Many of you may have seen pictures like this one floating around on Facebook or through email threads.   Often, these vintage ads are contrasted with unflattering pictures of rail-thin models or celebrities of our current generation.  There will then be some sort of caption like:

Wow. How times have changed!

The post will usually get thousands of “likes” and comments about how wrong of a turn we have taken and how right they had it back then.  There will be bashing of thin women, some quite nasty, (e.g. a woman without curves is not a REAL WOMAN) and all of it will be considered entirely appropriate.  After all, if you are thin, you must either have an eating disorder or you’re a stuck up model or celebrity who deserves the criticism anyway.

It makes sense why such feelings have developed.  Too many of us have watched our friends, our daughters, our mothers, our sisters beaten down by the pressure to be thin.  We’ve heard horror stories.  We may have even lived them.  We’ve seen beautiful women give up everything, even sometimes that which made them so beautiful, because they have been pushed into an insecurity about their weight.

When we’ve seen this happen or had it happen to us, when we know what it’s like to be told that a number defines your worth (whether through peers or through the daily assault of the media, or the subconscious push of a chemical imbalance) we naturally want to put up our defenses.  We want to do whatever we can to stop such a lie.   And so we may rejoice in ads such as these because they are the extreme opposite! And it would seem that the extreme opposite of a lie would be the truth.

The problem is, glorifying an ad like this does not end the lie.  It merely perpetuates it.

I’m sure we do it in good faith, without thinking that anyone could be offended.  After all, the idea that there might be some women out there who are thin and insecure– women who may be skinny but feel way “too skinny” and are unable to do anything about that–seems crazy!  We don’t think that a girl like the one in this ad exists.  We may not think that it’s even possible to be unable to gain weight.  And we don’t truly believe that a thin woman could feel ugly, un-feminine, or un-sexy.  So we think it’s okay to tell her that she should feel that way– okay to bash her in the hopes that that bashing might build up the women who are not skinny.  It’s the same thing that plays out with the “popular girl” in a school.  Regardless of how nice or mean she may be, regardless of how insecure or confident she may be, she is going to be bashed because people think she can handle it for the sake of the girls who are unpopular. We do this with big football teams when they play smaller teams– we root for the underdog and figure that because the other guy is not the underdog, we can boo him all we want.

But booing the other guy isn’t how you win.  It’s not how you gain your own confidence and it’s definitely not how you promote theirs.

For the past thirty or so years, skinny has been “in.”  So has being tan.  So have countless other trends and fads.  So naturally, those who are not skinny, those who are not tan, those who are not blonde or brunette or highlighted or curly-headed or rich or poor or whatever the current trend may be, are the underdog.  They start out being criticizied and put down.  Eventually, there are enough of them and enough people hear their plea that they develop a group of people who will stick up for them and defend them.  Eventually, rooting for the underdog will become standard and a trend, itself.  Now, the trend regarding weight is shifting again.  “Curvy” is becoming “in.”  Skinny, as can be seen by these Facebook postings, is out.  One day, it might circle back around just like it did a few generations ago.  In the end, these trends are silly, frivolous and should be rather irrelevant.  The reason they are relevant to us is because we are insecure.  And female insecurity is no passing trend.  It is a terrible reality.

But these sorts of ads– this “mean girls” support of the underdog will not end it.

Female insecurity will not end until we stop bashing the people on the other end of the spectrum.  We will not feel comfortable with our own weight until we are comfortable with everyone else’s.  We will not feel comfortable being brunette until we are okay with all the blondes being blonde.  And we will not feel comfortable with our own beauty until we can see the beauty in other people and be happy for it.

I don’t claim to know much about eating disorders.  But I consider myself to be fairly knowledgable about what it feels like to be a girl.  When I see someone say that whatever it is that I am is ugly or un-sexy it hurts me deeply.  I know that women are supposed to be beautiful, so when I see an ad where a girl that looks like me is called ugly, my womanhood is wounded.  I don’t feel like “a real woman.”  And we’ve all felt like this.  And when we feel like this it makes us feel better to put down someone else.

But I challenge women to be more courageous.

When I was in elementary school, I was jealous of the short girls.  I was tall, often taller than the boys, and so in class pictures, I had to stand in the back while the rest of the girls sat all cute in the front.  I know that back then I didn’t want those girls to look cute.  But I could have at least tried.  If I had tried to let go of my inner anger towards them I think I would have developed a lot more confidence and had a healthier opinion of myself.  But instead I learned the game of women.  I quickly learned how to be mean, even if only interiorly.

But the truth is, even if the game produces a quick self-esteem boost, it will not last. The insecurity will only come back all the more harshly.  And it certainly doesn’t make us any more beautiful.  In fact, when we rejoice that another woman is any less beautiful, we literally make ourselves less beautiful.  Because we taint our hearts.  And the heart is the most beautiful thing we have.

I know that some people may post such an ad to promote girls being healthy as “back then they had a better view of what was a healthy weight.”  But regardless of which generation was healthier, these ads miss the point.  They aren’t about health, just like most weight-loss ads today aren’t.

They’re about reaching the trendy number.  Playing off women’s insecurities.  Defining women by how sexy a man may find them to be.  We know women are more than numbers and more than sex appeal so let’s stop playing that game of which woman, skinny or curvy, is the “real” one.  Ideally, all women should strive for a healthy weight, but the ease of that task differs on all ends of the spectrum.  And before we can even get into what a healthy weight is, we must first discern what a healthy heart is.  A healthy heart is not jealous and a healthy heart is not vengeful.  A healthy heart takes what it is given and rejoices in the beautiful and the good, even if it is not its own. 

The following New Feminism Mission Statement for the recently created New Feminism Facebook Community was released today.  I participated in the drafting of this statement which brings together a wide variety of faces and approaches to the work of New Feminism.  You can join this community at Facebook by searching “New Feminism” and clicking on “New Feminism, Cause.”

We, the women of the New Feminism Movement, come together on this site/page to unite our cause upon the following principles.

1.  We come together to liberate woman, in her naturally designed femininity, not only from masculinization, but also from denigration as sexual object, commercial commodity or disfavored gender.

2.  We believe that women have a unique voice and role in protecting the dignity of the human person and creating a culture that values the life of every person, regardless of race, age, gender, physical ability, faith or any other category invoked to dominate or marginalize.

3.  We reject the imitation of masculine models of success and domination and acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of society.

4.  We embrace a wide variety of projects that seek to achieve true equality and incorporation of the feminine throughout society.

5.   We seek to introduce a new paradigm of feminism, whereby woman and the female virtues (i.e. Empathy, Interpersonal Relations, Emotive Capacity, Subjectivity, Communication, Intuition, & Personalization) are valued as fundamental to the health and sustainability of the human family.

We acknowledge there are many faces, many approaches within this movement including philosophical, secular, religious, moral, economic, medical, business, familial, and other perspectives whereby a woman expresses and becomes most fully herself.   In this forum, we all come together to share and be united in the cause of New Feminism.

We like to sleep in, go on last-minute vacations, and pull all-nighters working on projects we care about. We’d rather spend the money we do have on dates, not diapers. ~Nona Willis Aronowitz, 27 years old.

Have babies become another in a checklist of cost items for young women?  Are they juggling the “baby option” with the “mortgage option,” the “cruise option” or the “new job option”?  Have contraception, egg-freezing, sperm-on-demand and other baby-timing technologies tricked our young women into thinking that having and nurturing a child is another “To Do,” to be scheduled amid the demands of their career?

Ms. Aronowitz – a 27-year-old journalist – seems to think so.  She recently wrote:

Deciding when to have children is a riddle of figuring out the right age when neither my ovaries nor my career prospects will wither.  Why shouldn’t we wait until we’re financially secure and emotionally mature to have children?

How many young women think that having and nurturing a child competes in purpose and satisfaction with a job promotion?  Did these young women miss Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” message that nothing else a woman does trumps the “maternal imperative” of nurturing children?  Slaughter’s explanation for giving up a high power government job is worth repeating.

Deep down, I wanted to go home.  I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.  But also irreplaceable years for me to enjoy the simple pleasures of parenting—baseball games, piano recitals, waffle breakfasts, family trips, and goofy rituals.

Breaking the comfortable routine young married professionals often find themselves enjoying – finally independent, with some disposable income, stably removed from the stress of dating and sport sexing – can be challenging.  It’s often a wonderful stage of life, as the caterpillar unfurls her first set of wings.  The baby you always thought you wanted – you always intend to have – can suddenly seem like an expensive, cloying threat.

Young people often don’t know that they will never really grow up, mature into the satisfactions of adulthood, until they have moved beyond themselves.  Most young women don’t know that having a baby will be the single most profound change of their lives; or as one author put it, “Making the decision to have a child . . . is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.”  This “maternal imperative” is the wisdom of women – the sort of folklore older women like Slaughter used to pass from generation to generation.

It’s hardly surprising that many young women like Ms. Aronowitz sincerely believe that having a child depends on the right combination of income, job security and government programs.  Progressive feminism has infused their youth with the illusion that a baby is another accessory and that women happen to be the humans stuck with gestating them.  These young women have heard very few professionals like Slaughter call the bluff as she did in her recent Atlantic piece – a piece Slaughter wrote because she could no longer hawk the illusion to the next generation of women.

Ms. Aronowitz’ circumstances suggest another reason that some young women miss the wisdom passed from mother to daughter, the female wisdom about what deepens a feminine life, what unveils feminine satisfaction and significance.  Ms. Aronowitz herself was a birth postponed by her parents until “late” – and she then lost her mother early at age 64.  As Ms. Aronowitz painfully shares, “Losing my mother in my formative years was gut-wrenching, and all of my grandparents had died by the time I turned 25.”   It’s hard to learn what older women know when there are no older women in your life.

“Babies, my dear Ms. Aronowitz,” I and other nurturing women would tell her, “are not accessories.  They cannot be tacked on last minute, as time is running out, like a beach cottage you always wanted.”  

Babies are not made manageable one day by the “free and ubiquitous” child care or the easier “job market” Ms. Aronowitz wishfully thinks will move “having a baby” up on her To Do list.   No, these will not preserve the “last minute vacations” and date money Aronowitz prefers.  They will not make balancing a career any easier.  Babies still wake up needing you for hours at night.  They throw up on you unexpectedly as you head out the door for a meeting.  They stare mournfully into your eyes through a 103° fever, limp in your arms.  Babies find ways to draw from your heart protective longings shockingly beyond imagination and appallingly beyond control.  One of my own babies – when all else failed to pry me from a dogged determination to litigate full time – learned to speed dial my office number by age 36 months and whisper, “Me misths yous mommy.  Come home peas.”

Our young women are entitled to the truth, not an illusion.   Having a child may well be something a woman decides not to do, but it’s not an item you can expect to juggle like a new job, mortgage or car, a function of timing, dollars and favorable government programs.  No, babies are not an accessory.  A baby will take your life away from you – and hand back something so unexpected and magnificent that you will tear up your youthful To Do with a laugh, infused with the stunning wisdom nurturing women share.

The reason to read – and the reason not to read – 50 Shades of Grey are identical:  it isn’t real. 

It’s a fantasy.  It’s a dark, erotic tale about a guy named Christian and his domination of Anastasia, a tale that includes spankings and beatings.  Not surprisingly, the people who seem most to like this book relate the unreal, disturbing fantasy of Ana and Christian’s relationship to reality:  “I started reading it and almost instantly fell in love with Christian, he can be over bearing at times but really he just needs the love and attention a good woman can give him.”  People who know better, who know that these fantasies have no relation to reality, call Ana and Christian’s relationship “domestic abuse.”

Women have long indulged sexual domination fantasies – just as they have criticized these fantasies as immoral and politically objectionable.  Women’s conflict over fantasies featuring their own subjugation as a source of sexual pleasure began the moment women admitted to having sex drive in the first place.  Sexual domination fantasies make (some) women crazy:  some with desire, others with repulsion.  For some women, the push-pull conflict itself causes interest, like sneaking Godiva chocolate during a diet. 

Consider Nora Ephron’s typically witty 1975 essay “Fantasies” from the aptly named collection Crazy Salad.  Here was a woman admittedly conflicted. 

I have never told anyone the exact details of my particular sex fantasy.  I once told almost all of it to my former therapist; he died last year, and when I saw his obituary I felt a great sense of relief.  Anyway, without giving away any of the juicy parts, I can tell you that in its broad outlines it has largely to do with being dominated by faceless males who rip my clothes off.  It’s terrific.  

Ephron shared her fantasy to argue that women should reject domination ideation and give “sexual behavior and relations between the sexes” a chance of changing favorably in the wake of modern feminism.  “It is possible,” Ephron pled, “through sheer willpower, to stop having unhealthy sex fantasies.”  (Crazy Salad, p. 16).

Others, like Camille Paglia, have rationalized women’s indulging in subjugation fantasy on the theory that aggression, eroticism and power inequities are intimately and biologically linked.  The Roman Catholic Church would concur that, by virtue of man’s fallen nature, disorders of desire and fantasy are gravely tempting, but, like Ephron, the Catholic Church and many other religions favor the discipline of self control and rejection of unhealthy sexual thoughts and practices. 

While both politically and religiously incorrect, female domination fantasies have the added problem of being totally unhinged from reality.  Rape fantasies may be captivating and thrilling, but rape never, ever comports to the fantasy.  To the contrary, in the real world, sex by domination – that is any form of sexual interaction that occurs against the will of another person – is no fun at all:  it strays naturally toward violence, self absorbed pursuit and complete objectification of the victim.  In realty, sexual domination is not fantasy play – it’s physical abuse.

Ask Kim Basinger who turned a book similar to 50 Shades of Grey into the 1986 film 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke.  Filming that movie – characterized by its “none-too-subtle overtones of sado-masochism” – was reportedly “terrifying” for Basinger who found acting her role as Rourke’s sex slave anything but sexy. 

Or read up on the nasty scandal being covered by Salon.com within the sadomasochistic-bondage communities where participants self-identified as “submissives” find themselves in the awkward position of publicly complaining of being raped:  not pretend rape (which is “fun”) but real rape (which is not fun).   Grasping at credibility, the women being really raped insist that “we’re talking about real abuse here, not . . . ‘consensual non-consent’ that the scene is built around.”  While the fine line may seem foolish to outsiders, the difference between pretend nonconsensual sex – called “play” – and real nonconsensual sex – called “assault” – demonstrates the dramatic and fundamental difference between the fantasy of it all and the abusive, decidedly unsexy reality.  The two cannot co-exist in real time. 

These woes of “kink and bondage” women bring us back to 50 Shades of Grey:  to read or not to read? 

I think not.  Material featuring the humiliation and subjugation of a woman, while tempting in the dark corners of the mind, is ultimately dangerous simply because we are so easily tricked into relating its abusive content to reality.  When both secular and religious figures are in agreement on the unhealthiness of a course of behavior, when even the people who try to convert the fantasy to reality admit complete failure, there’s nothing grey about it.  I’m not going to read 50 Shades of Grey. 

Women take lots of pictures. Just look at Facebook. Or go to a prom or a wedding or a homecoming. It makes me wonder sometimes—do we actually care about this event, or do we care more about the pictures? I think about the times I have regretted oh I didn’t get a picture with her! But don’t mind or regret the fact that I didn’t actually talk to her. Why is it that, for a girl, forgetting her camera can put a damper on the whole day? And why, when you look through a Facebook album, do you see the same picture of the same four girls in the same bar with the same hands-on-hips pose over and over and over again? What drives this?

Women (and all people, but particularly women) feel the need to preserve memories. This comes from a good impulse. The woman taking pictures of her baby generally does so because she sees something beautiful and good and she knows that that beautiful and good thing will change and grow into something else. She wants to forever preserve the beauty and goodness of the moment the child is in and the moment she shared with him. This can be the same impulse that drives the girl wanting a picture of her prom date who asked her out over the intercom at school. Forever that picture will remind her of how special he made her feel. Because the way she felt was good. And she may never feel that way again. So then, how could there be anything wrong with female excessive picture taking?

The problem with excessive picture taking is that it has the potential to detract so much from that wonderful moment that you actually end up missing it. And the problem with missing the moment is that well, that one should be obvious. If the moment is so worth preserving, why are we missing it? It seems rather illogical. But human beings can be illogical, and often we are illogical when we are afraid. I suggest then, that excessive picture taking is often rooted in fear. Somehow, we jump from wanting to preserve a wonderful moment because it will eventually pass to becoming entirely afraid of its passing, and thus obsessive about preserving it. Every mother knows that her child must grow up and that the way he looks as a baby will be no more except in memories and pictures. And every mother ought to want to keep those moments. But how many mothers go from wanting to keep it to absolutely dreading its passing? I wonder, is the same picture with the same four girls in the same bar every night because the moment keeps being so wonderful and so necessary to preserve even if each picture looks the same? Or is it borne out of a fear of losing whatever was found in that bar and with those friends? Is it borne out of a fear that once there are no more pictures to take in the bar, well, there will be less to live for? Maybe, says the subconscious, if I take enough pictures of it all, I will have enough to look back on when the “best days of my life” are over. Maybe, somehow, I can extend the moment so those days don’t have to end. Maybe, my picture taking will make me immortal.

Now I know that most of us aren’t thinking about immortality while taking pictures. And I would guess that most of us are honestly just having a great time and wanting to preserve that time innocently and healthily. But women (and men, I suppose) think about what drives you to take the pictures you do. I wouldn’t be surprised if for many of us (I know at times it has been for me,) it is borne out of a fear of passing moments. And why is immortality related? Well, because passing moments remind us that our life is a passing moment. When a child grows up, when a groom carries his bride up the stairs away from her fairy tale wedding, at a graduation, at a twenty-first birthday party, we may, amidst our joys and excitements, feel a sudden and unexpected pang of fear. We may not always recognize it right away, but it is the realization of our mortality. When something good ends, we are reminded that everything ends. I suggest that we often take pictures, even frantically, because we know we are going to die. And we don’t want to die.

But see, what we often forget, as we panic at the sight of our wrinkling skin and greying hair (or even simply our passing semesters or the ticking clock on a Sunday night,) is that the thing we want to preserve—goodness, beauty, relationships, the human spirit—these things are immortal. The baby’s first smile, the first day of kindergarten, the last day of high school, the ninetieth birthday party, our best friends—these things live on forever! And I don’t mean in a sappy way and I don’t mean simply that they live on in our memories or pictures (for if that were the case, well then, frantic picture taking would make perfect sense.) I mean that the thing that we loved so much about those moments is immortal. That’s a sheer fact that needs no real faith. Goodness has always been and always will be infused throughout our world. The part that needs faith is that there is a place and a time and person where that Goodness exists as one entity. That someday, all those pictures won’t be necessary because we have the Real Thing. We have all the joy and the love and the beauty that was shared in those moments in its full force. Not just snippets here and there throughout our lives. We will no longer need to preserve.

Until then, let us preserve with joy and detachment. Not with fear or anxiety or obsessiveness. Let us preserve simply because life is so good! Not because life will get worse. It is this kind of carefree preservation that allows us to relish in the good both while it is here and afterwards. It is this kind of preservation that, in so rejoicing in that which is Immortal, reminds us of our immortality. It is this type of preservation that causes the girl who forgot her camera to smile and think to herself, I don’t need to worry, I’ll see this all again someday. We don’t need to live in the moment simply because moments are passing. We live in the moment because the Goodness we find in them does not pass away. The Goodness is the immortal thing– the thing which gives us life and happiness and energy. It is the time that separates them which passes. Time is so insignificant. Time will come to an end. Time is mortal. What we long to preserve, on the other hand, will never end. So let us laugh in the face of time, for we have surpassed it. And let us enjoy those things which surpass it with us. And let us take pictures of those things. But always as a second thought, and with the knowledge that we haven’t seen anything yet.

Progressive feminism had a hard week.

An online article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” – by the successful academic and State Department professional Anne-Marie Slaughter – blew the leotard off Superwoman.  Slaughter’s widely read piece soundly exposes the professional woman/wonder wife/marvelous mother as the exhausted and conflicted real person so many of us know through personal and vicarious experience.  Slaughter slays the myth of progressive feminism that women “are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot)” and blames, instead, the chimera progressive feminism crafted at the expense of my generation of women.  Remarkably, Slaughter attributes her conversion in perspective to a realization that she could not hawk this fundamentally flawed feminist image to the next generation of women.

Slaughter left her power position in DC because of “my desire to be with my family and my conclusion that juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible.”  “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” is a loving – though still confused – lament over changes that might make work and family easier to juggle for women in elite leadership positions.  Unwittingly, Slaughter actually explains why no set of changes will alleviate the conflict.  Indeed, of the many changes Slaughter tosses about – work from home, irregular “stair steps” as career path, matching work and school schedules and freezing eggs as a protection against declining fertility – none would have derailed her decision to go home.

In real life today, women have choices that men simply don’t have.  Having more choices means having to make choices that men do not have to make, choices that arise solely from our gender based differences.   Slaughter gives voice to the New Feminist assertion that gender equality means respecting and supporting women’s feminine reality, not re-engineering women in the mold of men or pretending that women’s life choices mirror those of men.   Slaughter’s explanation of her decision to “go home” is so beautifully, uniquely feminine, it’s worth quoting:

But I realized that I didn’t just need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to go home.  I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.  But also irreplaceable years for me to enjoy the simple pleasures of parenting—baseball games, piano recitals, waffle breakfasts, family trips, and goofy rituals.  My older son is doing very well these days, but even when he gives us a hard time, as all teenagers do, being home to shape his choices and help him make good decisions is deeply satisfying.

Even as Slaughter testily pokes ideas that might ease the balance of work and family, she recognizes the fundamental flaw in setting as ideal work-family combinations men favor – a flaw that academics like Elizabeth Fox-Genovese identified as New Feminism developed.  Namely, women are fundamentally different than men in their orientation to family and children and the human person.  These differences reflect a natural, gender-based concern for human well-being that often conflicts and most certainly contrasts with the male model of measuring success through individual ambition and pursuit.   Indeed, Slaughter points out the much higher frequency of women leaders who forego having families compared to their male colleagues.  As many of us know firsthand, this choice often does not signify that women in consuming leadership roles don’t want families but, rather, they embrace the human component of their office and profession (as well as friends and relatives) as their family.  Slaughter’s description is, again, so feminine in tone, it is worth quoting.

Still, the proposition that women can have high-powered careers as long as their husbands or partners are willing to share the parenting load equally (or disproportionately) assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them.  In my experience, that is simply not the case.

Here I step onto treacherous ground, mined with stereotypes.  From years of conversations and observations, however, I’ve come to believe that men and women respond quite differently when problems at home force them to recognize that their absence is hurting a child, or at least that their presence would likely help.  I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.

When I described the choice between my children and my job to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, she said exactly what I felt: “There’s really no choice.”  She wasn’t referring to social expectations, but to a maternal imperative felt so deeply that the “choice” is reflexive.

It is that “maternal imperative” – which Betty Friedan cavalierly dismissed when she called women the persons who happen to bear children – that “sameness” feminists deny, decry and demand destroyed that women might better measure up to male-defined success.  As Salon.com predictably responded to Slaughter’s article:

We are still very much in the midst of reversing eons of gendered injustice . . . Backlash politics . . . pushes back against every female stride, every achievement, and there’s still enormous effort to put into righting gender . . . injustices that make true equality elusive. A document like Slaughter’s offers a valuable testament to these remaining challenges. But its presentation as a deadening diagnosis of insurmountability is antifeminist, anti-woman, cheap and reactionary.

And that sucks.

Well, yes, I suppose from the progressive feminist point of view, Slaughter’s very real description of women as female beings, deeply and differently moved in relation to the human person than male beings, “sucks” – the way my sons say losing a ballgame or getting a “C” sucks.  New Feminists don’t see it that way.  New Feminism rejects the assertion that gender equality requires socially engineering our young women into the life styles, measurements and values used by men.  New Feminism rather embraces our “maternal imperative” and the feminine values that flow from that imperative as a “deeply satisfying” pursuit for women, a badly needed benefit to humankind.  NewFeminism.co welcomes the discussion initiated by Slaughter as a long overdue affirmation of the feminine as truly equal.

It was an all girls school retreat in ninth grade.  We were woken up around seven in the morning to start our day.  Girls shuffled into breakfast in t-shirts and sweatpants, un-showered and un-pampered.  After sitting down one of the girls in my class who, at the time, I didn’t know that well, turned to me and said your eyes have like a natural eye liner on them.  That’s so cool!  (Of course she assumed that like the other girls, I obviously wasn’t wearing makeup under this circumstance.)  I thanked her, hesitantly, and then spent the whole morning wondering whether I should tell her the truth.

You see, ten minutes prior I had run to the bathroom to coat my eyes in that little black stick I relied on so fervently.  It went everywhere with me.  I doubt I had a wallet on that retreat.  Maybe not even a cell phone.  But I had my eyeliner.  And I would make sure no one would see me without it.

Because my eyes were tired.  Always.  No matter how much sleep I got.  No matter how healthy I was.  They were too small.  Too weak.  Dark circles.  Puffiness.  Everything you don’t want your eyes to be mine were without that eyeliner.  Later, I found out that I was applying it wrong anyway (heavy line underneath my eye, nothing on the lid) but I was sure it made a difference.  And I was sure I was unpresentable without it.

A lucky few women may be immune to such obsessions or insecurities.  They may wear no makeup and feel great, or they may wear it when they feel like it but have no insecurities about when it comes off.  But my guess is that most of us have the equivalent of what eyeliner was to me in ninth grade.  We have some sort of mask — foundation, eye shadow, a hair straightener, fake tanning lotion — something, or many things, that we become enslaved to because of what we see as an imperfection.  And all this talk of every girl is beautiful— well we hear it, we may believe it, but we still find that one imperfection to be the exception to the rule.  Yes, okay, I’m beautiful, we say, but I have to get my hair relaxed. Have you seen it when its not?  Or I know that I can be pretty without eye makeup but I have terrible acne scars and I would not be caught dead in public without covering them up. 

I’ve said these things.  We’ve all said these things.  And God bless the woman who hasn’t.  But why do we say them?

I must clarify that there seem to be two circumstances under which a woman wears makeup (or straightens her hair or curls it or does any of these things.)  The first circumstance is really awesome and is not the one that I was in in ninth grade.  This woman wears makeup because she is an artist or she appreciates art and she sees makeup as a beautiful art, which it is.  Makeup, for her, is a way to adorn a beautiful picture with a beautiful frame.  A makeup artist then, is a master framer.  And the framing he or she does is a beautiful and good thing.

But the second reason for wearing makeup comes from the opposite impulse.  From the woman who says I am not beautiful, therefore I need makeup to cover me up and change me.  We say this because we want to be perfect.  And for many women, perfection consists of being physically perfect.  We have this little drive inside us that pushes us in the age old race to be the fairest of them all.  It’s biological, it’s a shame — but it’s our tendency, some more than others.  But we are more than biology.  And we know that Snow White was beautiful primarily because of her pure heart and because she was not concerned, as the queen was, with looking in the mirror.  I don’t know if Snow White wore eyeliner, but I’m sure that if she did, she did not have the same anxiety I had when I was without it.

I wore eyeliner because I was scared that I would not be loved for the way I was made. And that’s what we all want.  To be loved.  I had a little panic after the incident in ninth grade where I started wondering if I would wear makeup around my husband (for after all, I had to wear it in front of my closest friends.)  I decided that I needed to stop my addiction before I met him so that I would feel comfortable without it around him.  A weird reason to stop wearing makeup perhaps, but thank goodness for it because it freed me.  I started to see my own beauty, and in the process became a little bit more comfortable with myself.  It wasn’t easy.  No addiction, no matter how insignificant, is easy to stop.  But it’s always worth the pain.

Makeup and the many ways we clothe ourselves can become addictions.  And if they are, we have to work to reverse that because the addiction will destroy our own self-confidence and even hide our beauty.  Because masks hide.  Makeup should be an adornment, and not a mask.  For while we may think that the mask hides the things we want it to hide, often those are the things that help complete the picture.  The frizzy hair. The birth mark.  The sleepy eyes.  And the people who are irked by the exposure of such qualities usually are only so because they wish they had the courage to expose their own.

I by all means do not want to suggest that women should stop wearing makeup.  That would be like saying we should ban gold frames so that painters who have no frames won’t feel insecure about their pictures.  But I do think that many women would benefit from sort of a makeup (or hair straightening, tanning, etc) fast.  We will never be immune to insecurities, but if we can present the things we are most insecure about to the world without shame, what confidence may arise and what beauty we may find within ourselves! It’s a struggle.  The first time you walk out in a crowd without your mask, no matter how small of a mask it may be, you will feel ugly.  And you will feel judged.  But you will learn to see your own beauty and in turn, how to properly frame it.  The coolest thing is that other people see too.  I can’t count the number of men who have said they love it when women don’t wear makeup.  I don’t think is because makeup looks bad.  Makeup can be so beautiful.  I think it’s because men like us to be confident.  They like us to be courageous in our own skin.  Not just men — everybody likes that.  We were made to be that way.  We were not made to walk by the mirror on the wall and kneel down and beg it to tell us we’re the fairest.  No.  We were made to walk by the mirror and look in it and say, without arrogance, but simply with admiration, wow, what a beautiful masterpiece.

So here’s to mascara and here’s to dresses and here’s to earrings (what wonderful things they are.)  And here’s to the way they frame the picture.  But let us do our best to never let them hide it.  Because the woman is too beautiful for hiding.

Anonymous Father’s Day “Should be required viewing for anyone considering donating or selling their sperm, as well as for anyone contemplating using this method of conceiving a child.”
  — Kevin D, Sperm Donor

On Father’s Day holiday, we can’t help but think of those who do not know their fathers.  Some don’t know their fathers because they are adopted, because their fathers walked away, or because their fathers have died. But others do not know their fathers because their families have been intentionally structured so that they cannot know him—they were conceived through anonymous sperm donation.

It’s easy to think of sperm donation as nothing more than a way to help infertile couples have a baby.  It can be difficult for those of us who were not conceived this way to understand what it’s like, and how Father’s Day is a time of mixed emotions.

Hundreds of thousands of donor-conceived people have been born, all around the world, in the two hundred plus years that sperm donor conception has been going on.  Only recently have the ethics and the effects of donor conception begun receiving close scrutiny.  Often the questions are being raised by those who know they were donor conceived.

What is it like to grow up not knowing who your biological father is or if you have any half-siblings?  What is it like to find out that the man you thought was your dad is not your biological father, that your biological father donated his sperm and is known only by a number?  What do donor conceived people think about their conception stories, the money aspect of buying and selling sperm in order to conceive them?  And how have the anonymity and secrecy involved in donor conception affected them?

These are the questions that spark the conversation in our film Anonymous Father’s Day.

In the film, we state that it is difficult to know just how prevalent the practice of sperm donation is.  In fact, the latest research shows that it is simply impossible to know how many children are born from sperm donation each year.  The number most often cited is 30,000 per year, but that number is based on an estimate from 1988.  There is do doubt that the practice has increased since 1988, but there is almost no tracking or monitoring of donors or of the children conceived through sperm donation.  We cannot not know the true number.

In addition, sperm donation is a global enterprise.  Sperm from a man inCaliforniais used to fertilize an egg from a woman who lives inEastern Europe.  The resulting embryo is transferred into the womb of a woman inIndia.  A couple travels from their home in London to India for a vacation so that they can be nearby when “their” baby is born.

This convoluted scenario is now commonplace.  Sadly.

Many donor-conceived children are never told their conception story and are not able to be a part of the growing conversation about the practice, ethics, and impact of donor conception.  Those who do know speak of “genealogical bewilderment,” attempting to describe the feelings that come from having little or no information about their donor parent.  They have a deep longing to know where they come from, who they look like, who they belong to. It is a longing to know the missing other half of them.

Unfortunately, when it comes to infertility, family building, and reproductive technologies, the focus is often on those wanting to have a child rather than on the child they want to have.  Reproductive technology has advanced without enough serious reflection on the health and the well being of the children created.  These children wonder if anyone considered them, their needs, their desires.

The conversation around donor conception is growing.  Many donor-conceived people maintain their own active social network communities through blogs and Facebook groups.  Studies such as My Daddy’s Name is Donor and work being done with the Donor Sibling Registry are gathering and examining the experiences of large groups of donor-conceived people.

Donor-conceived people scour the Internet and school yearbooks and cold call fertility doctors and clinics looking for any information or details on their beginnings, their family tree, and medical history.  Many use DNA testing as part of the search for their unknown parent.

While their stories and family situations may be different, the issues surrounding donor conception in the lives of those created this way are often similar.  Many talk about secrets and mystery, about feelings of loss and abandonment, and about wanting to know their biological fathers and that whole side of his—of their—family.

Barry Stevens, one of the donor-conceived people interviewed in Anonymous Father’s Day, captures it well when he says, “Secrets are like land mines, you know.  They can go off at any time, but until they go off you’re sort of treading around them.”

Donor conception impacts not only the donor conceived person, but his or her entire family, and ultimately, all of us.  This Father’s Day let us consider those who have been intentionally separated from the man who gave them life.

Matthew Eppinette contributed to this post; he is the associate producer and co-writer of Anonymous Father’s Day and new media manager at The Center for Bioethics and Culture.