Elizabeth from My Milk Spilt was kind enough to publish me at her site; my piece “Missing the Mark” went live today. If nothing else, Michelle Allison’s linked-to piece is a go-to for some sense and sensibility regarding the USian (and AUian, at very least) “War on obesity”, etc.
Meanwhile, here’s a picture of a BLT with homemade bread and lovely summer tomatoes.
This piece is featured in Squat! Birth Journal‘s Spring Issue. I encourage an exploration and/or support of this lovely zine (available in paper or digital form); certainly a great gift for an expecting family-to-be! It’s a wonderful publication.
Over my twitterstream my friend Wendy links to a piece of, once again, sex discrimination against a woman feeding her child1). We’ve all heard it before. A woman is feeding her baby in a shop or a library or wherever, when an employee approaches and tells the woman she must leave, often invoking (their fallacious understanding of) the law and – at least in North America – usually in violation of protected rights. And certainly counter to common sense, compassion, and an understanding of public health.
It’s too bad more people don’t seem to see it that way.
Breastfeeding discussion is continually ignored and/or marginalized by the mainstream, made into a fringe issue although it concerns us all – our progress toward an egalitarian society, our support of families, our stewardship of the environment, and our county’s medical costs and spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being. Even movements self-identified as pro-woman often pick and choose which reproductive rights they support and advocate for, ignoring the societal edifices concerning birth, babies, and fulltime care of children – which necessarily ignores the women involved. If you Google “breastfeeding and feminism” you will see communities concerning the former subject discussing the latter, but rarely the reciprocal; mainstream pro-feminist discussions in general do not concern themselves with breastfeeding even though something like eighty percent of USian women do become parents at some point.
Keeping breastfeeding peripheral to social justice discussion contributes to extremely low breastfeeding rates in the so-called developed world (which are lower still in marginalized groups such as black mothers, teen mothers, and native or indigenous mothers, etc.). After all, anyone remedially-versed in the experiences of infant care and feeding understand that support, or lack thereof, is a major if not the major factor in aggregate breastfeeding success rates.
While some without children, or some with older children, or some men believe they can continue to ignore the health and well-being implications of poor breastfeeding rates and the compounded lack of choice afforded to already-stressed marginalized populations, such a luxury is not experienced for the child nor the child’s carer. These peoples’ daily realities are put under additional stressors. Thus when an individual receives repeated shaming messages or policing language and repressive strategies against her, she is most likely to experience discouragement, uncertainty, and isolation; she is at a very real disadvantage. Or as the author of “A tired hungry baby” writes:
I knew the law. I knew my rights. But I was still upset. And not the angry, self-important, righteous kind of upset. The teary, scared, “they”‘re going to kick me out of the store”, “I”‘m here with my kids” type of upset. It was clear I was about to be thrown out, and I was pretty sure that if I was going to be forced to justify feeding my baby, I was going to cry. And I felt truly alone.
This experience and this sentiment could have been written by so many of my friends – and many of these are “educated” women with class, hetero-, cis-, and racial privilege. Which puts the question: at what point does our mainstream dithering about “public decency” get real, and admit the costs we are requiring so many others to pay? “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” seems incredibly trite and inhumane when considering our socioeconomically-classist culture, to put it frankly, requires black, brown, poor and working-class mamas and families pay multifaceted costs – and by heaping on body-shaming and gender-policing we’re just making it harder. “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” tweeted by a white Portland hipster without children is such a disheartening and ignorant response when I consider, for instance, the lived reality of a child up all night screaming from a painful ear infection (and the work/sleep missed by carers and the stress for all involved). To get a little 101, ear infections, which account for thirty million trips to the doctor each year and are experienced by an estimated 75% of babies, is a risk decimated by a factor of at least two for a breastfed child2. And that’s just one real-life health issue and one potential pragmatism for parents, and it makes me irritated enough to knock that Stumptown out of said urbanite’s hand.
“Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” hurts real-life families, real-life people.
“Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” is something that should have been eliminated from our public discourse a long, long time ago.
This is why it is key that those who are not at this moment stuffing a nipple into a baby’s face – including men, including formula-feeders, and including those without children – support breastfeeding and stand up for families’ rights and for mothers to young children. When the mainstream frames breastfeeding an issue that the individual mothers should be fighting, all on their own, it throws the game (especially considering the corporate power and cultural reach held by formula producers: phdinparenting.com has some great information on this). Concomitantly, framing infant feeding as solely individualistic and “choice”-based is also at heart of those who shame individual formula feeding families (moms) for “not trying/caring hard enough”, too (sadly, there are many of these voices, although for the purposes of this piece I should note bottle feeding mothers are generally not asked to leave public spaces based only on their method of feeding).
So while there are many breastfeeding mothers who stand up to pressure and have a generally positive feeding career, the vast majority of breastfeeding mothers have been pressured to stop feeding and most have been shamed explicitly or implicitly while others stand silently by or dismiss the topic as a “women’s issue” (because, you know, those aren’t important).
This means often, as in the above-cited author’s case, at the point an episode of discrimination is most acute and immediate, she is likely extremely disadvantaged in her response. Consider also that mothers who breastfeed:
* are expending 300 – 500 extra calories a day per breastfeeding child (yes, some women are breastfeeding more than one child), and those are just the calories required to produce milk, not those needed to care for, comfort and nurture, clean for, etc. anyone else in the family.
* are often severely sleep-deprived (personally, I cannot overstate this effect on my life when I had infants).
* are usually dealing with hormonal and physical changes while they:
* are also under endemic body-policing and -shaming pressures including scrutiny of their weight, the state of their skin or hair, and their changed or changing body shape.
* are often under cultural policing as well; this is levied at mothers of color, those without class privilege, those outside the heteronormative spectrum, those with multiple children, etc.
* are usually constantly segregated and policed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by virtue of having children, by our adultist and child-unfriendly cultural norms.
* are often under-supported by their family, friends, neighbors – and, too-often, their partners (even well-intentioned ones), if they have one.
* are in the throes of what many would identify as one of the most life-changing experiences they’ve had - the twentyfour-seven care and responsibility for another human being, and an incredibly vulnerable one at that.
It is my position that any restriction of breastfeeding should be taken as sex discrimination - whether legally promoted or de facto by policy, societal attitudes, etc. As such, I haven’t yet heard a compelling argument to support it. A disdain for a function of women’s bodies doesn’t seem meritorious enough to warrant prescriptive measures.
It’s time for others to adopt that standard as well.
Because in North America, fighting for the unrecognized humanity of these women, babies, and families, often seems a never-ending job against a seemingly bottomless pit of ignorance and oppression. Today, as I finish this piece, a blogreader sends me an article from The Root, in which a woman nursing in the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. was hounded twice by security and told she must enter the bathroom and sit on the toilet to feed her child3.
So, yeah. “Gross, I shouldn’t have to see that!” needs to go.
* Photo credit: 3º Lugar – 2º Concurso Fotogra¡fico Regional “Fotografiando la Lactancia”. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Sorry y'all, but your parents should have thought about that before they had you.
People of Color, People with Disabilities, LGBTQAI People, plenty of marginalized persons have movements behind them, and yet in social justice circles people feel free to openly say “I hate children” without repercussions. Children are routinely beaten in the name of “good order and discipline” (and parents are blamed for not doing so in the name of “not being attentive parents”) and no one pays attention. We expect children to be silent unless spoken to, and we often walk around and talk around them as if they aren”‘t even there. And possibly more importantly, like our little friend, they notice when we don”‘t notice them. They notice when we fail to take them into consideration. They notice when they don”‘t matter. They notice when the world, when those who are meant to love them, don”‘t fucking see them or hear them. – from “Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don’t Notice)” by Ouyang Dan
Young people are scary because they are a social group whose rights we are reluctant to recognize. They are human beings with personalities, attitudes, opinions and needs. Just like misogyny arises out of a fear of women exercising their human rights; hatred of children arises from our wish to subordinate children. – from “We Hate Children” by Feminist Avatar in Scotland
Today, after reading an incredibly awesome piece of rad fem by a stellar author, I put forth a genuine and heartfelt question: Why do so many (not all) feminists exhibit vitriol and/or a non-inclusive attitude for children and their carers? Specifically, with regard to carers, I find there is a huge void where sensitivity, inclusivity, and a valuing of nurture-work and mothers is needed – even more specifically, mothers usually excluded and/or belittled are those non-white, non-middle- or upper-class, child- and home-oriented, disabled, neurologically atypical, gay, queer, or trans.
Two from the commentariat weighed in. The upshot of their responses: it’s “ridiculous” to say feminists hate mothers*, and anyway feminists have no real power so they’re just angry (and hey, understandably so, from my perspective) but their words only “sting” and have no real-life repercussions.
My charges of child-hate sentiment in the feminist sphere and resultant oppressions went unacknowledged and unaddressed.
One comment contained the following, which really has me chewing over it. See, I’ve heard this sort of thing before. Lots:
“Many radical feminists question why women wish to become mothers, because the planet is overpopulated and children are men”‘s all-time favorite weapon of choice to use against women. Not to mention that having a child ensures that you”‘re either raising another potential victim or another potential perpetrator.”
Here’s the thing: I’m dashing this off while being tugged at by my kids, mother, partner, and cats. Here I’m deciding to write to my readers – not the Haters, not the developed rad fems or those who want to discuss or ‘splain theory whilst ignoring lived realities of mothers/carers and children, and frankly, not those who hold anti-child views (sadly many of them don’t even know who they are). But if you find yourself generally wondering if you have any anti-child lingering sentiments (hint: yes you do), please read on and more importantly, read the links supplied.
I’ve written before, briefly (F-word example), of the unwillingness of some feminist discussion to acknowledge deeply-entrenched adultist tenets. These worldviews simmer under the surface but make themselves known in commentstreams of any article daring to defend children and their carers, especially one supporting their rights to be out in public at their levels of need (hey listen… I simply couldn’t bring myself to link to multiple vitriolic examples of breastfeeding hate, which are endemic in the US). One of the reasons I don’t self-identify as a feminist (although I absolutely support many feminist goals, and read and support many self-identified feminist activists) is because of the many ways feminist discussion has let down so many groups and continues to do so: today’s mainstream feminist discussion is often rife with demonstrations of racism, ableism, psychophobia, transphobia, adultism, and classism.
When discussing children the conversation – in mainstream and social justice spheres alike – is usually two-dimensional and frankly, played out: it seems we divide children into two classes: children parents can afford to feed – so parents have a duty to raise them “well-behaved” (regardless of the costs and pro-oppression indoctrination) and forcefully educated according to the institutional system – versus poor families with children. The solution in the latter case is – you shouldn’t have had them in the first place. In these often class-stratified discussions, pregnancy is often only discussed in terms of abortion rights (which are absolutely under attack) but not birth rights or holistic child-stewardship and nurture practices (including, shocker, the right to raise children without by-rote institutionalism). Like many in the self-identified right-wing, prominant progressives concern themselves with the care and quality of life – the life of babies or mothers (or non-babies and the right not to be a mother, which I unreservedly support) – concern which ends abruptly if a child emerges from the womb. I’m thinking of a progressive behemoth site with thousands of readers that describes itself as staunchly feminist; on this site a single author has posted merely two articles – out of thousands, scores of which concern abortion – that discuss birth culture and attendant realities in America (more dismal than you might imagine; yet it is still only considered fringe to advocate for revolution therein). There is – wait for it – one article discussing breastfeeding. One. In my opinion a feminist schema worth its salt would hold breastfeeding as a reproductive right and would, y’know, tackle birth reform. I won’t hold my breath.
The abovementioned rad fem comment seems to place a lot of value in asking WHY a woman would reproduce given how shitty things are. First of all, I commend objections to the multifaceted and ubiquitous narratives that a woman’s sole function is to reproduce. And things are pretty bad – and not only that, many people don’t even know it nor concern themselves. However, the reality is in having these same 101 social justice queries ad infinitum without deeper explorations of mother-and-child life we are letting down the women who do breed (something at present count, around 80% of women) as well as their children and (if they have them) partners.
Most women who feel and exercise what they believe is free choose to have children, even the “educated” (or seemly or middle class or whatever) ones, likely had little idea just how hollow the promises of “equality” (socially or within heterosexual partnerships) really are today. In my opinon this is largely due to misogynistic and kyriarchal mindsets – and in no small part also fallout from a child-segregationist culture. Many first-time parents have had little to no experiences caring for or being around well-nurtured children nor exposed at length to healthy child environs; almost every adult has moved from the position of child-as-oppressed to adult-in-privilege, and often will enact the damaging scripts they were forced into for so many years. The concepts of happy, celebrated, and idyllic motherhood are promised but ill-supported once baby arrives (although many mothers and fathers and carers manage to find genuine enjoyment and meaning from parenting). Our culture still functions to make many women choose between the family life she’d like and meaningful or respected paid work and financial support (and note: routinely criticizing and belittling traditional “women’s work” skews our ability to find meaning therein), even while we criticize these women for ever making sacrifices of one for the benefit of the other. We sentimentalize family life and mothering, but we also continue to frame parenting as huge drain that is less meaningful than Statusy Career or material acquisition, which of course erases the millions for who Statusy Career is not an option, a current reality, and/or a life-calling. More to the point, the needs of children are routinely, routinely ignored and the child class is raised while often being relegated to – still! – being seen, or not, and not heard – and often ill-protected (child abuse – verbal, physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual – another endemic and tragic occurrence that our school systems and supposedly progressive American ideals have not done nearly enough to halt or stem). On the subject of child-raising anyone with an opinion weighs in and often gets a clown-horn for the front pages, while those who continue to successfully advocate and care for babies and children largely outside oppressive schema are relegated to the fringe or downright vilified.
I think I can understand a lot of feminist anger regarding children and motherhood, although I wish those vocalizing anger would consider their words carefully. Many women without children are tired of the oft-fed line that one’s life is not fulfilled unless one reproduces and that without kids a life is empty or sad or even “selfish”. And I agree, this seems like a lot of bullshit. But that is precisely my point – the promises and Hallmark-sentiments surrounding “motherhood” are deeply problematic and when many women step into this role – for reasons and in quantities that are no one’s business to be prescriptive about – the reality is quite shocking.
As for the arguments against marriage, motherhood, etc. due to these institutions functioning as patriarchal tools – yes, I get it (although find me an institution that never does function thusly). But here’s my thing – once the child is on the premises Planet Earth is it really appropriate and helpful to discuss how they shouldn’t have been born in the first place – or espouse a glum scenario that the child is destined to be either “victim” or “perpetrator” (that is they are a cipher and academic subject – not a whole, multi-faceted human being with a heart, mind, integrity, and a future full of mistakes and triumphs)? In asking for feminist responses to mother and child, to be told another version of “women shouldn’t become mothers/children should think about that before existing” is not addressing living mothers and children; it’s requesting we just have fewer mothers and children. Very, very tolerant, supportive, helpful, and on point (tongue planted firmly in cheek).
Where is the acknowledgment that if the world is ever going to experience positive change – either episodically or by the whole – it is precisely the raising of children outside oppressive regimes and mindsets that will make this happen?
While discussing the wretched state of Child, where is the attendant activist discussion and pragmatic approaches to treat the living and breathing children, here and now, who need adult advocacy and increased agency?
Bizarrely, sometimes social justice conversation indulges in the make-believe that each person (or nuclear/bio-family) is an island. Self-sufficient and all that. This framing ignores the fact our lives began with others caring for us – however many mistakes our carers may have made, the vast majority of us received an incredible amount of work and nurture – and most of us will have a period of vulnerability bookending the end of our lives, too (those with disabilities or extenuating circumstances may not have the luxury of the normative but false “self sufficiency” narrative often promoted). It’s incredible to me how many grownups pretend they are separate, apart, do not rely on others, never did, never shall.
Author Naomi Aldort, who I’ve referenced here, wrote a book called Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. I’ve found it to be absolutely true that in the vocation of caring for other human beings my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual life has benefitted. My reality – mine – is that until I had children my activist mentality was almost non-existant and my passions were self-focussed; I rarely thought about how many others needed help, how many others had fewer privileges and resources and abilities than I. I am a flawed human being and continue to do my work, including self-improvement while trying to increase my stewardship for other people, for animals, for the planet. I am not perfect, but I will probably never support a worldview that doesn’t make it an active discussion point: helping those who need help and compassion, whatever population or class they belong to. Using such populations merely as theoretical entities (not human beings) might be necessary to get the ball rolling sometimes – but runs the risk of being a very underdeveloped and condescending strategy.
Some reading:
“On Hating Kids” at Feministe
“On childhate and feminism” at the Noble Savage
“My Child Takes Up Space” at Womanist-Musings
“The Ethics of Representing Childhood in Western Culture” by Naomi Aldort
And finally, “Children Take Up Space (and Notice When We Don’t Notice)” at Random Babble (quoted above), from which I offer this summation:
“[W]e as feminists, womanists, and social justice activists (and I”‘ll let you know where I fall on that scale when I figure it out) really fail hard at seeing children as what they truly are; a marginalized class of people who need their rights fought for and protected.”
Absolutement.
I totally had this baby to make you all happy, and it didn't even work!
A recent slight disintegration of discussion at a feminist blog I generally enjoy underscores the facts:
Women get it coming and going regarding childbirth and children. Just: constantly. And from the most elaborate and varied angles. It’s almost breathtaking.
Just a primer in case you’re completely clueless: women are put down if they don’t want children or feel ambivalent on the subject. Childfree women (or childless women, or if someone can find a term that doesn’t offend those with kids or without, let me know) are harangued pretty regularly – when will you have kids? What? You don’t want to? Why not? What’s wrong with you? Oh you poor (unnatural, frigid, spiritually-devoid) thing. If you don’t have kids you don’t have a life. Tsk tsk.
Women who do want children but can’t make it happen – their bodies don’t provide the technology, they don’t feel they could support a child, they don’t have the support they require, there are physical or mental or chemical or financial barriers? These women are constantly marginalized from the smallest throw-out sentences in children’s books (“A womb is a special place inside a woman where babies grow” purrs a very well-meaning, liberal-sentiment children’s book) to the glowing pictures of women-in-hospital, life fulfilled, yay baby! Birth is talked about as “natural” – yet in the fervor to reclaim and rescue America’s abysmal birth culture these discussions can further alienate and hurt those who don’t have a “natural” or complication-free experience. Infertility is somehow still a woman’s “fault” or failure; at best there is an insensitivity about the whole business. ”Just adopt!” chirps the seriously problematic hand-wave (socioeconomic class fail, to start) so many pipe up with when a woman has a problem breeding the more typical way. To my own consternation I hear women chirping proudly how easily they get pregnant, it happened at the drop of a hat, blah blah, with no regard to the woman standing next to them whose eyes fill with tears at hearing such oblivious enthusiasm.
Women who want children and then have them? Here’s where we get right up close to the subject of birth where misogyny really ramps up. You see garden-variety and boring misogyny when birth is discussed in any detail: accounts of orgasmic birth* (best-case, awesome birth scenario) and birth rape** (a very bad-case scenario) vilified, pooh-pooh’d, or ridiculed. It would be boring and played-out if I didn’t regularly see how much these dismissals hurt actual women, their children, their partners, their families.
I’m one of the last category mentioned above – a woman who wanted, then had children – and I could wax eloquently on how that opens a whole shit-storm of criticism. You birth the baby in the hospital or with drugs? You’re a sell-out, a wimp, a failure, either a privileged prima donna or a sad statistic. This goes double (or triple) if you have a C-section or if you (gasp!) formula-feed your child. Women are cut open and subjected to the complications of heavy-duty abdominal surgery (the current C-section rate in this country is on the rise and at about 30 percent; some states have a 38% rate) and then the women themselves are made to feel like failures.
Have a baby at home (on purpose)? You are an irresponsible, silly, vain (or ignorant) hippie. [raises hand]
And for mothers, this is just what you’ll get five minutes after breeding the little person(s). I haven’t got into the de-statusing and wage gaps and judgment (work outside the home or not? You’ll get it either way) and picking-at for childcare and schooling and career choice that await women in all walks of life.
Not everyone wants to admit this, but babies and childbirth are kind of everyone’s business – yes, men too. And yet your “everyday man” and fathers are, of course, mostly exempted from the vicious part of these conversations. While (white) men are still the primary women’s health policy makers, the OBs (who generally assist in most births in this country), the law- and policy-makers in this country, and even though they are often in positions that direct quite a bit about how pregnancy, labor and delivery goes down for many American women, they do not suffer the consequences and recrimination for birth outcomes nor passionate discussions about integrating family life with paid work. In the trenches, where women hurt the most, some of their bodies savaged or messed with and their life choices – to breed or not to breed, and how things play out when living their lives – sneered at, their emotions on edge and their sufferings and triumphs diminished or laughed at. Too few men take these issues up as the human rights concerns they are. Women are shunned and blamed for their suffering, if not additionally accused of Ruining America for being not-mothers or not-good-enough mothers or over-involved mothers.
I have no easy answers. Yet probably Step One would be to give more credence to women and their lived experiences. If a woman says she doesn’t want to have a child, please do not second-guess nor pity her, and please take away from this Actual Real Woman a commitment to stop assuming all women want babies, babies, piles of babies. If the statistics show a wage gap and a lack of fair housework distribution between heterosexually-paired partners, respect that as a reality that involves, you know, actual people, and is a further testimony to our culture’s continued inequalities which yes, we should be working to fix. If a woman speaks up about her birth or birth culture in this country, please take this as seriously as a discussion on your pet social justice topic, because reproductive rights and experiences fall under human rights issues that are happening to, again, real people. Allow the many suffering women and babies and the statistics in America’s poor birth climate some consideration. If you can’t or won’t do much about it, at least respect those who are fighting the good fight. Because there are good reasons to fight it.
Step Two might be to stop attacking individual women for their choices or their life circumstances. Just because you are personally squeamish about the phrase “orgasmic birth” does not give you the right to mock the real, actual women who find the subject important. Just because you breastfed and stayed home to take care of your children does not give you the right to weigh in on the love, hard work, and commitment of any particular woman who did not (in this example) breastfeed or stay home. Remember, we don’t pick on dads for this stuff, which is a red-flag for sexism at best.
And finally – again, just for starters – we all need to listen and believe. Because something about the anti-women sentiments that rear up in these conversations remind me of a phrase I hear oft-repeated in school and childcare environments, a phrase I have never liked: “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit”. Our cultural history has been one of silencing women, calling their concerns about housework or babies or jobs with or without kids silly, allowing their bodies to pay the price for being female. You don’t have to understand it all (indeed, even highly-involved activists are continually learning), but belittling the conversation? Uh, no.
Because: “If you don’t find time to change the world, then you’re busy keeping it the way it is.” (unattributed)
Mentioned/Further Reading:
“Non-Medical Reasons for a Rise in Caesarian Sections” at Sociological Images
* Several accounts of orgasmic birth at unassistedchildbirth.com
** Birth rape: “More Than a Traumatic Birth” at truebirth.com
A review of Heather Has Two Mommies at Raising my Boychick
“Maternal Death in the United States: A Problem Solved or a Problem Ignored?”, 3 part article by Ina May Gaskin
VBACtivism at the Feminist Breeder
Against a sun-dappled backdrop, my son artfully plays with a wicker, um, whatever the hell that thing is
I love to sew. If you’re reading here, you probably know this. I learned to sew so long ago I don’t remember not knowing the craft, but when my life turned to child-raising and home-life this desire simply asploded from my loins like a flaming, golden hawk. Some days it’s an effort to think of other things; think of them I must, however, as I do believe it’s both an honor and respectable, satisfying work to do – you know, everything else (kids pets cleaning dishes laundry mending planning shopping cooking playing cuddling reading bathing scrubbing vacuuming; Ok, my husband vacuums, not me, but still).
As I said, I love to sew. So you can imagine how much I enjoy flipping through the latest of a sheer glut of craft books and finding all these wonderful ideas, fabrics, products, tutorials, kits, trims, embellishments, machines, notions, and supplies.
But wait, you can’t imagine it. Because the truth is, I kind of hate these books, websites, and blogs. Shocker! No, I personally find it exhausting to consume or be exposed to the world of Unbearably Tasteful Craft, even for the bits and pieces of know-how I pick up.
Look, it’s only recently I’ve become frustrated. I, like many before me, was taken in by the first little celebratory crafts-for-laydeez blog. I saw a white woman, her hair tied in an artful kerchief, sitting demurely on a sun-dappled hardwood floor. Her adorable children’s (clean) hands hand-felted winsomely-flawed baubles and she sewed them to a vintage linen tablecloth. Maybe there was a bowl of apples sunning themselves on the shelf of shabby-chic armoire, right next to a striking display of hand-wound wool yarns (Red Hart, get thee out Satan!).
Awwww. So sweet. I want that life, I thought to myself.
Then there was another. This time the (white, young, beautiful, slim, hipster/urban ingenue/sweet hippie) posed in a halter dress she’d made from her husband’s old cotton dress shirt, her hands carelessly dipped in flour as her happily docile child licked the spoon to messy and cutesy effect. Across the door threshold fluttered hand-cut wool banner flags in a muted colorset as this duo of mother-and-child enjoyed an apparent blissdom of epic, Unicorn-making-out-with-Johnny Depp, proportions.
I’ll spare you further examples. There have been, and continue to be, a germillion of them.
Here’s the thing: I’m not going to pick on a single author, website, or publishing house. I don’t have the expertise or knowledge base to do so, nor judge any particular person’s intentions. When a blog turns from a “hey, I made this” site to first sponsorships, then little ads in the sidebar, and eventually a resultant book deal - yay! I guess. I mean if it makes someone a living it’s no more right to criticize that individual than anyone else who earns. These books and sites do, obviously, inspire and to some extent instruct (although I’ve yet to see much “new” invented in the field of stitching that our grannies and great-great-great grannies didn’t know how to do). People who know how to do stuff should write it down and share it, absolutement.
However, in the sheer volume of these bewitching tomes ($15 to $40 for each hardcover, lest ye forget) and sites (cluttered with ads to niceties we hadn’t originally planned on buying, and perhaps can’t afford even if we want them*) we get a sly underwhiff of nastiness: bit by bit they build an aspirational picture**: white, classy, pure, “natural” (whatever that means), beautiful, clean, tidy, creative, tasteful***, and in the case of kids, cute-but-well-behaved. A book I currently have on loan from the library happily sighs, “Take nothing into your home that is not a thing of beauty”.
Because, really? Most who know me would likely think I am a selective consumer – heck, we currently lack a table to eat on because I’m waiting for the right one (affordable and well-made, probably used). But the concept of a household only displaying items that are “things of beauty” is not the world nor the lifestyle most people find themselves in (A. if they could afford it and B. if they shared the aesthetic). The people I know around these parts, they have like three jobs and four kids and juggling exes and daycare and t-ball fees and stuff. These people shop at Walmart because That’s What’s Here (we literally have no apparel fabric store in a community of about 25,000) and They Haven’t Yet Learned Less Is More (and perhaps they will never be interested, P.S. even “simple life” peeps have a heck of a lot more shit than lots of other people****). A little compromise, perhaps? Or do we really have to all have the same sun-washed linen-curtain lifestyle in order to proceed, you know, learning how to stitch?
Buying only “the best” fabrics and threads, etc., is all well and good if you can do it; any stitcher knows the sheer bliss of handling well-made fabrics, thread – heck, even well-made needles (see Unicorn/Johnny Depp reference above). But most people I know buy sweatshop-manufactured clothes and inexpensive fabrics because A. that’s what’s predominantly available to them, and B. many of them can’t easily afford otherwise. Ever taken apart a Walmart t-shirt once it’s worn out to make something new? You probably should proceed carefully as this may not be worth it, depending on your skills in re-stitching and the item’s intended purpose.
And this brings us to the the (time-honored, but currently undergoing green-wash and trendy revival) subject of repurposing. “Simply take items you love and when they’re worn, recycle them into your life.” Fair enough. I do this: tons. Yet the book I have on hand that details the process and end results is not altogether relatable: picture after picture (several dozen models, all thin, all beautiful, all able-bodied, all young, and all but one white) in their repurposed and time-intensive garments literally standing in cornfields looking into the distance. Aw yeah… that’s the shit I usually do in my hand-sewn stuff. Stand on red-dirt roads looking awesome. This same site features a hand-stitched coat for $4,400 (worth every penny, and I’m not kidding, but a bit out of the ken for… you know, lots of people). Re-purposing, a subject I could write many, many more words on, is both time-intensive and often necessitates a competence, if not expertise, in knowing one’s fabric needs (more in a minute), style preferences, sturdy construction techniques, and time management (how many “re-purposed” projects are currently sitting unfinished, stuffed in someone’s closet?).
About those models and those lovely pictures from this book and many, many more: the race-fail is obvious. Some are better than others but it’s basically a white-fest. So there’s that.
The sizeism gets to me more than most other -isms; not because I, at 5′ 5″ and 190 pounds, feel especially butt-hurt or fat-shamed (I’m over it), but I know just how many women do get tripped up on the sum-total message that to be beautiful and expressive you need to be small or slim (in fact last week I received an email from a big girl who wants to sew but can’t find patterns in her size and her style. She is currently – surprise! – not sewing). The “repurposing” site I mentioned above? They put out a book with a lovely pattern – that goes up to a women’s size 12. Just so you know, the average American woman is a 14. So, if you’re fatter than a size 12 you don’t exist. Or you don’t deserve to look fashionable. I’m not sure which one.
And don’t give me that, “Oooh but they couldn’t possibly draft up every size, ever”. Um, yeah, they could, or a heck lot more of them could: Jalie immediately comes to mind for improved size ranges. Besides, I’m not suggesting every single garment come in every imaginable size from premie baby to the World’s Tallest Man*****. But maybe, you know, a woman’s pattern could include the same size iterations from the size 14 midpoint. If you know, you’re going to bother making a pattern at all.
Another bit of subtle-yet-dealbreaking sizeist undercurrent in the urban/indie sites: okay, here’s a simple tutorial instructing you to cut up your husband’s dress shirt and make an a-line skirt. Um, hello, unless your husband is much larger than you or prone to baggy fashion, you will not have enough fabric. The act of cutting a garment apart leaves you with significantly less yardage to create from given the design lines in the original garment. Example: this week I started t-shirt corset. It took 1.5 t-shirts in a men’s 2 XL to cut the pieces along the appropriate grainline (I am roughly that “average” size 14). I am an expert at pattern layout; your average newcomer won’t be.
The abovementioned yardage question is Sewing 101 (OK, maybe 102) but, to a newbie, constitutes frustration and bad crafting experience. Is it too much to ask the 101 “repurposing” folks write up some general guidelines so you don’t have average-to-fat ladies happily bringing home that Stones t-shirt thrift score only to be defeated when there’s not enough to go around?
(I realized I lapsed into seamstress speak in those last two paragraphs; stay with me now.)
Look, the books and websites I speak of are, ultimately, full of lovely DIY, inspiration, occasionally current links to sources for materials, and lots of pretty pictures (if you read nothing else here, please do read Kate Harding’s “aspirational” piece as linked below). Sometimes attendant to the books and sites are great communities for help and comradery.
Let’s not forget one thing, though: a huge component of the websites’ and books’ existence is to make money. If they can paint a lovely lifestyle picture they may be able to make a buck. Why else waste page space on a scone recipe smack dab in the middle of sewing tutorials? Listen ass, first off, who doesn’t know how to make scones, secondly, I can find my own tried-and-true recipe, you know, elsewhere, perhaps in the field of cookery.
Here’s my point, in case it’s not obvious: the canon of craft pr0n seems less about helping you make things as it is promising you a lifestyle if you buy things. Supplies are necessary to create but the acquisition of them is no substitution for the creative process. (And don’t forget how many crafts and disciplines have their roots in creating for next-to-nothing, currency-wise.) There are too many women (and men) who buy fabric, print patterns from a trendy online site, grab curtain lengths at a garage sale or thrift store, save up the money for a sewing machine…:
Then they simply don’t create. I see it, often. I am stopped in the street by people who know I sew: they want to, they can’t. And I want to be a force for the Good in changing this for anyone who wants it.
A coda: I had the opportunity a few days ago to attend a workshop by international spoken-word artist Desdamona. She was asked her work’s purpose and she said, “To empower people to create”. This simple phrase was powerful for me to hear. The drive to create is within us; the empowerment? Not always. This is why I call myself a Sewing Activist. This is why I assist as many who ask for my help.
True craftivism can be assisted by any material, book, tutorial, or blog, but it’s most effective at the grass-roots when we help one another along using what they have; even if our neighbor, yes, her entire works have thus far consisted of tie-blankets from JoAnns fleece printed with the Seahawks logo. She’s my peeps just as much as the fashionable “good things” set, if not more so.
Mentioned/Futher Reading:
Google image search for “new craft book”
Red Hart yarn, acrylic and therefore gauche
* Ad-free blogs, a concept
** Kate Harding sums up my objections to the “aspirational”, a simple must-read
*** “Tasteful” should not be the of order of how we express ourselves; this is why I dislike Regretsy and I some others do too
**** Material World: A Global Family Portrait
Zenning my house, a process (blog post)
Vagzilla: All Genitals Great and Small, a wee bit OT but a great perspective on human size variation
Jalie’s scoopneck top pattern in a 27-size range, from 18 months to a woman’s size 22
***** Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man
Fashion/fat police in the stitching world: BurdaStyle’s “Marilyn Pants”, 74 comments and counting along the lines of: “Ugh, only thin people can wear this” and “Even that thin model can’t pull this off”, and “P.S. don’t be fat. EVAR.”
Leslie at Fatshionista briefly discusses the “trapeze dress” fashion-Gestapo
“Obsessed with Martha Stewart”, a blog
In response to compliments and a query on my daughter’s “wolf suit”, I performed a search for barkcloth on Reprodepot.com, yielding prices of $10 – $15 for a half yard. Lovely fabrics, to be sure. Affording them is a small feat.
Desdamona, a performance artist
No-Sew Fleece Blanket, a how-to