On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

Someone on the interwebz is being taken to task for some things that he wrote about women. Just that we can all be clear, other than commenting on the action, I had nothing to do with it. Not me, this time folks. Move along trolls. Totally nothing to see here.

That's not going to stop me from commenting on the fiasco now though.

A couple of days ago Martin over at Aardvarchaeology commented on some advertisements he'd seen of alleged mothers and their children. Martin writes:

Here's what I mean. I don't claim 100% accuracy, but I believe I can usually tell on sight whether a woman has given birth and nursed a baby or not. It's part of the difference between girls and women. There is also the simple issue of at what age women usually have kids in the West. So when the travel agencies want to illustrate parenthood and show us a cute 7-y-o kid being held by a really pretty, pert, skinny woman in her late 20s, I just shake my head. It's obvious. They stick a kid model onto the lap of a grownup female model who has no kids, and sometimes they also equip the pair with a grinning hunk of a male model with good hair, playing dad.

Somewhere outside the picture frame is the kid's real mom. She's not in her 20s and she has given birth and has nursed and is probably not skinny, though most likely pretty too, and she has the build of a woman. During the photo shoot she's probably sitting around with the kid's dad whose hair is going and who isn't skinny either. I'd be more open to buying a ticket if the ads featured real families instead.

Click on the link above to see the advertisements that Martin is talking about. I have to admit though, I am shocked. I thought everything in Sweden was totally hot. My dreams of moving my lab to Sweden are shattered.

Video 1: Vroom vroom, Sweden!

One of Dr. Isis's favorite bloggers Candid Engineer and the internet's newest goatfucker Terrfied Tabetic have taken Martin to task in their own delicate ways.

So, at what stage did Martin jump from well-meaning to d00d into the land of the wackaloon?

Well, to start there is one small glimmer of stuff that Martin said that I can agree with.  Advertising does set unrealistic expectations for the female form.  Recently, there's been a bit of a war in the blogosphere over Ralph Lauren's blatant photoshopping of Filippa Hamilton.  Hamilton was photoshopped so severely that her head appears bigger than her waist.

Figure 1: Hamilton now claims that post-incident she was fired from her job as a Ralph Lauren model for being too fat. At 5'10", Hamilton is 120 lbs and a size 4.
 
So, I get where Martin is going with the idea of unrealistic expectations.  However, he goes awry by discounting one set of norms and embracing a second.  Martin divorces "you must be thin to be beautiful" and marries himself to "after you have a baby, you're going to get chubby and I can tell."    I think that is also unrealistic.  Not every woman who is pregnant loses her original form post-pregnancy. We're all different, and that's where these assumptions go wrong.  Martin rejects one standard and embraces another -- but neither standard fits every woman.  We start out different sizes.  We may end at different sizes.  We may choose to have children in our 20s, like I did.  We may wait until we are in our 30s.  There is nothing that you can "tell" by looking at a woman.

Child birth fundamentally changes us as women and one of the things that some women fear (at least I did) is that they will not feel the same in their bodies after they've had children. I'm just going to throw this out there..  There's a certain amount of ick factor in hearing a dude on the internet telling women that our post-baby bodies give him wood.  That our post-baby bodies are a more sexual form. In a follow up to the first post, Martin writes:

To me, it's sad to see a woman touting her ability to get skinny again after childbirth as a virtue. Sweetheart, you don't need to look like the models in the ads. And, frankly, once that first baby pops out, you will never look quite like a girl again. My point is that you really shouldn't want to. (The men don't mind. That's why children get siblings.)

What I should or shouldn't want is irrelevant.  Little Isis will get a sibling because Mr. Isis and I decide that we want to take on the responsibility to caring for, educating, and raising another offspring.  Not because my post-Little Isis form makes it impossible for Mr. Isis to keep his penis out of me.

I know that you're trying here, Martin.  I do.  And I know that you wanted to post something with a feminist perspective.  But the way to do that is to tell us about how the ads are unrealistic (I'll give you that.  The women in those ads may very well have BMIs less than 18), and then advocate for ads that show a diversity of women.  Not to create a whole new scheme of over-generalizations.  So, try again, little muffin.  I look forward to your next attempt.