What if I don’t want to be sexy?

Let’s see if I can get through this post about body image and issues without telling you what kind of body I have, and you see if you’re comfortable not knowing at the end of it, okay?

Much as I try not to be Twitter incrowdy (my excuse for never blogging), this did arise from a Twitter “event”. One idiot was promoting “managed anorexia” because he felt only thin was valuable, and a lot of great people responded by trying to get #curvesaresexy trending. Then some less great people started labelling thin bodies as unsexy, and some other people objected and…

This is how it goes, though. Bodies – pretty much invarably women’s bodies – are where the discussion is at. Whether we value curves, bones, or all kinds of bodies, women’s bodies are a site for discussion in a way that men’s are not. And I don’t think that changing the object is as helpful as changing the subject. Laurie Penny put it beautifully in her moving piece on recovering from anorexia:

[T]he real breakthrough came when I stopped defining myself merely by my dress size. Once I started to believe that my worth as a person had nothing to do with how my body looked to other people, I began to give myself permission to take up the space I needed.

Put it like this: if offered the chance to never be treated as a body-object again, on the condition that neither would anyone ever find me sexy again, I’d take it. That is, of course, from the vantage point of being a mother, and therefore devoid of public sexuality in most environments anyway. (Seriously – for a start, it takes about 12 times the effort to communicate that I am, in fact, a lesbian, once people know that I’m a mother.) And I’m in my mid-30s, so moving past the realm of mainstream sexy, anyway. But not moving past the point where my body is a defining factor in how I am perceived, how I perceive myself, and where who I am is positioned in culture. Worthy of notice or not worthy of notice, that judgement in itself requires that my body be noticed. Unsexy, mumsy, frumpy, dykey, MILF, invisible because physically unremarkable, all of those require an evaluation of my body.

And I would just rather not. I don’t want to be a mainstream or a countercultural or a fetishistic sex object. I want to be a subject, and my subject, largely, is not my own body, or even my own sexuality. I want my daughter to stop thinking it’s important to call me “pretty”. I want her to stop thinking it’s important when people call her that. I want to remove the instinct I have right now to tell you that, of course, she is beautiful. Can I tell you she’s valuable? That you are? That I am? Can we leave it at that?

The forces of darkness

I’ve always thought of patriarchy (and am starting to think of kyriarchy) as a colonising force that has, literally, camped out in my brain (okay, not literally camped, but is literally present in the structures of my brain). I can send rebel forces in to resist those ideas when they arise; I can take land back; I can build my own ideas and clear space for those of others. But I can also, sometimes, be overwhelmed by the power of those forces that a lot of people over a lot of time have sent in. They hold their positions fiercely, and when my guard is down, they take their opportunity.

And becoming a mother was one of those opportunities. It’s all so new, every little thing such a new and specific challenge, and, frankly, I’m always so damn tired. To be the rebel mother, I have not only to be a mother, but also to be a mother in ways that, at most, I’ve only seen demonstrated by one or two people, or have only read about, or have only extrapolated from things I believe in other areas of my life. And if the rebel mothering forces fail, the ground will be held by powerful, culture-wide ideas I’ve been taught and have absorbed all my life.

I had smugly thought that being in a same-sex relationship meant I got a free pass on having to deal with gendered dynamics at home. And, yeah, my partner and I were together for nine years before we had children of ours (she has older children from a previous relationship), and in that time, we didn’t have gender-founded issues to address between us very often.

But then, I gave birth to our two children, and gave up working and studying (and then worked part-time). And I was tired, and I was Mummy, and I couldn’t remember how to question what a Mummy is. Ah, responds the colonised brain, a Mummy does everything for her child, and is happy to. A Mummy respects the working-for-pay partner as “really” working, and counts her own hard labour as something else. A Mummy doesn’t seek to be listened to as if her day really counted. A Mummy takes the day shift, and the night shift, and the organising, remembering, managing of the household, and thinks she isn’t using her brain.

I hate bathing my children. I seriously considered not writing that, because it’s supposed to be such fun. But I’ve always hated it. My partner, on the other hand, loves it. But for a long time, I thought I had to do it, at least some of the time, because it’s totally unacceptable for a Mummy to be absent from a whole area of parenting. It was a year or more later that it occurred to me to ask: why? Well, because I’m only doing this little tiny thing, mothering, not using my expensive education and my apparently-atrophied brain, so I must do it right, must love it all, must not burden the proper worker with tasks that are necessary rather than a fun extra to the kids’ day.

I’m working pretty hard now not to be The Mummy (a sort of bandaged zombie, right?). The howling toddler, the stroppy four-year-old, those belong to both of us (and to their dads) just as much as the joyous zaniness of two small kids in the dressing-up basket does. The broken nights, the vile nappies, the food on the floor, the dried-up felt tip pens, the friendship drama: we’re a family, and the children should expect their love, care, comfort and discipline from all their parents.

And I have a daughter, and I have a son. What will they think a Mummy is, if they come to be one, or come to be the partner of one? Will it be easier for them to resist?

As I left for work one day last week, Firstborn said mournfully: “You’re not nice to your children and you don’t spend enough time with us. I decide that [Partner] is my biological mummy.”

After I’d finished trying not to laugh at her, we discussed how my bio-motherhood is immutable, but that doesn’t mean I have to be the only one who spends time caring for her; likewise, because Partner isn’t Mummy (usually, though terms vary) doesn’t mean she can’t be the one who’s simply There. Or, indeed, that one or other Daddy can’t be that person, as well.

So I like to think I sent a small rebel platoon into her brain. I hope her forces are stronger than mine. I’m her mother, after all, and that’s my job.

Inheritances and taffeta

Just a quick link for you from the excreble Guardian Family supplement:
Gay Godfathers Rule

Oh, where to begin? With the stereotype of gay men as childless, rich and brimming with “good taste” and bonhomie? With the cheerful encouragement by the mothers of the writer’s (three-out-of-four) female godchildren that he will, better than any actual woman, police conventional femininity? With the fact that the article might be mocking the parents who think in this stupid way about their fabulous gay friends, but is probably dripping with self-hate? Because he talks about his status as a qualified counsellor and the experience of growing up gay and isolated, but the quotes from the parents are all about inheritances and taffeta.

My kids have gay actual fathers, as well as, in Secondborn’s case, a gay Oddfather.  Just occasionally, people take my comment that one of Firstborn’s dads is much better at plaiting her hair than I am, and run with it. Gay men have such flair for these things, don’t they? I bet she’ll have lovely clothes as she grows up. They’re sorely disappointed when I point out that he works in tech support and keeps  a pile of What Car magazine in the downstairs toilet. Not to mention that he’s a good feminist ally.

I still have a shred of hope that this is a belated April Fool or, perhaps more likely, that all of the Guardian weekend supplements have been infiltrated by performance artists literally making a mockery of liberal Middle England. If not, I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished bashing my head off the wall.

(I can’t, in all seriousness, actually manage to write “hat tip”, but I got the link and a healthy dose of articulate rage from the fabulous Glitzfrau.)

Click to gender

That’s it. My relationship with Early Learning Centre has been strained for some time  now (see previous post on the pink/blue issue), but I’ve finally decided to end it. You see, it’s the “filter by gender” thing. Yes, I know it’s been there for a while, but today I’m trying to buy a tea set for Secondborn’s second birthday, and this time, it’s personal.

“Dressing up and roleplay”
Items for girls: 118
Items for boys: 73
Items for both: 72

“Learning and books”
Items for girls: 212
Items for boys: 203
Items for both: 201

“Cars, trains and construction”
Items for girls: 81
Items for boys: 122
Items for both: 81

I particularly like the cases where “both” is fewer than the smaller of the “boys”/”girls” options. You can’t just add them together. Some of that pink stuff is so toxic it can cause penises to spontaneously drop off. And, yes, imaginative play and reading are for girls, while spatial skills are for boys.

ELC is exclusively for kids under 5. At what point, with what evidence, will people figure out that “natural” gendered preferences could be fully explained by this shit?

It’s not just them, of course. Loads of sites offer gender-filtered search, or boys’ and girls’ categories, particularly when it comes to imaginative play or dressing up toys. There’s something odd about parents/ other toy-buyers not being trusted to perpetrate gender stereotypes themselves, isn’t there? Anyway. I’m boycotting. It’s over between me and ELC, but also all those other crappy infant gender programming sites.  Boycotts’r'us.

I’m reading Naomi Stadlen’s What Mothers Do – especially when it looks like nothing and I recommend it to anyone. Particularly if you’ve ever cared for a baby. The relief of reading that just possibly you’re not wasting your life, and that “I haven’t really done anything today” might just mean “I can’t explain what I’ve been doing.”

But, obviously, I read it with gender glasses on, because that’s what I do with everything in the world. Okay, the author says she refers to the generic baby as “he” to distinguish it from the generic mother “she”. But the two pieces of information she gives about the babies of the mothers she quotes are the baby’s age, and their sex. They are referred to in the anonymised quotes as “G” or “B” according to sex.

The thing is, I would find it distracting not to know the sex of the baby someone’s talking about. Even though, as the mother of a girl and a boy, I empathise (or not) with what they’re saying with respect to both my children, or either of them (and in that case, mostly because of the child’s birth-order place), it’s information I feel I need in order to be able to move on with the content of the text.

Frustratingly, this was more or less the topic of the PhD I abandoned after having Firstborn. The more I raise kids, the more I’m aware of it. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do something that doesn’t look like nothing and finish that.

Anyway. Stadlen’s book is one of those you just want to quote every line of. I won’t. But it’s great, so far, though a little inclined to the: “Ooh, traditional societies! We must learn from the savages!” thing.

Quibble 2: the book only acknowledges the existence of single mothers and mothers with a male partner. I have books like this, which strike me as true as a mother who is pretty much like most others, and books which affirm my identity as a lesbian and feminist mother, with pride in both those identities. But to be sad, to suffer from post-natal depression, to struggle with motherhood, to feel isolated and failing – these are not things that lesbian mothers do. Or not in books, anyway. We can’t admit that what we wanted might be hard; sometimes too hard. We can’t ever say “take these children away!” because we fear, more rationally than most, that someone might.

So there you go. I’m a feminist, queer mother. I have PND. I sometimes fervently wish I could throw my children out of the window and run away. I love my kids. I’m probably as decent a mother as the average straight woman. But it’s hard to admit that I’m not better, because we’re like any oppressed group: you’ve got to be twice as good to be seen as half as worthy.

Also, the lesbian mother books? Are boring, mostly.

“When I grow up I want to be a butterfly,” says Firstborn.

“Really?” I respond. “Well, perhaps you will.”

“I’ll go into a chrysalis and I’ll be a butterfly.”

“Or maybe a moth.”

-

“When I grow up I want to be a fireman,” say Firstborn.

And my instinct is to say something like “Yes, you could be a firefighter.”

-

And later, I’m singing “Brown-eyed girl” to Secondborn, only I’ve changed the words to “Brown-eyed boy.”

-

So what is it about gender? Why can I easily let my kids play that they’ll grow up to be a different species, but my instinct is to “correct” them when they play that they’ll grow up a different gender? I’m probably more relaxed than most, in that Firstborn’s saying “I’ll grow up to be a man” doesn’t get “corrected”, but it’s the smaller daily things that I let slip by – the smaller things that build up to constructing a child’s world where the only thing that isn’t mutable is gender.

Of course, there’s a feminist pressure to remove the “man” ending in order to make it clear to Firstborn that women do the job too. But how to balance that with the conscious desire to leave gender boundaries a bit blurrier than the rest of the world seems to?

And that doesn’t explain the song lyrics, does it? What’s wrong with singing “Brown-eyed girl” to Secondborn? I sang it to Firstborn, and her eyes are blue.

Things that are pink and blue

Um, yeah. A bit of a hiatus there while I figured out what I want to do with this blog. But I’m back now, and since it’s December, I want to talk about Christmas shopping. Specifically, Christmas shopping for things for kids.

This is a thing for girls. It says “Ideal for a child‘s room”, but it has a glittery pink stand and a picture of a girl on the packaging.

This, however, is a thing for boys. It says so right there on the packaging. Which is a shame, because Firstborn would love these toys.

These are things for boys and things for girls. The picture’s a bit blurry (sorry), but there are tape recorders and electric keyboards, identical but for colour and decoration (pink with flowers; blue with circle-y things). The packaging on each shows girls and boys respectively; posed almost identically in what is clearly the same set. Look here for a nice clear illustration.

The final proof comes at the checkout, by the way. It might be “Cool Keyboard – blue” on the website, but take it to the cash desk in the shop and I’ll guarantee it comes up as “keyboard boys”. I know because I bought Firstborn this easel once.

This one’s interesting, though: the pink is a “Winter 4 piece outfit” while the blue is a “Boys 5 piece outfit.”

This relates back to the earlier stuff, doesn’t it? Stuff for girls only needs a girl on the packaging or a pink element to be off-limits for boys. But stuff for boys, like the Tonka toys, needs to be explicitly labelled, because “boy” isn’t as untouchable for girls as “girl” is for boys.

[Personal anecdote breakout: while people always assumed Firstborn was a boy when she wasn't dressed in pink (which she pretty much never was), I never had anyone modify her blue clothes by force. Secondborn, when wearing faux-leopard-print bootees with pink lining, has had total strangers on the bus pull his trousers over the bootee cuffs to hide the pink.]

I’m sure I’ll return to this topic soon. I’m very sure, because I already have more shoddy camera-phone pictures to share.