or sexy, Ms. Kate, keep in mind that childbirth affects different bodies in different ways. YOU might feel just fine, but other women are dealing with more sagging, different amounts of dead-feeling skin, etc.
I haven’t had any kids, but once upon a time, I lost over 130 pounds and was left with drooping, sagging skin. I had some plastic surgery, and I’d do it again in a minute. The surgery made me NORMAL, more or less. For the first time in my life. My tits weren’t flat against my chest yet sagging to my belly, which in itself was no longer flapping against my thighs.
So please take your dismissive attitude and stuff it in your kayak.
Well, for some women, I bet the physical stress of pregnancy really does do a job on the body, and I can see why they would want to return to what they were “before” (Godknose that nothing else in her life will be the same.)
I’m in my late 40s, have not had kids, but have found the changes in my body disconcerting–partly because I’ve got a very weird body shape to start with and when you add tiny bits of fat on top of that I end up being a shape that has absolutely crazy curves and proportions. (Luckily my present sex partner drools over my shape.) I’d like to lose a few pounds in certain places–but will I go get plastic surgery? Not on your life–too dangerous.
That’s my major bugaboo with how plastic surgery is handled, both by the doctors advertising it, and the media. If it’s “cosmetic”, there seems to be this unconscious assumption that it’s superficial, easy, simple. Hell know! You have just as many possibilities of things going wrong with cosmetic surgery as you do with regular surgery.
Seems reasonable, em. I can’t help but think that some of the judgement comes from people who probably haven’t considered the outer limit of how much your body can change. But I bet a lot of women getting this work are the already-trim-but-aging soccer mom set. Who knows, though? But that it’s very intense changes or not that intense doesn’t change the general factors. I don’t think “vanity” is an adequate explanation for women’s greater interest in plastic surgery. I think “patriarchy” is, which is not women’s fault.
Zuzu, I’m not talking about functional impairments here. I have a lot of loose skin, but more from 50 lbs lost than your 130 and I can understand what would happen if I had more than what I do to deal with might be difficult and get in my way on a daily basis.
What these people are saying, however is that EVERY woman who has had children has something WRONG with her and isn’t ENTITLED or permitted to feel sexy or active until she has had such surgery. Not women who have functional impairment - EVERY woman. I call bullshit on that and will continue to, regardless of whether Zuzu thinks it is dismissive.
Why? Because this meme is CULTURAL and not FUNCTIONAL, as evidenced by the way some cultures find women who do NOT have post-maternal boobs and belly to be not yet fully adult in some way.
I’m not saying that isn’t messed up, either, but these jerks want to make EVERY woman with ANY flesh from childbearing feel inadequate. Their insistence on “fixing” women so they can be permitted to have lives and sexuality is a far cry from back-sparing breast reductions or removal of skin after impressive weight loss.
So get stuffed already - just consider that your personal extreme situation is not the issue here (although insurance companies are loathe to fund the necessary skin removal or breast reduction so long as this bullshit continues). The issue is casting any woman who ever had a baby as being defective.
It’s not necessarily gender-specific; if your wife has lost interest in you and you’re a guy, you’ll get pretty desperate too.
What these people are saying, however is that EVERY woman who has had children has something WRONG with her and isn’t ENTITLED or permitted to feel sexy or active until she has had such surgery. Not women who have functional impairment - EVERY woman. I call bullshit on that and will continue to, regardless of whether Zuzu thinks it is dismissive.
Why? Because this meme is CULTURAL and not FUNCTIONAL, as evidenced by the way some cultures find women who do NOT have post-maternal boobs and belly to be not yet fully adult in some way.
But you’re foreclosing the possibility that women who feel that they do have functional impairments might just feel that surgery could help them.
Now, I do happen to think that surgery is pushed too hard to solve problems, or “problems” that might respond to other therapies. But unless you’ve spent time in a body that isn’t the product of a millimeter of gravity’s effect, but has changed permanently and dramatically, you really have no business telling anyone who has that their decision to have surgery is the result of capitulation to the patriarchy.
I agree that the increase in women using surgery to “correct” their postpartum bodies is both a function of patriarchy and a rational reaction to the ways mothers are made vulnerable in our system. Add the current media obsession with “bump watches” and “how (insert too thin celebrity) lost her baby weight in three weeks!” and it’s a wonder that any postpartum woman can become comfortable in her new body.
I had my son over a year ago and while accepting my stretch marks and saggier breasts has been pretty easy, the sagging, wrinkly jelly belly has really done a number on my own perception of my desirability– a perception wholly influenced by the cultural messages I’ve absorbed over my entire life that youth= not mother=sexy. Like most women, I have been hard on myself my whole life about not being quite thin enough, but my confidence has never been so low. And I realized that it has a lot to do with feeling less powerful as a mother than I did as a nonmother. I am vulnerable (particularly financially) in a way that I have never been before. For some women, I can see how they would look at plastic surgery as reclaiming their power– they have rightly judged that much of their value in this society comes down to their fuckability.
It makes me angry at the medical profession (specifically plastic surgeons) for extending their pathologization of the female body to include normal postpartum changes. I can’t, however, sit in judgment of the women who do this, even if it is only for “vanity”.
One day I thought: “hairless, firm, thin… funny, as if grown women were supposed to look like children, ha ha!” - and then I paused and it totally gave me the creeps. A paedophile beauty ideal? Can’t be. Surely not. Still, to this day, pictures of super-thin models or actresses…. brrr. Just a tad creepy.
I think that’s what people are getting upset about, not plastic surgery per se. It’s just this trend to take what’s basically a womanly body shape and make it look like something you need to get rid of. We’re forgiven for turning 40, it seems, as long as we make sure our tits and arse are still marketable. (I’m reminded of Shrek2: “With… just… a… flick of my magic wand, your troubles will soon be gone…”)
Er, I think Zuzu and Ms Kate are actually agreeing with each other vociferously. If I understand correctly, these are the points:
1. Women who have undergone extreme body changes that lead to physical discomfort or functional changes should have every right to plastic surgery without being criticized.
2. Some forms of plastic surgery are more dangerous than others, and no surgery is without risk.
3. Therefore, if the person only needs minor changes and they are only cosmetic, it is likely better for them to try adjusting their lifestyle.
and
4. If they are only unhappy because of external pressures, the external pressures are a bad thing.
Seems to me, Zuzu is discussing point 1, while Ms Kate is focusing more on the others, especially point 3 as an antidote to 2 and 4. Neither of you is trying to generalize the other’s pov out of existence, but you’re feeling like the other one is doing that to you.
I find it really interesting the Amanda’s comment about the “need (for) federally subsidized day care, more worker protections for working mothers, better maternal leave (and maybe even mandatory paternal leave), more flex time at work, and less social stigma on motherhood.” has been completely ignored in the comments to this post. Elect more mothers and you make motherhood and parenthood in general less of an economical impediment, and you dismantle the system that makes saggy boobs a hit to your standard of living. Enough navel gazing…
I doubt they’re saying every woman, Ms. Kate. We’re all aware there’s a lot of variety—I know women who bounced right back, physically, and you would have never known they were pregnant. Some women are born fortunate, with bodies that seem made for it and don’t stretch out much. My aunt didn’t even pop an outie while she was pregnant. On the other hand, some women really change a lot. The variety is viewable at Shape Of A Mother.
I don’t disagree that it’s probably being performed based on external factors more than any other—whether or not you can afford it, whether your husband has a wandering eye, whether you are financially dependent, whether you work in a physically competitive environment. But I can really sympathize with a woman whose tits and stomach just collapsed, especially if she lives in a world where everyone else seems to have bounced right back. Hell, I’ve never had any kids and I can feel like a cow when I look at the hyper-exercised capri-pant wearing soccer mom set at the grocery store, all size 2s and towing 2-3 kids. And then I realize that these women, who are probably housewives since they shop when I, as a freelancer, do—in the middle of the day—know the score. Being tiny is insurance against the women your husband is meeting out there who haven’t had 2-3 kids. And then I get both sad for them and mildly superior-feeling because I didn’t get sucked into yuppie hell.
It’s not necessarily gender-specific; if your wife has lost interest in you and you’re a guy, you’ll get pretty desperate too.
Depressed, grieving, and desperate are entirely separate emotions. I’d say your average man feels the former two far more than the last, which is part of a woman’s problem when she’s financially dependent. A man may be sad to see his marriage end, but he’s not going to be frantically wondering how to pay the rent nearly as often as a woman.
Uh, no. It’s so your boss doesn’t fire you for putting your kids before your ambition. It’s so you fit into the social scene. It’s so your husband’s friends and coworkers are still attracted to you and he maintains his trophy wife. It’s so you can prove you can afford the time and/or money it takes to create and maintain that body. It’s to make sure you feel bad about your body and your self. It’s so plastic surgeons can make money. It’s to keep you in line so you don’t join the revolution.
It really isn’t so much about sex or marriage. It’s about control in general (which sometimes includes sex and marriage).
But these women are not getting the surgeries for their husbands. They’re getting them because everyone else is and they need to keep up with the Jones.
First of all, maybe you should go back and re-read my comment, since I did make reference to Amanda’s larger point.
Second, fuck off. I can comment on whichever aspect of her article spoke the most to me and as a mother the concept of body acceptance in a patriarchal culture is huge. I fucking hate when people tell me what I SHOULD be talking about (unless of course it’s our blogmistress– her sandbox, her rules).
Elaine, it’s quite possible that it’s all those things at once.
To Schrodinger’s Cat: While I really, really hate to bring up the “what about the thin people?”, I have to say your equating of the “womanly” body with the rounded, fertile image seems a bit off. I think it’s just as fallacious to assume that big pretty curves are the definition of womanhood any more than the “bag of cute antlers” look. (No offense meant regarding the latter term, it’s one I use for myself.) I just feel that enforcing either as the be-all femininity is a bit wrong.
I pointed out y’day, in a comment that didn’t make it through, that Mumtaz (1593-1631) in memory of whom Emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, had 13 children in her 19 years of marriage with him (she died in childbirth); and he loved her to distraction. This was in a highly patriarchal society, where ordinary men were allowed four wives. I would imagine that the competition for an emperor’s sexual favors was more cut-throat than anything today.
The obsession with the body comes from a culture where the human being **is** the body; where the religious ideas of “soul”, “spirit”, etc., some extra dimension to human beings have been discarded as superstition. People become like cars, if you can afford to, you trade in for new model every couple of years.
I don’t disagree that it’s probably being performed based on external factors more than any other—whether or not you can afford it, whether your husband has a wandering eye, whether you are financially dependent, whether you work in a physically competitive environment. But I can really sympathize with a woman whose tits and stomach just collapsed, especially if she lives in a world where everyone else seems to have bounced right back. Hell, I’ve never had any kids and I can feel like a cow when I look at the hyper-exercised capri-pant wearing soccer mom set at the grocery store, all size 2s and towing 2-3 kids. And then I realize that these women, who are probably housewives since they shop when I, as a freelancer, do—in the middle of the day—know the score. Being tiny is insurance against the women your husband is meeting out there who haven’t had 2-3 kids. And then I get both sad for them and mildly superior-feeling because I didn’t get sucked into yuppie hell.
Well, it’s good for you that you manage to return your self confidence by condescending on those women’s situation in life (aka - thinner than me, but housewives, so I shouldn’t feel too bad about myself). But come on, being dependent on one’s husband is not the only reason to want to look good. I definitely put some effort into staying thin and fit despite not being dependent on anyone. Why? It just makes me feel good to fit into the cultural standard of the place I live in - which is the only one that matters to me in practice. This way I don’t have to look at more fit women, feel a pang and then invent stories about their lives being less successful than mine, to silence this feeling of inferiority.
Anyway, despite seeing once a very disconcerting example of a woman undergoing plastic surgeries after birth with at least some evident pressure from her husband, I don’t think that the phenomenon as a whole is problematic. I probably would consider a breast lifting surgery if my breasts sag because otherwise I’d have to wear a bra, which I can’t stand. I don’t know how significant the risk of complications is, so I can’t say for sure, but I’d certainly look into this. For me it’s no different than a LASIK surgery I had to fix my nearsightedness or the surgery on my eyelid to fix the after effects of the sty.
Regarding the argument about different cultural norms - of course beauty is culturally dependent, but what does it matter practically? If somebody lives in the western world he’s most likely influenced by western cultural norms and will feel uncomfortable (to some degree) if his body doesn’t fit them, even if it does fit, say, African norms.
I’m surprised this is new, I guess. I thought we had been pathologizing the post-baby female body for, like, decades now.
If somebody lives in the western world he’s most likely influenced by western cultural norms and will feel uncomfortable (to some degree) if his body doesn’t fit them, even if it does fit, say, African norms.
But they shouldn’t! I hate that people are forced to fit into artificial beauty standards! What’s wrong with the African standard?
Well, it’s good for you that you manage to return your self confidence by condescending on those women’s situation in life (aka - thinner than me, but housewives, so I shouldn’t feel too bad about myself).
Good for you that you maintain your self-confidence by presenting a false front of a person untroubled by the actual world like the rest of plebians. You know that no one is buying your story about how you’re so much better than the rest of us, right, that you enjoy bleeding on your pants and never, ever have a vain moment where you compare yourself to someone else?
My god, your little song-and-dance about how you are so much better than the rest of us who have to live in the world is far, far, far vainer than anything I could have written. I’m sure the soccer moms of the world are uniquely untroubled by the fact that I’m actually grateful that I’m not in their world, since I fall basically outside the entire radar. If ever they have a moment of worrisome doubt that other people are laughing at the yuppies, they are free to console themselves with a pretty new dress that costs more than my entire wardrobe, and everyone wins.
But unless you’ve spent time in a body that isn’t the product of a millimeter of gravity’s effect, but has changed permanently and dramatically
Ooh, ooh, I have. So can I get my feminist card stamped and make it my business to tell women whether their choices are or aren’t the result of patriarchy?
The really sad thing is that no amount of surgery is going to magically turn a middle-aged mother’s body into exactly what she looked like (or might have looked like) as a 21-year-old who’s never been pregnant. Their husbands aren’t really getting the clock rolled back. They are, however, getting a wife who is willing to undergo multiple surgeries to be as physically pleasing as possible. As somebody else already pointed out, it’s about power.
Elaine - it isn’t really about work. Your husband’s co-workers and your boss don’t (I hope) see you naked, so dieting and expensive clothing hides things like stretch marks. The person who’s job depends on “my husband still adores my tits” is a woman who is income-dependent on her husband.
Amanda
you still remember me from the menstruation thread *^_^* :0)
Well first of all you’re funny (in a good sort of way, not being cynical here)
I didn’t mean to say that I don’t have those “vain moments” - in fact I have them all too often, and struggle with it a lot. That’s what makes me so sensitive to the issue, and that’s why it’s so easy for me to see this tendency in others. I just think those thoughts are unhealthy, and one should fight them, not wallow in them.
Actually my point is that society places importance on looks and an individual inevitably internalizes this outlook to some degree. In my opinion the healthiest way to deal with this reality is to make oneself look the best one can (without compromising ones health or other more important aspects of ones life), and not to go around tarnishing the whole idea of a ” beauty standard” while tossing jealous glances at women fitting this standard.
Regardless of your point as you say it was, your behavior was to smack me down for being honest about my imperfections. Which was not only vain and unnecessarily self-righteous, but is damaging to the dialogue here. I hang my flaws out because it encourages more honest, interesting discussions here. I see variations of the smackdown for being really honest all over the place and it bothers me. It doesn’t discourage certain behaviors, from rape fantasies to having a little bit of shallowness here and there. What it does discourage is honest dialogue.
The very idea that one can live up to a competitive standard without competing is just more self-aggrandizing B.S. It’s amusing how you lay claim to this “jsut strive to be better” standard instead of a competitive one when you’re actually resorting to the lowest form of cattiness, singling out a woman for failing to reach a standard so you can look better by comparison. Which is why your phony story about how you don’t compare yourself to others rings so false—you are, in this very thread, comparing yourself directly to a woman and openly and without a scrap of humor (not in a joking way to yourself) in order to beef yourself up.
I suspect your next comment will be, “Look at me and admire my humility!”
Anyone who has to maintain her husband’s sexual interest by slicing and dicing her body is married to an asshole of the highest order.
So your solution is to become happily complicit in reinforcing unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards– because, m’dear, no matter your blather about “not compromising one’s health” having major surgery (a tummy tuck and breast lift are pretty significant) to look one’s best after having a baby is pretty risky.
I swear you’ve given the worst defense of your non-feminist choices I’ve ever read. It’s fine to admit that you have capitulated to patriarchal pressures– we all have to stay sane– but to pretend like it’s not a problematic choice or that the rest of us are being foolish for worrying about it is just… pathetic.
To make it absolutely, abundantly clear: My jokes at the expense of yuppies and yuppie culture about how I both feel the allure of the hyper-perfection of it and feel at the same time that it’s way too much work for what it gets you. The woman who has 3 kids and still fits into a size two through massive amounts of exercising and dieting and surgery is, in my eyes, like a millionaire lawyer who works 80 hours a week—you envy their high style of living while not envying the stress heart attack they’re setting themselves up for.
“The very idea that one can live up to a competitive standard without competing is just more self-aggrandizing “
I didn’t say that. I said that competing inside your head is unhealthy. One needs to compete in the real world, if one finds the issue important enough! That’s the whole point.
I didn’t originally like the way you wrote down the desire to look good after birth to the need to please ones husband. I think it’s 1) wrong in many, if not most cases 2)demeaning and offensive for women who choose to have such surgery for a different (and sometimes, IMO completely legitimate) reason. Your subsequent posts aimed at proving this questionable assertion were offensive as well.
Good god. I don’t envy anyone. What’s the point? Why should I care about “yuppies” (who are they, anyway?), and what they wear or how much money “they” have? I can’t imagine why I should give a shit what the alleged housewives in the supermarket look like.
I’m fat. I’m active and decently healthy in spite of it. I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks about how I look.
If I ever get motivated enough to lose weight to the point that my saggy skin hangs over my pudendum (from the Latin “pudere — to be ashamed” — how do you like THAT), and makes it hard for me to wear pants, I’ll slice it off. Until that unlikely day, though, I’ll keep biking and swimming and running and even fucking! In the body I have! Woo-hoo!
Am I immune to the patriarchy? Have I always felt like this? HELL NO! It took work, and therapy, and making good frienships, and reading tons of feminist literature (and blogs), and being middle-aged, to finally smack my forehead and say to myself, “What the HELL have I been thinkin’?”
Oh, Amanda, btw, size 2 is of course unnaturally thin (it’s XS!), but 6 or 8 seem pretty realistic for most people if you exercise few times a week, and avoid overeating.
Most specialized “diets” are unhealhy and don’t reach the goal, IMO.
btw, does being a steretypical yuppie woman mean to be a housewife dependent on ones husband? Can’t you be a career yuppie woman? It seems like that’s what you imply in your comments, and I’m not very familiar with American specifics, so it’s not clear. I always thought it’s the other way around.
but 6 or 8 seem pretty realistic for most people if you exercise few times a week, and avoid overeating
6 or 8 are arbitrary clothing sizes. They are not measures of fitness or of the healthiness of one’s diet.
I’m a size 6 or 8 because that’s pretty much the shape I am. I barely exercise and I have a terrible diet. It has nothing to do with my virtuous concern for my weight and everything to do with genetics; people in my family are just kinda naturally skinny and have high metabolisms. I’m sure tinfoil hattie could kick my ass any day of the week in a physical fitness competition. But hey, that doesn’t matter, because in your opinion, the only thing that matters is that she couldn’t fit into my suits!
It’s not about “internalizing” beauty standards because society doesn’t judge you on how happy you are in your skin. If you’re fat, don’t shave your legs and have unfemininely short hair, do you think you will be treated the same way–by friends, by your co-workers, by your boss, by people you interact with every day–as if you spent more time conforming to external pressure about what you should “look like”?
mythago:
I was trying to say is that there is some beauty standard in out society (for women as well as for men, but a more strict one for women of course). Personally I think it’s a smart decision to try to fit this standard to some degree, just as one follows dress code of ones workplace. I don’t think it’s capitulating to Patriarchy or capitulating to anything, but minding your own good.
In no place did I say that being certain size equates fitness. I said it’s usually possible to be fit and perceived as such with moderate execise+healthy eating habits. (for the person of average built that would usually in particular mean to fit size 6-8 pants, but it’s inconsequential - I just noted that most people will never fit size 2 without compromising their health)
The first sentence should’ve been:
“I was trying to say that there is some beauty standard in our society (for women as well as for men, but a more strict one for women, of course)”
You are a fucking idiot. Rationalize it all you want, but you are not only capitulating to patriarchy you are promoting its misogynistic standards as a good thing.
It’s nice to have the Pandagonian imprimatur
on MomsRising.
I was on board for a time - but then failing to see them
sync`d with the Family Pride folks - kinda got to wondering.
So lapsed. Wrong to so , I guess.
I’ll reup.
[I have their very nice CD doing the
Motherhood Manifesto Documentary…
If someone would like to have it[?])
I was trying to say that there is some beauty standard in our society (for women as well as for men, but a more strict one for women, of course).
Now, that is the problem. The beauty standard for women is much, much, much higher than it is for men. It’s odd how you recognize this, yet chastise the other women on this thread for calling bullshit on the whole system. When you dish advice in how to conform to the beauty standard it comes across as catty and insulting.
Oops. The sentence above should have been in italics. I was quoting Cultural Catgirl.
Mythago: The really sad thing is that no amount of surgery is going to magically turn a middle-aged mother’s body into exactly what she looked like (or might have looked like) as a 21-year-old who’s never been pregnant. Their husbands aren’t really getting the clock rolled back. They are, however, getting a wife who is willing to undergo multiple surgeries to be as physically pleasing as possible. As somebody else already pointed out, it’s about power.
Thank you for this comment! It explains so much to me. I have never even felt tempted to have a face lift, because you can’t get back what you really miss: that fresh, velvety skin my teenagers have. All you can get is your old skin stretched tight, yuck. But showing your ability ($) and willingness (buying into the standard) to be sliced to achieve a lack of wrinkles makes a lot of sense )on its own terms).
I don’t prescribe to other women what to do with their bodies, but I wish we could take ourselves out of the partriarchy and find out what we really want before deciding.
This thread took an interesting turn. It’s like a beauty pageant, except for people to compete for Best Affectation of Disinterest.
[i]You are a fucking idiot[/i]
Nope, actually I’m a dickblister and I’m full of shit *^_^*
The discussion here is an perfect example of the two sides of “the personal is political” — some people seem to be focusing on “how can these women mutilate themselves to fit an unrealistic patriarchal ideal” or “this is a realistic response to living in an insane culture” or “what assholes these women’s husbands must be”, and others on “we need to improve support for mothers and reduce the social/economic/political stigma of being one”.
What strikes me is how thoroughly all of that is true. It’s almost impossible to live in this culture without having some notion that your body should be that of an intensely fit 20-something of mostly northern european ancestry with a personal airbrusher. And that the bodies of those around you should be ditto. The whole gamut of personal pathologies arising from that is, for me, mostly a pointer.
“But they shouldn’t! I hate that people are forced to fit into artificial beauty standards! What’s wrong with the African standard?”
Pffft. If you were there, you’d just be bitching about THAT standard
Beauty standards are arbitrary and subjective. Someone is always going to be left out. Here’s a thought: MOVE to the culture your body fits. Oh, you LIKE indoor plumbing. Well……….
{/sarc}
Pffft. If you were there, you’d just be bitching about THAT standard
So what if I would bitch? Being a man you don’t understand any of this anyway…continue slaving to your patriarchy approved yuppie style of life with all its unnatural indoor plumbing…
I don’t think it’s capitulating to Patriarchy or capitulating to anything, but minding your own good.
I can’t even parse this. Are you trying to say that if women benefit from (or at least are not punished for) capitulating to patriarchal pressure, then they’re not really capitulating because they’re ‘minding their own good’?
I don’t prescribe to other women what to do with their bodies, but I wish we could take ourselves out of the partriarchy and find out what we really want before deciding.
Exactly. That’s what bothers me so much about the ‘mommy job’–it’s not that these women have chosen plastic surgery, but that they’re facing doctors telling them their perfectly normal bodies are deformed, for fuck’s sake.
The obsession with the body comes from a culture where the human being **is** the body; where the religious ideas of “soul”, “spirit”, etc., some extra dimension to human beings have been discarded as superstition. People become like cars, if you can afford to, you trade in for new model every couple of years.
I doubt you can back that up historically. Consider the Victorian ideas of Muscular Christianity and the Graham Diet.
And the Graham Diet and Muscular Christianity provided the dominant mores of their day?
WTF? Seriously, that is a majorly warped sentence. My smallest size, when definitely underweight is a 12. My group of friends, when happy, healthy and fit, range in size from a 0 to an 18, and none of us is particularly outside the norm - I.e. none of us are people you would look at and exclaim “Wow! She’s just tiny!” or “My God she’s huge!” We all fall between 5′2″ and 5′10″ in height with significant variation in frame and muscularity.
Trying to give a “realistic” size for most women is, I think, an illustration of the entire problem in a nutshell.
Arun, funny, I hear the exact opposite argument quite frequently. I.e. that when the body is denigrated in favor of the soul or spirit, then doing whatever to it, be it starving, surgery, or anything else, is entirely permissable. If you pay attention to and enjoy the body you have, you’re not very likely to ravage it for some cultural ideal.
And the Graham Diet and Muscular Christianity provided the dominant mores of their day?
Nope - but they show that “the obsession with the body” is entangled with religious strands.
continue slaving to your patriarchy approved yuppie style of life with all its unnatural indoor plumbing…
Indoor plumbing is due to the dominance of the gender that stands up to pee?
“Oh, Amanda, btw, size 2 is of course unnaturally thin (it’s XS!), but 6 or 8 seem pretty realistic for most people if you exercise few times a week, and avoid overeating.”
Oh, bullshit. This is the most self-serving, obnoxious bit of condescension I’ve heard in weeks.
I’m 49 and a size four. I’m a size four because I am a considerably smaller human being than most people - I’m 5′2′ and very small framed. Most women’s bones are bigger than a size 6 or 8. Most women my age, hell, most women twenty years younger than I am, are not going to be a size 6 or 8 simply throught exercise and “not overeating.” Most people are just a lot bigger than I am, and that’s got nothing whatsoever to do with fat, diet, or exercise.
Being tiny is insurance against the women your husband is meeting out there who haven’t had 2-3 kids.
What makes the husband untrustworthy and/or the other women disrespectful of your marriage? Is it simply unexplainable facts about human nature, or is there something else?
Indoor plumbing is due to the dominance of the gender that stands up to pee?
Oh, once again this absurd need for rationalizing everything…It’s slaving to the patriarchy approved style of reasoning, don’t you get it?
The husband has no bond with his wife, not as herself and not as the mother of their children? The father has no bond with his children? The father feels that what he might do with other women has no bearing on the well-being of his children? There are no parents, uncles, aunts, extended family, whose esteem he values and to whom his straying would make unhappy?
Arun: It’s really cute of you to affect disbelief that adultery is a common occurrence at any point in a marriage, but especially problematic after the kids arrive (statistically the first year of a child’s life is the period when most marriages end). Many women who are completely financially dependent upon their husbands feel an added pressure to maintain their sexual desirability as a way of securing their financial interests.
It’s slaving to the patriarchy approved style of reasoning, don’t you get it?
For the life of me, I can’t figure out whether you’re going on a rant for the purposes of humour or you’re serious - and I specialise in that. Irony, she has crawled up her own ass.
Problem with that theory is that those concepts have NOT been discarded. The vast majority of Americans DO believe in God (90%) and a soul that lives on after death (84%). http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=359
Also, note that atheists and agnostics have lower divorce rates than Christians:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
…and that the most liberal states have some of the lowest divorce rates:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/mar&div.pdf
but 6 or 8 seem pretty realistic for most people if you exercise few times a week, and avoid overeating.
Bullshit! As Broce said, people come in different sizes and shapes, regardless of how much they eat (or don’t) or exercise (or don’t).
Myself, I come of sturdy, peasant stock. I got down to a size 10 one year in college. That was the year I swam four times a week (laps, expending a lot of energy), rode my bicycle to the trainer’s twice a week (six miles round-trip), and had a 90-minute horse-riding lesson twice a week. (Only non-riders believe that the horse does “all the work”, especially in English style.) This on top of my normal walking briskly around campus (no car, and a full schedule plus work-study gave me no time to dawdle).
Of course, that kind of schedule is not compatible with other life-requirements. With a new class schedule the next semester, I had to give up three swim periods and one bike/horse-ride per week. I went back up to my then-normal size 12 — which I consider my personal ideal, since I maintained that without effort from age 12 to about 26.
Now, I’m 30 pounds heaver than I’d like to be, despite the fact that I don’t overeat and I do exercise a few times a week. Increasing age does that, as well as a lifestyle that doesn’t have automatic activity built in. I have no doubt that, were I tending a garden with a hand-hoe, washing the clothes by hand with a washboard, kneading bread-dough weekly, ironing clothes with a 5-pound weight, etc, etc, etc, I’d lose that 30 pounds, and more. But I prefer my modern conveniences, thankyouverymuch.
In short, unless one is genetically predisposed to a smaller size, exercising “a few times a week” will help keep you healthy, but it won’t get you any closer to that supposedly-holy size 6. Very few people are able to juggle fulltime work, housework, shopping, billpaying, and all the other minutiae of life AND maintain the rigorous workout schedule that would be necessary to sculpt our bodies into a mythical ideal.
AND WHY THE HELL SHOULD WE?!?!? Life happens, and this over-emphasis on looking perpetually 20 is warped. My mother is 80 and, back in the day, had five kids. She has — OMFG — a tummy, and frets that she doesn’t have a shape like Paula Abdul. It’s absolutely insane, and it’s foisted on us by societal expectations (read, fucking patriarchy).
I resent those expectations; what the hell is “wrong” with having a natural, average body-shape? (And “average” is NOT a 6 or 8, BTW.) Moderate eating for health is a reasonable goal, as is moderate exercising for health — but, in most cases, that doesn’t translate to a supermodel body. To suggest that watching a few meals and adding another period of exercise a week will work miracles is completely unrealistic. How about joining the real world, which is made up of real people, each of whom is an individual, with an individual size and shape.
In other words — Bah, humbug!
Arun: It’s really cute of you to affect disbelief that adultery is a common occurrence at any point in a marriage, but especially problematic after the kids arrive (statistically the first year of a child’s life is the period when most marriages end).
In America. Among Americanized people only.
Look at it this way, in the patriarchal society often rightly derided here, the man’s property, his wife, has become more valuable because she has demonstrated her fertility. A woman really comes into her own only **after** having children. In the patriarchal society, children are among a man’s wealth and happiness.
Long ago Syed Qutb came to America and left disgusted and went off the deep end. His writings became the inspiration for the Muslim Brotherhood and bin Laden’s lieutenant, al Zawahiri. He obviously threw out the baby with the bathwater. But surely there is a way between these two extremes, between America and Islamic fundamentalism.
Many women who are completely financially dependent upon their husbands feel an added pressure to maintain their sexual desirability as a way of securing their financial interests.
I’m now ambiguous as to which is the crueler system towards women. From afar, America seems great. Closer up….
Ha, Mythago, you flatter me. I couldn’t kick anyone’s ass! The only reason I didn’t come in last in my first triathlon is because 3 people dropped out. But I had so much fun! And it was a huge thing for me to have fun being athletic, because I have NEVER been that way! As a skinny kid and skinny young adult, I didn’t do ANYTHING athletic & was the proverbial picked-last-for-PE-class nerd.
It’s just fun for me to be able to be dispassionate about my body, although I do catch the voices in my head scolding me sometimes, and I try to stop it.
I have to say, though, that a lot of my “freedom” comes from being middle aged and at last being invisible to the male gaze. So yeah, my “freedom” is still patriarchy-driven.
And round and round we go.
You think there would have been the population explosion in the Third World if “(statistically the first year of a child’s life is the period when most marriages end).”???????
It is an amazing statistic. Perhaps in light of this you will understand the violent resistance of various peoples to be Americanized. They must sense the essential wrongness of this.
They don’t hate you for your freedoms. They do hate you for the vanishing life of the family.
I should desist till I stop foaming at the mouth.
Arun? I would note that in much of the third world couples stay together from pure survival. When you live close to the edge, you don’t have a lot of room to be fussy about who you band together with.
Did you not see the post a couple of days ago about the steady decline in the American divorce rate over the last few decades? Read it. You might find out some interesting things about the “vanishing life of the family”.
http://brewright.blogspot.com/2006/12/christian-divorce-rates.html
A counterpoint to the Barna statistics.
but 6 or 8 seem pretty realistic for most people if you exercise few times a week, and avoid overeating.
I’m with StarWatcher and the others. At my absolute skinniest (5′10″ an 120 lbs–in high school/college), I still was a size 10. Because my hip bones are just naturally that wide and even then I still had a bit of a stomach. I got constant concern that I had an eating disorder and I was a bag of bones (I didn’t have to make much effort to be that skinny either, the standard busy college schedule with no car did most of it). Then I started grad school and got married and spent most of my time at a computer doing image processing and I gained 20 or so lbs. Still, I was pretty thin. Until I had kids. Now I’m 31 and 190 lbs and a size 14. I exercise 3-4 times a week and more or less watch what I eat (I have a weakness for dessert). This is just the size my body has decided to be and other than starving myself, I don’t see much I can do to significantly change it. And from what I understand, I’m more average than that 6 or 8.
And this isn’t to say that someone who is a 6 or 8 (or smaller or bigger) is wrong or bad. Just that people come in different sizes and shapes and there isn’t much that can be done to change it. I don’t see that as a problem.
I think Arun’s got a point. You can blame the patriarchy for many things, but I do not think you can blame the patriarchy for forcing women to look good in order not to be left by their husbands. I have lived in very patriarchal places and they did not approve of men buggering off and abandoning their wives and children for another woman. The feeling was that once you got a woman pregnant you should stick with her come what may, and few men abandoned this duty and those who did were thought of as bastards of the highest order.
Frankly, I think there’s even a case to be made that fucking off and abandoning your wife and children for another woman has become more common and socially acceptable only after feminism changed divorce laws and social mores regarding the stability of relationships. I’m not complaining about that, I’m all for easy divorce and flexible relationships. But I suspect the source of women’s anxieties around this doesn’t lie entirely with the patriarchy - a lot of it may lie closer to home than some of you are comfortable with.
Evo-psych says that signs of fertility are what make a woman sexually attractive. The best predictor of future performance is past performance. A woman who has already had a child has proven her fertility. Therefore, men should be turned on by stretchmarks and wobbly bellies, and I am incredibly sexy.
Wrong, james. In patriarchy–a form and aspect of a dominator society, such as ours–marriage and family are about power and property. A married man had obligations to wife and family to be sure, but the notion that he therefore stuck with her till death did he part, not straying, was amply covered by hypocrisy. If you had even a modicum of privilege, power, status–details were in fact negotiable if not in form and word.
Men in a patriarchy get used to being called “bastards of the highest order.” It is as much a compliment on their “manliness” as an insult; all depends on if you can get away with it or not. Historically, men could always run away and start over, and millions did.
Feminism suggests that men don’t have to be bastards of any order, and that our real happiness lies in that direction rather than playing the dominator game. Dominator society offers nothing but being a successful bastard.
Arun also has it upside down. Most Americans do believe in god and a soul. However, those are not the people with the lowest divorce rates - agnositcs and atheists are. Also, in America by and large it is the states and religious groups which are least liberal which have the highest divorce rates.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
Interesting. kate - the study you’re referencing is, in fact, the exact study the statistics Arun linked were intended to counteract.
In actuality, I don’t care squat about the divorce rates. I want to know how many marriages are good ones, and good =/ staying together. Unfortunately it’s a little difficult to measure that statistic. However, as the child of an intact but miserable marriage (they hate each other, but they’re still married after 52 years), I don’t find staying together despite anything to be a good thing. And while I have no statistics to back me up, I don’t find young marriage and early children to be terribly conducive to enduring happy marriage (in general, there are always exceptions), yet that’s what most conservative Christian churches encourage right along with strongly discouraging marriage.
James: Are yous seriously trying to blame feminism for women thinking they need “mommy makeovers” to increase their sexual desirability and thus maintain marriages? Are you kidding me? Are you suggesting that there is only one form of patriarchy? Do you even know what patriarchy is?
Do you even know what patriarchy is?
Yes, only women can decide what is and what isn’t Patriarchy! I think men have no right to speak about it, and have no glue what it means!
“James: Are yous seriously trying to blame feminism for women thinking they need “mommy makeovers” to increase their sexual desirability and thus maintain marriages?”
Don’t be silly. I’m not ‘blaming’ feminism.
I’m saying that due to feminism relationships are more flexible. People know they’ve got to please their partners, or risk being left for someone else. That’s a good thing. Fewer women are treated badly by their husbands, because husbands know their wives will leave them if they do this. That’s good. I am a fan of feminism because of the way it has changed relationships. For me to ‘blame’ feminism I would have to view women thinking they need to increase their sexual desirability in order to maintain marriages as a bad thing, and I don’t.
james, not really following how you think feminism means women should put more effort, not less, into conforming to patriarchal standards. It goes both ways, after all; a woman whose relationship is “more flexible”, and who has options other than relying on a man for her living, has much more power to leave her husband for a man who is less freaky about stretch marks.
It sounds as though what you’re doing is trotting out the old MRA line about how feminism actually makes it easier for men to dump the sorry bitches without paying alimony forever and aren’t those feminists sorry now.
It is true that in some highly patriarchal cultures, men who abandon their wife and children for younger models are thought of as bastards. However, that doesn’t do a whole lot to help said wife and children, and it doesn’t eliminate the notion that the obligation to be sexually attractive is Woman’s Burden. (Did you think feminism came up with the notion of “keeping yourself up”?)
However, those are not the people with the lowest divorce rates - agnositcs and atheists are.
My impression is that they’re also more likely not to get married (I dunno whether it would be the same in the States), which would have a considerable effect. Any related statistics on cohabitation vs marriage?
Contra Arun, the correct way to resolve the conflict between the world as envisioned by Qutub and the world as envisioned by a secular feminist liberalism is not to meet Qutub halfway, but to resist him completely. The propagation of this fallacy of the middle way is one of the most infuriatingly preposterous maneuvers ever executed in a debate.
James, in a patriarchal society, men don’t ‘need’ to leave their wives to screw around. They can do it all they want and the wives can’t really say much about it. And why would they want to lose their nearly free housekeeper and babysitter anyway? Women in a non-patriarchial society get a little funny about their husbands doing that kind of thing and may leave themselves or show the husband the door. Feminists would rather collect child support and temporary alimony than have to live with the B.S. that women in more patriarchial societies have to put up with just for a paycheck, and I don’t think we have that many regrets.
Ahhhhh!
I can’t take it anymore! WHen will it end?!?
A return to patriarchy won’t solve the “divorce on a whim/because you’re fat” problem. As bmc points out above, in a patriarchy men have mistreses and affairs which the wives have to put up with. (Ex: Henry VIII.)
No, the problem is with capitalism run amok which leads some people to treat their spouses as if they were shoes and could be traded in for a new pair because the old pair got a bit scuffed. I do not know how many husbands would really and truly divorce their wives, break up their families, and devastate their kids because wifey has a post-baby body that isn’t tight and firm anymore. If this is a reality, and there are legions of men who are willing to do just that, it’s not a sign that the patriarchy was a better deal for women: no, it says that there are some selfish, cold, and shallow people out there and what encourages that?
I believe that this is the devil’s bargain that trophy wives make. The lesson here is to marry for love and compatibility, not status.
Also, I’m not convinced that post-natal plastic surgery is for advancing in the workplace. As pointed out above, your coworkers are not going to see you naked (unless you are a stripper); if you want to have a pre-baby body under clothes, there are plenty of undergarments at Victoria’s Secret to help you do just that, at a fraction of the cost and danger of plastic surgery.
“The lesson here is to marry for love and compatibility, not status.” I always thought that the reason people liked Diana Princess of Wales so much was because she CARED that her husband did not love her and did not want to have a real marriage with her. People admired that the status and money were not enough for her. CW would say take the Versace wardrobe and the jet set lifestyle and fergittabout hubby and horse face. Of course others reviled Diana because she should have ‘towed the line’ and I think the patriarchal royal family was genuinely shocked that she wouldn’t.
Still, if non religious (less religious?) groups aren’t marrying at the same rate, the divorce rate of those who do marry is lower. So, the marriages that do occur could be considered more stable than those in other populations.
I don’t have any links at hand, but I have read that states with high divorce rates also have large numbers of young people that do not cohabit (or cohabit for less time), and marry when they are younger and less educated and less financially secure.Some people call them ’starter marriages’. There is also a sometimes a certain amount of pressure (expectation?) from the religious community to marry. Often, cohabitation is seen as unacceptable, along with premarital sex. There seems to be a climate of ‘marriage is for everyone’, or ‘marriage is the desired state of being for adults’, when the discussion gets going.
It seems to be an interesting trade off- IIRC, some people may be less likely to marry, and also less likely to divorce. Or, some may be very likely to marry (at a usually younger age, and in a social climate where marriage is strongly encouraged, in suboptimal conditions), and be more likely to divorce.
(And then we get into discussions of very religious people who believe divorce is wrong in almost all cases who have a low divorce rate. From there, I start wanting to hook people up to polygraph machines and try to determine who really believes themselves to be happy with their marriages and why).
I think this point is critically important when examining why marriages dissolve. Since the whole point of the post is the extremes that women are going to in order to keep their marriages from ending, I think it’s high time social science started really looking at happy marriages vs. intact marriages.
Just because a couple stays together doesn’t necessarily mean that they should, or that they are happier together than apart. We need to challenge the idea that being married is the default state for all adults, just like we need to challenge the idea that being a mother is the default state for all women.
Mezosub-thats kind of what I was trying to get to with the thoughts of people being encouraged to marry, the belief that divorce was wrong, and what makes people happy. Only, you said it better.
if you want to have a pre-baby body under clothes, there are plenty of undergarments at Victoria’s Secret to help you do just that, at a fraction of the cost and danger of plastic surgery.
Well, I’d prefer plastic surgery: some types are not that dangerous and I’m not into wearing restrictive clothes that alter your body shape (hint: if it alters it, you’re going to feel it).
Also, what about the beach? What about the freedom to wear whatever you like, not restricted by specific garments from Victoria Secret?
Come on, don’t judge people’s decisions without being in their skin.
Well, CC, you’ve clearly neither had surgery nor worn any of those horrible restrictive garments. I’m assuming you’re actually what you posed in #58, minus the ‘blister’.
C’mon, there’s no shame in saying ‘I’m a guy and I just want to see more boob jobs’.
I don’t know about you, CC, but I don’t work at the beach; most of us who aren’t strippers, lifeguards or camp counselors can go our entire working lifetimes without having our bosses, coworkers or clients see us in bathing suits or G-strings and pasties. IOW: no-one at work is going to know you have a “mommy body” so you don’t need a tummy-tuck to advance at your job. Face-lifts are a different story; both men and women get those so they don’t have to face ageism. But that’s hardly a mom issue or even, arguably, a gender issue.
And again, I want to address the idea that so many women are only a plastic surgery date away from divorce. Are there really that many men who have such deep pockets and sufficient detachment from their families that they can divorce for such a frivolous reason? Sure, Donald Trump comes to mind, but see “deep pockets” and “detachment from family.” The actual peer-reviewed research of respected social scientists show that the more affluent and educated couples are, the less likely they are to divorce. The typical face of divorce in the twenty-first century is working-class, not First Wives Club. And of course these are the people who can’t afford plastic surgery in the first place.
You know mythango, after reading comments like yours (in that you basically suppose that somebody prefering a breast lift to a wired bra is, as eloquently implied by your subtle play of words, a guy) I start to wonder if it’s right that I call myself a feminist. I just don’t want to be associated with people like you.
Ah, and no, I’ve neither had a surgery nor wore those garments, save for a padded bra - this I can bear, but not if I have choice, just as I didn’t like to wear glasses and had surgery instead. I guess I failed a womanhood entry test then. Cheers =)