A few months ago I was contacted by a woman named Angie Sonrode about a documentary she is working to create all about body image after motherhood. I was thrilled to be asked to join them in whatever small capacity I can. After talking with Angie on the phone I was not only excited to discover that she and I seem to share a lot of thoughts about this whole aspect of womanhood, but I was also so inspired by the actions she is taking to make this happen. I can’t wait to see this whole journey play out. Stay tuned for the trailer launching later this month!
(FYI, trigger warning for sexually inappropriate comments.)
So this woman has been the subject of controversy. Internet commenters (a.k.a. assholes) have accused her of lying, so she bared her stomach for all and showed the world the extra skin she has left from the weight she lost.
I applaud the fact that she had a desire, set a goal, acted on it, and was brave enough to stand up to bullies by exposing herself even further to internet trolls. Thank you, Simone. (Although I feel like I have to add that I don’t condone that rate of weight loss. I am NOT debating or questioning her actions – I don’t know her health history – I AM saying that it is an extreme action that should not be taken without careful consideration and medical attention.) She is an inspiration to women in that she is fighting back against body judgers in the most intimate way, just like we do here at SOAM. <3
But I'm not even really here to write about her. I'm here to write about Facebook's community standards. You know how they're always banning pictures of nursing moms but are totes okay with sexy bikini pics? So today I broke my cardinal rule of Never Reading Internet Comments (except the ones here, of course because you guys are amazing and supportive) and I came across this one:
Ugh. It makes me sick to my stomach. (To “fap”, if you don’t know, is to masturbate to photos online.) Not only does this comment attempt to push the female body back into an archaic place of existing only for the pleasure of men, but I find it rather emotionally violent. And so I reported it. I was torn as to how to label it since general “harassment” wasn’t an option. It doesn’t directly humiliate me or someone I know, and it’s not exactly pornography. Maybe I should have picked “something else” but I went with porn based on Facebook’s own example of “sexual arousal”. This commenter was talking about his sexual arousal (or lack thereof) in regards to this photograph, no?
But Facebook replied thusly:
I don’t know what the best way to address this is. Do you think this should fall under Facebook’s current community standards, or do you think they should be adjusted to protect women from this kind of thing?
Either way, do me a favor and click here and report this picture, okay? And the other picture(s) like it in that thread. DO NOT comment on them because god knows we should never feed the internet trolls. But let’s stand together and let Facebook know this isn’t okay.
Nine years ago when I started this website, it was the only thing like it on the web. It exploded beyond my wildest dreams and within a month I was getting calls from the London Guardian to do a story on it. Over the years SOAM has reached thousands (at least) of new moms every year through news stories, blogs, television shows, and, perhaps most importantly, through word of mouth. And over the past almost decade, many other websites, photography projects, and viral photos have done similar things, spreading the word that the mombod (or any bod) is totally normal and beautiful. I feel like we’ve done some amazing work here at SOAM and I am so proud of what this website has accomplished. <3
But over the last couple of years things have slowed down for SOAM. I've gotten fewer submissions (yet readership hasn't really dropped!) and little exposure in the media. I feel like SOAM can still accomplish a lot - perhaps even more than before as the internet continues to make the world even smaller, and as people hunger even more for the knowledge that they are already normal and beautiful.
There are a few things about SOAM that make it stand out from other projects.
~For one thing, I think it's more personal. There are no professional photographers, no fancy lighting or artful poses or depth of field - it's all what you find in your own mirror at home.
~It's more diverse. We've been collecting submissions for more than nine years and with over 2,500 submissions over the years there is literally every type of body represented here.
~Finally, SOAM is a community - if you choose to submit your photos here, you will find mamas all over the world who share your experiences and thoughts. Some of the mamas come back and post updates so we can really get to know them and see how things change for them over the years. And know that it's a safe place; I moderate the comments to keep the trolls out.
So I'm asking for your help here, mamas. Let's continue to spread the word that all bodies are beautiful. How can you help? The way I see it, there are three things you can do. You might choose to submit your own story. You don’t have to be nude, and some mamas aren’t ready to share photos at all. That’s okay! We are welcoming to every story. You may point your local media sources to this site to help spread the word to as many mamas as possible. And if neither of those things works for you, you can simply share the link with your own friends and on social media (check out our links at the bottom of the page) and maybe leave some comments for some of the mamas here. After all, without you as the reader, SOAM is nothing.
Thank you so much, mamas, for helping to do this good work in the world. As I said so many years ago when I wrote the blurb on the front page, “I think it would be nothing short of amazing if a few of our hearts are healed, or if we begin to cherish our new bodies which have done so much for the human race. What if the next generation grows up knowing how normal our bodies are? How truly awesome would that be?”
My mom died almost four years ago. She had a lifetime of problems (that is probably a gross understatement) and she was a very broken person. Ours was a complicated relationship (also a gross understatement). At the time I brought all her journals, notes, letters – every paper that had helped to define her as a human – home and tried to order them as best I could chronologically into a box. This summer I’ve been working hard on a book about her that I’ve intended to write for at least a decade. It is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting work that is helping to heal my own psyche and that I hope will someday play a role in the healing of others.
The point being that I’ve been absent here because I’ve spent this last week living in the letters of the past.
I’ve brought out the box of documents to find quotes and fill in the blanks for me as I write her story down. I’ve scanned everything relevant and, as a child of a hoarder, tossed everything that didn’t matter anymore. I discovered some interesting things.
My mother never believed she was worthy to be human. She came barreling into the world loud and feisty and those weren’t qualities admired in children in the 1950’s. She tried to fit into the box society held for her – a different sort of shape for a woman, but one that is just as important to us as our physical shapes. If we spend our lives wishing we were a different shape, either inside or out, we forget to find the beauty in who we already are.
In the box I also found a 36-page (single-spaced) letter that my grandmother had written to her aunt detailing her 1958 divorce. On the first page she wrote, “I’ve heard so often how crazy I am, just like my mother and my grandmother, that perhaps I can believe it myself.” And I realized that we have a long family history of trying to figure out where our sanity lies in relation to our own mothers. I spend my life various amounts of afraid that I will lose it like my mom did, or that I will hurt people like she hurt me.
As young women and wives, they didn’t know their own value, constantly putting it aside for the words of another. Their notes and letters indicate that they slowly began to realize that they are allowed to take up space in this world and that this partly had to do with raising daughters.
As we parent our children, we reparent ourselves. Searching to protect our babies from that which hurt us the most, to fill the holes we need filled. We see our babies and want them to know from birth that they are worthy and are allowed to exist, just as they are, in this world. And, slowly, we begin to make those connections for ourselves as well.
So I’ve been thinking this week:
~To remember that anger is just as valuable an emotion as serenity. Anger gets shit done and we need shit to get done.
~That we are all beautiful, and our different gifts come together to make up this whole world that, if we allowed it to work properly, would function in harmony as we each employed our own talents.
~That it is a part of parenting to reparent ourselves.
~That we all walk the heroine’s journey in our lives, learning who we are as we go. And that it can be a lifelong process. And that that is okay.
Love yourselves, mamas.
And hopefully I’ll be back to regular Feminist Fridays next week.
The Huffington Post has this AMAZING piece on the clitoris complete with the history of our knowledge of it, the anatomy of it, and the political aspect of it. Like. Seriously. You need to read this. And then you need to tell all your friends to read this.
Last night I went to see the Kids in the Hall perform live here in town and Dave Foley did a monologue that began with a statement about the assumption that weight loss is always a good thing (”I’ve just lost 25 pounds. *waits for applause to die down* Could be cancer!”) and ended with him describing a literal river of menstrual blood because he’s “a guy who’s comfortable with menstruation” and if he wasn’t already my hero, HE IS NOW.
Also he was very polite when my friend saw him walking in front of the theatre before the show and grabbed him and spun him around to be in a picture with him. HERO.
I’m writing that bit partly because I’m still high from the evening, but also because GUYS SHOULD BE COOL WITH MENSTRUATION AND ALSO CLITS. And, honestly, so should most women.
After the weird and sexist #dadbod trend, women tried to take back their right to exist just as they are, mom bodies and all. Which is, you know, kinda the thing here at SOAM. So I have been hanging out on Instagram and Twitter in the #mombod tags and for the most part loving the movement.
But I’ve started seeing something more sinister. People are taking the movement and using it as a way to exploit the insecurities of moms and to make money off their emotional pain. I mean. This isn’t new. It’s the backbone of the fashion and makeup industry to feed off the insecurities of women. But it’s frustrating and makes me a little stabby. Kind of like that time they stole my picture and used it to sell stretch mark cream. SIGH.
So, you know, it’s finals week and I got burned out on graphing quadratic functions so I laid down on the couch and made this (GOD BLESS 2015 AND THE IPHONE). And I AM SO SORRY that it’s cheesy as hell, but it gets the message across. As always, aim for health. But, also as always, never forget that you are beautiful ALWAYS. You don’t NEED to change a thing to be beautiful. You already are.
You probably saw this photo of this professor last week on the internet. A student in one of his classes in Israel had to bring her baby to class, and when the baby started fussing, she made to leave, but her professor took the baby and soothed him and continued teaching. Which is amazing. I think at least six different people shared it with me on Facebook since the photo went viral. Because the opposite situation of this one happened to me just a few weeks ago.
I’m a single mom and I’m trying to finish my degree finally, years after putting it on hold for many complicated reasons. I don’t have many resources to turn to for babysitting and on one particular day I couldn’t find anyone to watch my 10 year old son. Rather than miss valuable information in a math class, I decided to take him with me. I won’t go into the whole boring, overly dramatic story except to say that I had planned very carefully how to keep him quiet for a whole two hours, I understood I may have to leave if he was disruptive, and yet my college broke their own policy protecting parents and refused to allow me to attend my class. It became a kind of a big deal, I wrote letters to about 20 different people in charge of the college and was given several good apologies almost immediately.
But the whole thing taught me a really important lesson about being a woman, maybe especially a mother. You’re gonna have to struggle the whole way. Not only does the necessity of finding a babysitter for my children fall entirely on me, but there aren’t a lot of resources to help a mom through her education. (I also wonder how a father bringing his child to school would have been received – I suspect it would have been honored for being a responsible father. Honestly, the double standard there is just as harmful for dads as it is for moms. To be surprised when a man is a good father is an insult to men in general.)
So when this professor took that child and allowed that mother to continue her education he made a statement. He told her and all women that he values them, they they deserve the chance to learn, that he will help them succeed. He taught everyone in that class that kids are a normal part of humanity, that mothering is a normal part of humanity to be embraced and supported rather than shunted off, out of view of the world. I mean, really, when you look at it from a biological point of view, parenting children is the actual reason for the human race.
I get it that kids can be disruptive. Believe me. I get that. But think how much better the world could be if children were accepted and expected, if moms were supported in their endeavors to better their lives? We need more men like this. Standing ovation to you, Dr. Engleberg. Thank you.
Motherhood changes a person internally and externally. The current societal standards do not accept the outward changes, and they don’t understand the inward ones. To become a mother is to change a person as much as metamorphosis changes a caterpillar into a butterfly. We become unrecognizable. We become beautiful.
Many times motherhood begins with a pregnancy, but as millions of mothers around the world know, that is not the only way to become a mother. And no matter what the method – adoption, birth, IVF, surrogacy – motherhood is the most incredible task we will ever face. And I know many, many beautiful women who choose not to have children by any method, and I love you for being who you are and for knowing who you are and I honor, you, too, on Mother’s Day. For being a mother to your friends or to their children or to your fur babies. Truly motherhood can look like so many different things to all of us.
And then there are mothers, like myself, who do not have mothers. Or mothers, also like myself, who have/had difficult relationships with their mothers. I know how much this can complicate your feelings about this day. I support you and I love you in all your various, conflicting, and very real, and reasonable, and perfect feelings about this day and about your mothers. As I learned while attending Al-Anon meetings many years ago, feelings are neither bad nor good, they just are. You are allowed to have many complex and conflicting and “bad” or “wrong” feelings about today. And you are allowed to talk about them today, on this day of celebration, if you need to.
So today for all the mamas holding your newborns, or calling your grown children, or waiting with baited breath to hold your own child or to hear that a child is waiting for you, for all the mamas calling your mamas, or unable to call your mamas, for all the women who do not call themselves mamas but love their mama friends and family just as fiercely, I want to wish you a beautiful Mother’s Day.
You are beautiful inside and out. Your story is beautiful through and through. Happy Mother’s Day to you, my friends.
It’s been a crazy week and I’m so sorry I haven’t posted anything. I have a lot of great links for you today, but still no time to make up a post here. Hopefully I will get to do a makeup post on Sunday. But in the mean time I wanted to post a link to this article about a mama who lost her baby. It’s poignant and she says a lot of really important things to keep in mind. Things like the fact that there isn’t a right or a wrong way to look after a pregnancy, and that there isn’t a right or a wrong way to be a mother. Like how even if your child dies far too early you will always be a mother. And how we should stop judging each other. Take a moment today to open your mind to the experiences of others and hold them in your heart. Lift each other up, mamas.
This is really important, you guys. Net Neutrality (meaning, if you don’t know, the freedom of the internet to be available to all people at no extra cost) is back in the news this week. And no one really seems to be talking about that. Which is extremely upsetting. We’ve been fighting to keep the internet neutral for years and years – maybe since it really became a big enough deal that the big companies wanted to regulate it. But now they technically can. Your internet service provider can block certain websites or charge more for others. They can charge the people who run websites extra to make their websites run as fast as they could, as they currently do. This means, among other things, that small websites like this one could die. I don’t want to see SOAM die. I’ve seen it do too much good in the world.
Right now, you can go sign a petition at The White House’s website. Here it is. Tell the government that information shouldn’t cost anything. Tell them to end this and keep net neutrality safe. And then pass this on to everyone you know, okay?
