Somehow I was not one of the tens of thousands of people who have reacted to Maura Kelly's anti-fat-person blog entry on Marie Claire. The magazine has received 28,000 e-mails about the piece; the initial post itself has garnered 3,000 comments. It's in the Daily News, HuffPo, washingtonpost.com, etc.
Basically, she wrote a hateful post about how it's "aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room"--yes, that is a direct quote--and how even though she has a few friends who could be called plump, she would be "grossed out if I had to watch [fat people] doing anything." It's not hard to see why the fatosphere freaked out. There was even a protest staged in front of the offices on Friday, in which fat people were supposed to gather and make out, or something. (The post was prompted by Maura's editor asking about her reactions to Mike and Molly, a CBS show about two obese people in love. It's ridiculous that this idea in and of itself is a premise, incidentally.)
What's striking me is her apology, made after the post proved explosive. Here's where I should say that I've worked with Maura and have never found her to be anything less than honest, kind, and sincere. (I've also written for Marie Claire and haven't found their party line to be any more anti-fat than any women's magazine, though I wasn't writing about body issues.) When I read the apology, I could hear the words coming out of her mouth; they were in line with the person I know.
The post itself was anything but. I kept reading, waiting for a disclaimer better than "some of my best friends are fat!" and never got one; I kept waiting for the big reveal to this obviously farcical post (right? right???) and was left hanging. But as her apology makes clear, this woman has been in the grip of an eating disorder. It's behind her now--that is, she is no longer engaging in eating-disordered behavior--but manalive, do those mind-sets ever stick.
I'm sympathetic to how this grossly myopic view of fat people might be a symptom of an eating disorder. I don't want to believe that Maura's actual feelings are anywhere near as hateful as her words. So then I asked myself: Do I, deep down--as someone who's had an eating disorder--have the same reaction to seeing morbidly obese people? The answer was a swift, decisive no. I felt relieved to answer this honestly--rather, to come to that answer honestly--and vaguely righteous, suspicious that maybe Maura's post wasn't about her eating disorder at all but about something closer to bigotry.
But then I remember my mother and the mustard cape.
There was no plus-size store within driving distance of the South Dakota town where I grew up, so when I was a kid the only time my morbidly obese mother purchased clothes was during our annual summer visits to my grandparents in Dallas. These visits were as shrouded in mystery as her annual visit to the gynecologist: I knew it was something adult women did, specifically something my mother did, and it had something to do with something I wanted no part of. I pictured these stores--we didn't have words like "plus-size" back then; my father referred to it as the "big woman" store, and my mother didn't refer to it at all--as somehow dark, dank, with lighting that was harsh and low at the same time. I pictured eerily large dressing rooms with mean, ugly mirrors; I pictured elephantine, kindly saleswomen who were all very careful not to mention the fact that this was a "big woman" store. I pictured women filing out of there not delighted with their purchases, nor even relieved at having gotten it done, but furtive, ashamed. I absorbed so much shame from the very idea of the store that the thought of going there with her seemed like a punishment devised especially for me, designed to make me see my fate as a woman.
We eventually moved to an actual city, one with "big woman" stores of its own. My mother's shopping trips went from an annual basis to an as-needed one. It became a bit of a treat, actually--the best store (possibly only, even in the early '90s) was at a mall an hour's drive away; every so often after school she'd pick me up and announce we were going to that mall. I would go into Claire's and pick out cheap earrings, and would meet her back at the store. The first time she suggested this I felt squeamish, literally sick to my stomach at the thought of going into that store with her; she may as well have suggested we go to a sex-toy shop as a mother-daughter team. But it made the most sense, and I acquiesced; imagine my surprise when I saw that the store was just like any other, just with added digits on the clothing tags. If anything, they were preferable to the cheap, gaudy places that catered to teenagers like me. I read the simple, sunny decor and the saleswomen's perky attitudes as disguising shame. Perhaps it was simply maturity.
On one of her trips--one without me--she purchased a mustard-yellow cape. Why, I have no idea. She wasn't a dramatic dresser--the flashiest she gets even now is a red blouse instead of a black or forest green one--nor did she and my father go out to the sort of places where a cape would be appropriate. I suspect she just saw it and was in a good mood; the saleswoman probably told her it looked good on her. I can hear it now: Most people can't wear that color--but you! with that red hair! those hazel eyes! you owe it to yourself!
And the thing is, it did look good on her. I can see that now. At the time, though, all I remember was my mother showing off her purchase, twirling around the living room in a cape, and being horribly, horribly embarrassed. Embarrassed for her, that she was taking delight in an outlandish garment when she hadn't earned the right to do so by being thin. Embarrassed for myself, for being her daughter. Embarrassed that capes meant for big women even existed; embarrassed that there were fat women walking around out there right at this very minute wearing mustard capes and thinking they looked fabulous.
It became crucial to not allow my mother to wear her mustard yellow cape. Words I used include ridiculous, weird, how could you, terrible. Words I did not use include fat, fear, and I. I was 15. It was the same year I stopped eating breakfast, and lunch. Yes, fat people made me very, very uncomfortable.
I wish I could tell you that my mother heard her petulant 15-year-old daughter protesting her fashion choices and catalogued it along with her other sins, sins like making me use coupons if I went into the grocery store for her and calling parents of friends just to make sure that yes, a responsible adult would be there for the Friday night sleepover. Instead, she took off the cape, put it in its bag, and stuffed it into her closet, where it stayed until they moved out of the house.
I tried once, post-college, to try to get her to wear it. By then I could see my mother for who she was: a flame-haired, hazel-eyed woman with just the slightest hint of Texas twang whose charm lay partially in the fact that she didn't know she had any. I knew by then that the mustard cape would bring out that flame, highlight that hazel, and maybe send her a quiet alert about her own charisma. I took it out of its bag and brought it out casually. "You really should wear this, Mom," I said. "I know I made a big deal out of it when you got it, but" [it's not about fat, it's not about weight, it's not about you] "I was a teenager and anything out of the usual was mortifying. But try it on--I know it'll look great."
She laughed. "I don't know what I was thinking when I got that thing," she said. "Who am I to try to wear a cape?"
Maura, Maura, how could you not have seen? How could you not have known your own history so? How could you have looked at your own reaction--and for the record, while I find your reaction sad and even abhorrent, it's also an authentic reaction and I'm not going to ask you to deny that--and stopped at its face value? How could you not have put it together that a revulsion of fat people might not be about fat people at all, but about your own relationship with your body? You're a smart writer and a smarter lady, and this wasn't your best. It wasn't even your worst. It was your sickest. I have no idea where you're at in your recovery, only that you write about your eating disorder history as being in the past. And the eating may be, but the disorder lingers.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Estonian Tech Wizards and Universal Access
Given that in the States we have people arguing that receiving basic health care isn't a human right, it's a relief to read that most people globally feel that another sign of developing civilization--Internet access--should be a right.
But what really caught my eye here was that Estonia, of all countries, is one of the places that has already ruled that it actually is a human right and has wired the whole country (including mobile access). I know next to nothing about Estonia, but one of the facts I do know is that it ranks extraordinarily high in its proportion of women in technology. Nearly 70% of those employed in science and technology in Estonia are women. I don't exactly think that the high proportion of women in tech is the cause of the advanced thinking on global information access...or, well, maybe I do. It makes sense that a country that sees technology as not being gendered would see it as being plain old human, much as our need to drink water and transport ourselves. By not having vague implicit ideas of restricted access by gender (which most of us in the States have--when was the last time you heard "tech gal" instead of "tech guy"?), restrictions are lifted across the board.
There's also a chance that the very notion of universal access in places that place a premium on gender equality in tech is shaped by the actual women in the field. Most of the open-access zealots I know are men, but then, I'm American. Despite this field of advancement, Estonia is far from a women's paradise, so I can't help but think that women in comparatively privileged positions (tech) would feel strongly that global information access is a necessity, for very concrete reasons in addition to tech-utopian ones.
But what really caught my eye here was that Estonia, of all countries, is one of the places that has already ruled that it actually is a human right and has wired the whole country (including mobile access). I know next to nothing about Estonia, but one of the facts I do know is that it ranks extraordinarily high in its proportion of women in technology. Nearly 70% of those employed in science and technology in Estonia are women. I don't exactly think that the high proportion of women in tech is the cause of the advanced thinking on global information access...or, well, maybe I do. It makes sense that a country that sees technology as not being gendered would see it as being plain old human, much as our need to drink water and transport ourselves. By not having vague implicit ideas of restricted access by gender (which most of us in the States have--when was the last time you heard "tech gal" instead of "tech guy"?), restrictions are lifted across the board.
There's also a chance that the very notion of universal access in places that place a premium on gender equality in tech is shaped by the actual women in the field. Most of the open-access zealots I know are men, but then, I'm American. Despite this field of advancement, Estonia is far from a women's paradise, so I can't help but think that women in comparatively privileged positions (tech) would feel strongly that global information access is a necessity, for very concrete reasons in addition to tech-utopian ones.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Superbad Superbowl
I'm just as disgusted as the next feminist by this year's Superbowl ads. What's striking me more than the rotten way women were portrayed in the alternate universe of SuperbowlLand is the way the target audience--men, presumably--was depicted.
The Dodge Charger ad begins with men talking about not women, but The Man. The actors were shown giving a litany of promises: I will be at work by 8 a.m.; I will sit through two-hour meetings. It quickly becomes clear that being good middle managers is only part of the deal, though, as the list grows to include "watching your vampire movies," recycling, and other things we're supposed to see as tedium.
I often wonder who these sorts of overtly pandering ads are pandering to, exactly, since nobody I normally hang out with thinks that way, at least not openly. I watched the Bowl with three men, all of whom are thirtysomething beer-drinking football lovers--the Bowl's target audience--and the irony of hearing them groan just as loudly as I did at these ads was not lost on me. But reading reactions from car geeks and Twitter reactionaries (annoyed Tweeters appeared to be men and women in equal measures) revealed that it wasn't just my little self-selected group of men who were turned off by the blatant appeals to an outdated mode of thinking.
I'm guessing that the thinking of the ads creators went something like this: The economy ain't so hot >> men's status as breadwinners is suddenly in jeopardy >> ergo, men must be in an ENORMOUS PANIC about this >> let's assure them they're still men by getting them to spend money on these terrifically masculine products >> Dove body wash. (I bring this up not because body wash is gendered, but because the ad, even in pushing a product that has feminine connotations, relied on such lazy stereotyping of what it means to be a man--this from a company that has done some decent work in trying to show a more authentic version of its customers than most companies would dare. The Dove ad was by far the least gross of the don't-worry-you're-still-totally-dudely genre, but still.)
But what is so shortsighted about this is how A) outdated, and B) erroneous it is. Let's look at the erroneous part first: Yes, men have lost out financially more than women in this recession. But the logical way to assure dudes that they're still manly is not to tell them to either spend more money or treat women as the enemy: It's to widen and reconstruct what manhood is. Any man who has been in an equitable relationship that is supported by his peers knows it's a helluva lot more fun to have partner-as-partner, not partner-as-enemy. And you know what? Women who don't act as harpies and rip men's balls out via forced Twilight viewings? We, too, like to have sex, and it will be more fun than it would be with the constructed harpy, because neither party will secretly be dreading the act. (I'd bring up other benefits of equitable relationships--relationship health, stability--but as we learned from the Megan Fox Motorola ad, really all men can think about is sex anyway.) As for the other things that are supposedly culturally castrating men--the job, the recycling, the responsibility--those are no longer merely the province of men.
Which leads me to how outdated this line of thinking is. I'm reading The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight From Commitment by Barbara Ehrenreich, which was written in 1987. It's, in part, about how constructed masculinity led to the epidemic of middle-aged crises among men, during which our fathers and grandfathers supposedly ran out, bought sports cars, and had affairs. I haven't finished the book yet so can't say what Ehrenreich's thesis is and how it stands up to today, but what's striking me is how much of what she's writing about applies to everyone now. Most women are in the work force now and are often the sole breadwinner. Escapist fantasies written by and for women in the '50s and '60s--when the men of 1987 were growing up--by and large reflected a desire to escape the monotony and drudgery of housewifery, because that was the feminine sphere then. There's no absence of that kind of tale today, but there's acknowledgement that women's lives outside of the home can feel like a trap too. I'm imagining an ad geared toward a unisex audience using the Dodge Charger premise: A series of close-ups of men and women listing the series of compromises they are willing to make in the world at large so that they can have this one amazing thing that will make them feel glad to be alive. That ad would be able to keep the marginally creative conceit without assuming that the audience secretly hates their lives. Hell, if you must, you could even still make it gendered by adding in the sort of daily work that is still often left to women (diapers come to mind). It's still gross on a consumerist level (whose life is made better for longer than a week by having a really cool car?), but it's not offensive.
I also don't think that the men-trapped-by-their-lives idea the commercials were promoting is as effective in 2010. Generation X supposedly created the nation of prolonged adolescence, without shame. Much of what Ehrenreich addresses as the cause for the flight from commitment is our idea of what constitutes "maturity," which doesn't have much latitude according to the rules that she cites. But with men and women getting married and having children considerably later in life, and with "bachelor" no longer being a euphemism for "homosexual"--indeed, "bachelor" now has a ring of glamour to it--men who once would have been considered hopelessly flighty or immature because they're choosing not to "settle down" now seem normal. As I wrote above, women are just as tired of men as the corporate grind--but more importantly, tales of alternate, noncorporate lifestyles aren't exactly hard to find these days. We're supposed to take glee in the fact that even though we may be married and bear children and maybe even actually like our boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife, we're still cool--isn't that why Judd Apatow movies exist? Isn't that why people liked Juno? Because they prove that we're different somehow from our yuppie parents? Maybe the answer is that as Generation X ages, we realize that we're not any different--maybe the Dodge ad is more relevant than I want to acknowledge.
There's another big loser in the Superbowl, besides men, women, and the Colts: creativity. I really couldn't care less about football; I watched it for what was supposed to be the showcase of America's collective advertising talent. (And for The Who. Which, really? No. Just, no.) I don't think the process of advertising can ever truly be creative, but from journalism school I do know that there are some brilliant creative minds working in advertising, and this was supposed to be their time to shine. I remember watching the hysterical Emerald Nuts commercial during the Superbowl a few years ago and thinking for the first time that maybe I was actually missing out on occasion by not watching more television ads. Last night, I kept waiting for the "real" ads to start--many of the ones that weren't ugly with sexism were just confusing instead of clever (why was there a whale? why was he pretending to be dead while eating Doritos?) or plain old boring (Shape-Up shoes couldn't have come up with something remotely clever?); and according to my fellow viewers, several of the ads weren't new at all. I get that this was a tough year for advertising, but c'mon! When Charles Barkley offers the evening's best non-football performance, something is amiss. At least he was just lovin' on tacos, not hating on women. Or himself.
The Dodge Charger ad begins with men talking about not women, but The Man. The actors were shown giving a litany of promises: I will be at work by 8 a.m.; I will sit through two-hour meetings. It quickly becomes clear that being good middle managers is only part of the deal, though, as the list grows to include "watching your vampire movies," recycling, and other things we're supposed to see as tedium.
I often wonder who these sorts of overtly pandering ads are pandering to, exactly, since nobody I normally hang out with thinks that way, at least not openly. I watched the Bowl with three men, all of whom are thirtysomething beer-drinking football lovers--the Bowl's target audience--and the irony of hearing them groan just as loudly as I did at these ads was not lost on me. But reading reactions from car geeks and Twitter reactionaries (annoyed Tweeters appeared to be men and women in equal measures) revealed that it wasn't just my little self-selected group of men who were turned off by the blatant appeals to an outdated mode of thinking.
I'm guessing that the thinking of the ads creators went something like this: The economy ain't so hot >> men's status as breadwinners is suddenly in jeopardy >> ergo, men must be in an ENORMOUS PANIC about this >> let's assure them they're still men by getting them to spend money on these terrifically masculine products >> Dove body wash. (I bring this up not because body wash is gendered, but because the ad, even in pushing a product that has feminine connotations, relied on such lazy stereotyping of what it means to be a man--this from a company that has done some decent work in trying to show a more authentic version of its customers than most companies would dare. The Dove ad was by far the least gross of the don't-worry-you're-still-totally-dudely genre, but still.)
But what is so shortsighted about this is how A) outdated, and B) erroneous it is. Let's look at the erroneous part first: Yes, men have lost out financially more than women in this recession. But the logical way to assure dudes that they're still manly is not to tell them to either spend more money or treat women as the enemy: It's to widen and reconstruct what manhood is. Any man who has been in an equitable relationship that is supported by his peers knows it's a helluva lot more fun to have partner-as-partner, not partner-as-enemy. And you know what? Women who don't act as harpies and rip men's balls out via forced Twilight viewings? We, too, like to have sex, and it will be more fun than it would be with the constructed harpy, because neither party will secretly be dreading the act. (I'd bring up other benefits of equitable relationships--relationship health, stability--but as we learned from the Megan Fox Motorola ad, really all men can think about is sex anyway.) As for the other things that are supposedly culturally castrating men--the job, the recycling, the responsibility--those are no longer merely the province of men.
Which leads me to how outdated this line of thinking is. I'm reading The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight From Commitment by Barbara Ehrenreich, which was written in 1987. It's, in part, about how constructed masculinity led to the epidemic of middle-aged crises among men, during which our fathers and grandfathers supposedly ran out, bought sports cars, and had affairs. I haven't finished the book yet so can't say what Ehrenreich's thesis is and how it stands up to today, but what's striking me is how much of what she's writing about applies to everyone now. Most women are in the work force now and are often the sole breadwinner. Escapist fantasies written by and for women in the '50s and '60s--when the men of 1987 were growing up--by and large reflected a desire to escape the monotony and drudgery of housewifery, because that was the feminine sphere then. There's no absence of that kind of tale today, but there's acknowledgement that women's lives outside of the home can feel like a trap too. I'm imagining an ad geared toward a unisex audience using the Dodge Charger premise: A series of close-ups of men and women listing the series of compromises they are willing to make in the world at large so that they can have this one amazing thing that will make them feel glad to be alive. That ad would be able to keep the marginally creative conceit without assuming that the audience secretly hates their lives. Hell, if you must, you could even still make it gendered by adding in the sort of daily work that is still often left to women (diapers come to mind). It's still gross on a consumerist level (whose life is made better for longer than a week by having a really cool car?), but it's not offensive.
I also don't think that the men-trapped-by-their-lives idea the commercials were promoting is as effective in 2010. Generation X supposedly created the nation of prolonged adolescence, without shame. Much of what Ehrenreich addresses as the cause for the flight from commitment is our idea of what constitutes "maturity," which doesn't have much latitude according to the rules that she cites. But with men and women getting married and having children considerably later in life, and with "bachelor" no longer being a euphemism for "homosexual"--indeed, "bachelor" now has a ring of glamour to it--men who once would have been considered hopelessly flighty or immature because they're choosing not to "settle down" now seem normal. As I wrote above, women are just as tired of men as the corporate grind--but more importantly, tales of alternate, noncorporate lifestyles aren't exactly hard to find these days. We're supposed to take glee in the fact that even though we may be married and bear children and maybe even actually like our boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife, we're still cool--isn't that why Judd Apatow movies exist? Isn't that why people liked Juno? Because they prove that we're different somehow from our yuppie parents? Maybe the answer is that as Generation X ages, we realize that we're not any different--maybe the Dodge ad is more relevant than I want to acknowledge.
There's another big loser in the Superbowl, besides men, women, and the Colts: creativity. I really couldn't care less about football; I watched it for what was supposed to be the showcase of America's collective advertising talent. (And for The Who. Which, really? No. Just, no.) I don't think the process of advertising can ever truly be creative, but from journalism school I do know that there are some brilliant creative minds working in advertising, and this was supposed to be their time to shine. I remember watching the hysterical Emerald Nuts commercial during the Superbowl a few years ago and thinking for the first time that maybe I was actually missing out on occasion by not watching more television ads. Last night, I kept waiting for the "real" ads to start--many of the ones that weren't ugly with sexism were just confusing instead of clever (why was there a whale? why was he pretending to be dead while eating Doritos?) or plain old boring (Shape-Up shoes couldn't have come up with something remotely clever?); and according to my fellow viewers, several of the ads weren't new at all. I get that this was a tough year for advertising, but c'mon! When Charles Barkley offers the evening's best non-football performance, something is amiss. At least he was just lovin' on tacos, not hating on women. Or himself.
Friday, February 5, 2010
random thoughts on paid childcare
I'm surprised that this NYTimes article about nanny-mother communication didn't mention, at all, what to me seems to be the heart of the issue: women paying other women to do what is traditionally women's labor. I'm neither a mother nor a nanny, but it seems obvious that the troubles relayed in the article belie a deep uncomfortability with paying someone to take on what may have been conceived of, initially, as love-labor.
I suspect that there's a strong cognitive dissonance between what any mother experiences as a mother and what she experiences as an employer: She presumably has children out of, in part at least (I hope) love, and introducing paid work into the equation makes it clear that it's not just love-work, it's work-work. The mother is simultaneously handing over one of the most important things in her life and reducing it to figures. The article doesn't mention fathers, and that seems deliberate: While I'd like to think that many fathers deal with nannies too, that simply might not be the case--and even in households where it is, the fact of woman-woman communication in a traditionally female realm is what complicates the issue.
In this context, Clay Shirky's recent call to arms to women--we need to act like dicks, he says--is exposed for the (somewhat) empty entreaty it is. Yes, mothers (indeed, all parents) and nannies should have clearer communication; I'm sure many a nanny could benefit from being more aggressive with her employer, especially given the race, class, or age dynamics often present in these relationships. But aggressive approaches aren't as effective outside of non-corporate work environments. Paid labor that complements love labor is no less a job than any other, of course, but the tactics Shirky recommends women adopt to get ahead in the workplace apply to men's work spheres (in the traditional sense--the outer sphere--not, say, Chippendale's), not women's. I want every qualified nanny to know her worth; I want every woman hiring that nanny to articulate her needs--and nowhere in there would I ever want a nanny saying she knew how to prepare nutritious meals if she didn't, or have a mother acting like a blowhard when negotiating the care of her child.
To ignore the love part of the love-labor that is being paid for in a nanny-parent relationship is to reduce an enormously important job to its parts instead of looking at it as a whole. Excuse me for being a hippie, but this is what utopian visions of collectivized child care take into account that the nanny arrangements described in the article seem to be trying to avoid: That when both parents wish or need to work outside the home, the day-to-day care of a child, by necessity, requires labor that is fairly compensated and that allows the caretaker to use skill, intuition, experience, and whatever version of love there may be involved to do the job.
I'm babysitting this weekend for very close friends of mine. In the various times I've come over to learn the bedtime routine, my friend has asked me if I'd like to change the child's diaper so that I can get hands-on experience. Besides the fact that changing diapers is generally unpleasant, I've hedged on this. Now, I probably changed my first diaper when I was 11 years old and got my first babysitting gig. (The thought of anybody hiring a sixth-grader to care for their children seems wholly absurd to me now, but it subsidized my Mike & Ikes throughout junior high, so.) Part of my hesitancy stems from simply not wanting my friend to see me be "all thumbs," as one of the mothers in the Times article describes; I would also feel foolish having her watch me install an air-conditioner for the same reason. But the thought of being watched--even by a dear, loving friend--at this task in particular makes me uneasy, because there's this idea that somehow I should naturally be good at this. I feel pride when I am able to soothe my friend's son when he gets fussy; it somehow makes me feel like a better person, as though I have some magical, mystical ability. I don't want to be caught in the act of totally not knowing what I'm doing--even though I do--and I wonder if it's because I've carried with me the idea that it should come naturally despite not being a mother myself, or wanting to be one.
A night of caring for my friends' child is, for me, a labor of love, and were I a professional (beyond junior high, that is), I would likely have the skills and confidence that would allow me to not give a shit (heh) about having anyone watch me change a diaper. The mild feelings of mild unworthiness as a woman--and those feelings are indeed mild, and something that I recognize as a holdover from my mother's era, not from expectations put upon my demographic of 30something New York professional unmarried women--can, for me, be fleeting, because my labor is valued elsewhere. It's a lark, a date with my favorite nine-month-old. But were it anything else, I would hope that the peculiarities of paid childcare within a labor context were evaluated holistically instead of being parsed in the way the subjects of this article seem to do.
I suspect that there's a strong cognitive dissonance between what any mother experiences as a mother and what she experiences as an employer: She presumably has children out of, in part at least (I hope) love, and introducing paid work into the equation makes it clear that it's not just love-work, it's work-work. The mother is simultaneously handing over one of the most important things in her life and reducing it to figures. The article doesn't mention fathers, and that seems deliberate: While I'd like to think that many fathers deal with nannies too, that simply might not be the case--and even in households where it is, the fact of woman-woman communication in a traditionally female realm is what complicates the issue.
In this context, Clay Shirky's recent call to arms to women--we need to act like dicks, he says--is exposed for the (somewhat) empty entreaty it is. Yes, mothers (indeed, all parents) and nannies should have clearer communication; I'm sure many a nanny could benefit from being more aggressive with her employer, especially given the race, class, or age dynamics often present in these relationships. But aggressive approaches aren't as effective outside of non-corporate work environments. Paid labor that complements love labor is no less a job than any other, of course, but the tactics Shirky recommends women adopt to get ahead in the workplace apply to men's work spheres (in the traditional sense--the outer sphere--not, say, Chippendale's), not women's. I want every qualified nanny to know her worth; I want every woman hiring that nanny to articulate her needs--and nowhere in there would I ever want a nanny saying she knew how to prepare nutritious meals if she didn't, or have a mother acting like a blowhard when negotiating the care of her child.
To ignore the love part of the love-labor that is being paid for in a nanny-parent relationship is to reduce an enormously important job to its parts instead of looking at it as a whole. Excuse me for being a hippie, but this is what utopian visions of collectivized child care take into account that the nanny arrangements described in the article seem to be trying to avoid: That when both parents wish or need to work outside the home, the day-to-day care of a child, by necessity, requires labor that is fairly compensated and that allows the caretaker to use skill, intuition, experience, and whatever version of love there may be involved to do the job.
I'm babysitting this weekend for very close friends of mine. In the various times I've come over to learn the bedtime routine, my friend has asked me if I'd like to change the child's diaper so that I can get hands-on experience. Besides the fact that changing diapers is generally unpleasant, I've hedged on this. Now, I probably changed my first diaper when I was 11 years old and got my first babysitting gig. (The thought of anybody hiring a sixth-grader to care for their children seems wholly absurd to me now, but it subsidized my Mike & Ikes throughout junior high, so.) Part of my hesitancy stems from simply not wanting my friend to see me be "all thumbs," as one of the mothers in the Times article describes; I would also feel foolish having her watch me install an air-conditioner for the same reason. But the thought of being watched--even by a dear, loving friend--at this task in particular makes me uneasy, because there's this idea that somehow I should naturally be good at this. I feel pride when I am able to soothe my friend's son when he gets fussy; it somehow makes me feel like a better person, as though I have some magical, mystical ability. I don't want to be caught in the act of totally not knowing what I'm doing--even though I do--and I wonder if it's because I've carried with me the idea that it should come naturally despite not being a mother myself, or wanting to be one.
A night of caring for my friends' child is, for me, a labor of love, and were I a professional (beyond junior high, that is), I would likely have the skills and confidence that would allow me to not give a shit (heh) about having anyone watch me change a diaper. The mild feelings of mild unworthiness as a woman--and those feelings are indeed mild, and something that I recognize as a holdover from my mother's era, not from expectations put upon my demographic of 30something New York professional unmarried women--can, for me, be fleeting, because my labor is valued elsewhere. It's a lark, a date with my favorite nine-month-old. But were it anything else, I would hope that the peculiarities of paid childcare within a labor context were evaluated holistically instead of being parsed in the way the subjects of this article seem to do.
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