Last night while watching the Oscars with a group of friends (the worst Oscar telecast I can ever remember seeing, and I watch them religiously!) I remarked that it said a lot about Natalie Portman that she failed to thank her co-stars Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey in her acceptance speech for Best Actress.
A female friend said something that I have heard a lot in recent years. She said, “Oh, she just has pregnancy brain.”
Hmm. My first response is to think, “Well, she was nominated months ago and she was a front-runner the whole time. Am I to assume that she put no thought into her acceptance speech? I don’t think so. Winning an Academy Award is the absolute highest achievement of any movie actress. Natalie P. has been in the business since she was a child. She was no dark horse in this race. As a professional actress, she should have carefully considered this important moment in her career and I assume, therefore, that she did. I do not attribute her omission to some enfeebling of the brain brought about by pregnancy but by either nerves or just choice.”
So what are we saying when we casually throw around terms like “pregnancy brain?”
What we are really saying is that pregnancy is a detriment to female intelligence.
Is that something any of us want to claim?
After everything our foremothers have been through to fight against the notion that women are dim creatures best governed by men, don’t we owe them more than to toss around expressions like “pregnancy brain?” Wouldn’t you want to sock a man if he dared to say that? Sure you would. Then why is it okay for women to throw it around?
I strongly encourage you all to read Carol Tavris’ excellent and insightful book, The Mismeasure of Woman. Another good one is Barbara Ehrenreich’s For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women. The Tavris book really changed my life.
A few years ago I got jumped on by a bunch of minister mothers for saying that there was NO excuse whatsoever for a clergy woman to show up to officiate at a funeral looking disheveled with her stole completely askew and her hair thrown up in a clip and looking a mess. Even though none of us knew if that particular young woman minister HAD children or not, those mamas attacked me in sisterly solidarity with a hypothetical mom! I held my ground. I said, and I maintain, that it takes literally 60 to 120 seconds to check a mirror or to take a few deep breaths and check our robes, stoles and hair before we leave our robing room to preside.
Even if we are skidding, out of breath, from caring for a sick child who has barfed all over us to the church, we still owe it to the deceased and their families (or to the couple getting married, or to the worshiping congregation) to take those brief moments to compose ourselves before officiating at any rite of passage or worship service.
That’s called being a professional.
It’s being aware and responsible.
It is not inflicting our sense of crisis and frantic energy to the people whom we have been called — and are being paid — to serve.
Because I assume that women at any stage of their fertility or child-rearing are capable of being responsible professionals and refuse to believe that are deprived of our intellect or common sense due to menstruation, menopause or gestation, I try very hard not to use terms like “pregnancy brain” or “PMS.” Human beings are complicated microorganisms. We are all — whatever our biological gender — under the influence of hormones, life changes, physical transformations (beware, too, of over-using “senior moment!”) and the aging process all our lives. While pregnancy certainly affects the brain, it is not, for many women, a debilitating condition. When we encourage the perception of pregnancy as a disease or hindrance of our cognitive functioning, we are playing right into sexist assumptions and very old, entrenched views of women as the “weaker sex.”
This has been your friend PeaceBang with a consciousness-raising reminder: Chicks do not lose their brains when they have a bun in the oven. Please consider how casual usage of expressions like “pregnancy brain” promote the idea that they do. Thanks for reading.
It would be super cool if moms would post comments about things they achieved while pregnant. I really think we’re in an era of scaring the crap out of pregnant women : don’t eat this, don’t do that, this is dangerous, don’t go there, don’t don’t don’t. The old paternalism is very much alive and well and with us.
The lovely Miss Portman and her ugly curtain tassel earrings by Tiffany.
