THE GOOD MOTHER

Motherhood is a very complex, heated and complicated discussion. "A history of American Motherhood" gave a great overview of what has happened in the past and what is currently trending in our world right now. For most women, once she bears a child, her entire world shifts. There is no going back to being just you, now you have someone else very tiny and completely dependent on you. And although this can be very stressful and time-consuming, i believe it is one of the most fulfilling things a female can do with her life. Fathers too, i shouldn't leave them out. I have seen my husband get all teary eyed over our children many times when they melt your heart in a way that you never imagined would happen. Now, back to the point. The pod-cast by Backstory Radio was very interesting and educational. If you don't know much about how mothers have came to be who they are today, i highly recommend you listening, its only 55 minutes. At the beginning of the discussion Linda Kerber addresses a pivotal point in history, the 1795 commencement speech. It was stated that the future of our world was in the hands of the fair ones. Although this did have some negative connotation to it by acknowledging the "fair" ones, i think it was the beginning of a change in how womens roles were viewed. Women do shape the future by how they raise their children. It makes me think of the cheesy Michael Jackson song "I believe the children are our future"...haha. But in all seriousness, it is so true. Even if you are completely an egalitarian couple and do everything equally, there is no way to equally birth a child or breastfeed a child, and no matter how hard you fight the traditional roles, somehow they sneak into your daily life anyway, i personally believe it is inevitable.
Towards the end of the discussion the Guys decided to inform the public on how Mother's Day came to be. This story was so heartwarming and rather tragic in the end. Anna Maria Jarvis was a femminist, activist and socialist in her own time, before any of these words had definitions. She would go out rallying for women to come together, and she nursed both sides of the civil war back to health. She was  truly an inspiration, especially to her daughter; Anna Marie Jarvis. The younger Anna loved her mother so much, she followed in her footsteps and continued her mothers cause until the day she died.  In 1914, Jarvis finally had gotten Mother's Day to be a nationally recognized holiday in West Virginia. What an accomplishment of a woman at that time! She wanted mothers nationwide to be acknowledged for their hard work and dedication, but what happened was not what she intended. Within her lifetime, many females wrote to her thanking her for creating such a day to honor their mothers, and Jarvis; who never beared her own child, became furious. The whole point of the holiday had become commercialized and marketed and profited from. She didn't want people sending her stuff, she created the day to honor her own mother, not for people to honor her. In the end, she petitioned to remove the holiday she created, because the public did not respond the way she intended them to. By loving their own mothers and showing their gratitude and appreciation for them and their hard work. It was a very sad ending for the younger Jarvis, who's life ended in a state-run home.

The Last Abortion Clinic

The Frontline documentary "The Last Abortion Clinic"stirs up many questions of morals and ethics within America, and i think will always be a heated debate.  I was completely baffled by what had happened in Mississippi, which was the main topic of discussion during the film. Beginning in the early 90's, a group of pro-life activists started challenging Roe vs Wade, which eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court, where they discovered that they had 4 votes to overturn the right given to women. Due to this surprising split within the court, many anti-choice groups started pushing legislation to change their state laws. Mississippi has always been an anti-choice (this term was used by the pro-choicers, and i particularly like it) state with deep republican southern roots. Due to the split decision of the court, they decided instead of revoking women's rights, they would just change the wording of the law to dealing with an "undue burden". This then caused a drastic change in the anti-choicers way of protesting and lobbying.  By the end of the film, there was and is only one abortion clinic left in the entire state of Mississippi. Most women wont even approach it either because of the protesters and the ridicule they will receive by entering. I find this very sad and disturbing. I am pro-choice and not one bit ashamed of it. Every women has a right to decide what to do with her own body, even if it is having an abortion. I got pregnant at the age of 20, while going to school full-time and working full-time, not to mention the father and i weren't even officially dating. i had the opportunity to make the choice on my own, and i chose to keep my child, and eventually married his father, and we have been together for 8 years now. But when i was in that panicked state, i was grateful to have the CHOICE, the option to not possibly ruin the rest of my life due to one mistake. And i firmly believe every woman deserves that choice. In the film, it showed little teenagers having children and not getting medical attention until they were 6 months along, just because they couldn't get an abortion due to the distance they had to travel. So instead, they just didn't think about it and continued on with their lives, drinking, smoking etc. and not wanting to face the fact of having a child. The children do not deserve to come into the world where their parents are not going to care for them. There are enough babies out there needing homes, there is no need to bring ones into the world that are unwanted.

The Girl Model

"The Girl Model"
The documentary "The Girl Model" was intriguing yet sad and disappointing all at the same time. The beginning of the film captured a scene of far too many young girls putting their body images on the line just to be scrutinized and judged. Within the first five minutes of the film, it showed a sixteen year old girl standing in front of three scouts. The male scout asks her about her blemished face, and she responded that she had just started her period and the acne was only temporary. After a moment, he told the other two scouts that he felt she looked older than sixteen and none of the contractors would want her because of her mature look. This seemed absolutely absurd and disgusting to me. This first clip validated all of the "body projects" Brumberg talked about in her amazing book "The Body Project", by acknowledging the obsession girls have with their figure, their menstruation, and "acne vulgaris", which was thought to be from sexual derangement during the early twentieth century (Brumberg, 63).174


Most of this documentary was about a young thirteen year old girl from Siberia named Nadya. Her family had fallen on hard times and she somehow ended up auditioning for a modeling job. The scouts, one of which was an ex-model herself; decided that Nadya was a good candidate for Japan due to her innocent and young face and features. Although the agency "Switch Modeling" had promised her at least two jobs, she went home after her contract was up, never receiving these 2 jobs, landing her family further in debt then before.  Naydya said at the end of the documentary that this experience had made her more mature and she didn't feel like a child anymore. These feelings were because of the rough transition from young girl to young adult she went through while in Japan ultimately by herself. In my opinion recruiting girls this young could not only put them into sexist roles far too early in life, but also emotionally and mentally cripple them for life. If a young girl is not mature enough to handle a situation brought to her, it can have devastating results. I know at one point during the film, Ashley, the main narrator for the film did mention that if they didn't get to the girls first, who knew where they would end up. Im not quite sure the situation in Siberia, but if they have such a problem with young girls falling into prostitution and such behaviors, why haven't they implemented more female oriented classes/activities for these young impressionable girls? Overall the film was interesting, i just didn't quite agree with what was happening within the film.