He was undaunted. "Aww...I'm making you blush!" I scoffed, contemplated murder, and smiled. Pregnant women, you see, are expected to welcome public comments and backhanded compliments on their appearance. Otherwise they're bitches and cunts; I know, because the few times I've responded with snark, I've been threatened with violence or called a sexist name.
Women, people of color, people labeled disabled, and most other disenfranchised groups are routinely expected to accept a completely nonsensical proposition: They are ruled by their hormones, genes, or biology. That's why they can't be fully trusted to be rational. Yet they must also tolerate incessant intrusive comments from strangers. Black women are told that it's a compliment for strangers to touch their hair. Women are expected to smile when commanded to do so. Black men are expected to be ingratiating at all times, lest someone mistake them for criminals.
We tell disenfranchised groups they are crazy and irrational, then use their reactions to other people's irrational and harmful behavior as evidence that they are indeed--surprise!--crazy and irrational.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the many backhanded compliments pregnant women receive. Telling a woman she looks good "for a pregnant woman" takes for granted that she is unattractive because she is pregnant. Many pregnant women struggle with body image; after all, we live in a society that tells us that women who aren't thin are disgusting, and pregnancy makes it impossible to be thin. Apparently that's not enough. Because some folks want to remind us that, hey, we may be attractive, but pregnancy really lowers our overall beauty.
There's another, more subtle form of sexism at work: the notion that sexuality must end with motherhood. If we admit that pregnant women are attractive, then we must admit that mothers are sexual beings. That's not acceptable to a society that so stridently embraces the Madonna-whore dichotomy.
Men often excuse the objectification of non-pregnant women on the grounds that it's "natural," or that men are "innately visual." An entire field of pseudoscience, evolutionary psychology, has dedicated itself to proving that our social norms are hard-wired. Evolutionary psychologists will happily tell you that thin women are genetically superior, that men can't help their philandering ways, and that a face that aligns with the beauty myth somehow also correlates to greater fertility. Because...evolution. Yet at the very moment when women begin to advertise their evolutionary value, when they have proven that they are indeed fertile and healthy, they are told that they're inherently unattractive.
So, if someone in your life is pregnant, it's really fucking simple to not destroy their self-esteem. You shouldn't need rules. But if you do:
- Don't comment on unfamiliar women's appearance. Just don't. This sort of interruption instructs the woman that your desire to objectify her is more important than whatever she's doing. And if you don't interrupt women to comment on their appearance, then you never have to worry that you're going to say something hurtful.
- Quit treating pregnancy as a form of ugliness. Women do not look good "for being pregnant." They just look good.
- Any time you feel the need to comment on someone's pregnancy, ask yourself if the comment would be acceptable if you were making that comment about another minority group. Replace "pregnant woman" with "black person," "immigrant," or "poor person," and it becomes quite clear how offensive it is to assert that "You look great for a pregnant woman" or "You're really smart for someone who is pregnant."
I really, really shouldn't have to write this.
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