It sends the message that having a family, and in particular children, is an un-overcomable (not a word, but I hope you know what I mean) obstacle in the way of getting started in the modeling world. This phenomenon probably extends beyond just modeling- as I have seen with the opt-out revolution stuff and with the celebrity-actress mothers, it is hard to work in any field with a young child.

All I can say is that I was really hoping a mom would win this reality show too.

Ultrasounds are now taken not only for medical purposes, but frequently also for emotional reasons like fostering a mother-child bond in utero or reassuring the mother that the child is, in fact, there and alive. You can even use a “personal doppler” to give yourself ultrasounds at home. Through the visualization provided by ultrasounds and 3D ultrasounds, the fetus becomes a person much sooner than birth- its gender is assigned. The woman thus becomes a Mother at the very start of pregnancy.

In the past several years, the policing of pregnant women has become a much bigger issue. There was an episode in season 5 of Law and Order:SVU about a woman who gets pregnant and has a drinking problem. Her ex-husband gets a court order to send her to rehab to protect the baby. If she drinks, basically, she gets thrown in jail.

That episode was based on real-life cases where pregnant women have been judged for drinking, smoking, or doing drugs while pregnant. The monitoring of “problem behaviors” in pregnant women – with the express intention of protecting the FETUS not the woman herself – has become a reality.

Perhaps in response, there has recently been a rise in popularity of “natural births” and the use of midwives and doulas instead of doctors in hospitals. It seems like pregnancy has become much more “medicalized,” and that pregnant women are surveilled under the guise of medicine- a “clinical gaze” that is still male as opposed to the usual “male gaze” to which other non-pregnant women are subjected.

She says it will address the challenges of motherhood- perhaps particularly motherhood in the spotlight. The show will definitely be something to keep track of…

The episode dealt with a pregnant woman whose fetus was killing her. Once the medical case was solved to realize the problem was in the fetus and not the woman’s body, House became adament that the best course of treatment was termination of the foetus. However, Dr. Cuddy would not permit that – the patient was a woman in her 40s who had repeatedly experienced miscarriages and fertility problems.

House accuses Cuddy of being unable to be objective because of her own fertility problems. In the end, however, Cuddy takes medical risks that House will not take, and the patient (and the foetus) survives.

There are a few interesting things in the episode. For one thing, fertility issues have been front and center on top TV dramas lately (see also Addison Montgomery on Grey’s Anatomy’s 2-hour special episode). It appears that fertility problems are becoming mainstream- a big enough social issue that they are showing up all over TV.

What was even more interesting to me personally than the fertility issues was how the episode portrayed the issue of abortion. House at the start of the episode pushes termination and refuses to call the foetus a “baby” (in contrast to both the patient herself and Cuddy). However, to fix the problem with the foetus, “open fetal surgery” had to be performed. During the surgery, the episode recreated one of the most well-known pro-life images: the “baby” reached its hand out of the uterus and gripped Dr. House’s finger.

To make matters worse, he became speechless as he watched the “baby” and had to be called back to focus on the surgery. After the procedure, he started calling the foetus a “baby” in conversations with Cuddy and the patient. Showing that transformation, and the pro-life image, rubbed me (as an ardent pro-choice advocate) the wrong way. I thought the produces/writers might be trying to make a political statement about abortion by showing House’s change of heart. Or they might be trying to make House more relatable, but to do that they chose to make him appear more pro-life.

Perhaps with the recent “partial-birth abortion” decision by the Supreme Court, pop culture is moving towards the right. The religious right has gained political and cultural capital in recent years, so perhaps pop culture is just catching up… either way, I don’t like it.

In spite of recent rumors of a breakup, the couple seems to be still going strong. In a recent interview, Angelina talks about her decision to have a biological child. It appears from the interview that she was worried Brad would not be able to love the adopted children as much as a biological child.

That quote from her is particularly interesting in light of speculation from the paparazzi that Angelina herself plays favorites: actually AGAINST her biological child. It’s almost as though she is overcompensating for not wanting herself or her lover to be seen as favoring Shiloh.

Further intrigue has been raised that Jolie is “addicted to adopting”- although she has supposedly left her wild child ways behind, she has “replaced” her older dangerous behaviors with rampant…

childrearing? Wait… hold on a minute. I mean, I sort of understand where the media is coming from – taking on so many children in such a short time with, well, let’s be honest, no “previous mothering experience” to help her through, it is a little bit rushed and potentially overwhelming. But the Jolie-Pitts also happen to be among the richest families in the world. Clearly they can provide adequate care for the children even if Angelina herself is too overwhelmed to do it. And, let’s face it, there have been many poorer families who have acquired as many children and dealt with it fine, right?

Even more interesting is the debate in the tabloids about Jolie being a stay-at-home mom. She claimed, supposedly, that after adopting her latest addition, Pax, she would devote herself entirely to her children and stay at home. A few days later, she signed a contract to film a movie in Prague. No biggie, right? We all know acting isn’t actually work.

But really, that is a bit hypocritical. She said she wanted to stay home. She could have stayed home. But she didn’t. It’s okay. It doesn’t make her any less of a mother… or does it?

Finally, let’s talk about sexiness. When I think about Angelina Jolie now, sometimes I catch myself having the thought “you know… she used to be the sexiest woman alive.” Used to be??? I mean, I know it’s just my thought, but I’m totally getting it from somewhere. Someone, somewhere in the media is pushing that her new image is not “sexy” but “maternal” and “giving” and all those other things… as though they are mutually exclusive. I mean, I’m pretty sure that as the gold standard of cosmetic surgery, she’s still considered pretty darn sexy by most of the world. But I guess you have to pick one, right? Sexiness… or motherhood?

But maybe, just maybe, that’s changing…

So now we celebrate our mothers on this one day a year- and the media talks about nothing but mothers: how to honor your mother, what expensive and materialistic gifts to buy her, plus anything and everything mom-related. Hopefully, I’ll dig up something interesting tonight to post about.

Ellis, Meredith’s biological mother, was a career woman. She resented Meredith both for hurting her career and for hurting her relationship with Richard. The show tells the viewers that Ellis’ treatment of Meredith as a result of the resentment directly causes Meredith to be so screwed up. Through Ellis, the message could be construed or read as partially corroborating the idea that mothers who work instead of taking care of their children cause their children to be screwed up. They are Bad Mothers.

However, there is more to Ellis, obviously. On the show, she had Alzheimer’s and so rarely recognized Meredith. We see Meredith as a daughter taking care of her mother in spite of their previous issues- indicating that Meredith still hopes their relationship can be repaired and also that Meredith wants her mother to know and care about her.

In the episode where Ellis is lucid for a day, she tells Meredith she is disappointed that she hasn’t chosen a specialty and she seems to care about her relationship with Derek more than her career. She calls Meredith ordinary. Here again we see Ellis presented as a Bad Mother: she does not seem to care about her daughter’s happiness, and she advocates to both Meredith and Cristina that marriage and childrearing are incompatible with a career as a surgeon- she advises her child against motherhood and says if she wanted her same career she wouldn’t have had children. At the same time though, she does express regret that she chose to put everything into her career instead of investing time and energy into Meredith.

Meredith gets closure in the weird “afterlife” episode, where her mother (somewhat uncharacteristically) hugs her and tells her she is “anything but ordinary.” So cliche, but the show had to fix Meredith somehow, and since her mother was the source of the problem, her mother had to be the solution too. Ellis is an example of a mother not to be emulated, as she puts Meredith down and fails to show she cares up until that last moment of closure.

Susan, on the other hand, wants to be a part of Meredith’s life, and she tries so hard that she almost smothers Meredith. She buys groceries for the interns’ house and shows up unexpectedly and tries to repair Meredith’s relationship with her father. While her motivations may be somewhat out of guilt (for having persuaded Thatcher to never contact Meredith), she was genuinely trying to be a mother to Meredith. Meredith didn’t know how to respond, but it was clear that she was receptive to being “mothered.”

Were Susan’s tactics enough to have her actually take on the role of “mother” to Meredith? She certainly did motherly things, but her place in Meredith’s life was fairly shortlived, and it seems to me that nothing she did could have repaired or built a relationship in that short of a time frame. It will certainly be interesting to see how the loss of Susan will impact Meredith. Obviously Meredith was upset at the end of the last episode, but it was unclear whether Susan’s death or her father’s renewed rejection was the underlying cause. If Meredith misses “Fake Mommy” does that make her motherhood more legitimate? Or should the viewer be judging Susan on her own merits without complicating the picture by analyzing Meredith’s mental state?

To me, Susan’s efforts, while genuinely nice and quite well-intentioned, did not make her a mother to Meredith. It seemed clear, however, that she was trying to become someone who could fill that role, which is an interesting concept on its own: how possible is it, really, to “become” a mother to an adult? Is there a space for building that kind of relationship?

Almodovar’s film Volver focuses a lot on mother/daughter relationships (so do a lot of films, but I want to talk about this one today). The movie really focuses a lot on Penelope Cruz’s character’s (Raimunda) and her sister’s (Sole) relationships with their mother. At the beginning of the movie, they believe their mother is dead, that she died in a housefire. The two sisters and Penelope Cruz’s daughter (Paula) go back to the town where she died to visit their dying aunt, where they begin to notice that, oddly, in spite of her blindness and incapacity the aunt still appears to be able to cook, clean, maintain the house, etc. After the death of the aunt, the mother reveals herself to Sole (who thinks she is a ghost) and prepares to return to live with Sole in Madrid. In spite of her fear, Sole embraces the chance to be with her mother, laughing with her and happy to have the chance to be with her again.

We learn, however, that the reason the mother has “come back” is to deal with her issues with Raimunda, who hates her. The relationship between Sole and her mother is an example, I suppose, of what a mother-adult daughter relationship ought to be. As the movie progresses, Raimunda realizes her mother is back and we see their relationship change- we don’t really see that she hates her mother, just that she has reservations about it. In the end of the film we learn why: Raimunda was raped by her father, and she thought that her mother ought to have protected her- and her mother admits that this is true. Her mother admits that having learned about the sexual abuse, she started the fire that killed her husband and a woman that was presumed to be herself but was really her husband’s lover.

Meanwhile, Raimunda and her daughter Paula have their own issues. Raimunda’s husband Paco tries to seduce Paula, and Paula winds up killing him. Because of her own experiences with sexual abuse, Raimunda immediately forgives her daughter and helps her hide the body, clean up the blood, and later get rid of the corpse. Although Paco is not really Paula’s father (Raimunda’s father is, as Paula was the product of the sexual abuse), Raimunda is horrified at his behavior and comforts her traumatized daughter.

So what can we do with all of this? Is it fair to say that it is a mother’s responsibility to protect her daughters from sexual violence? Is Raimunda’s blaming her mother for the sexual abuse inflicted by her father fair? Even if it isn’t fair, it’s realistic. Mothers ARE expected to protect their daughters. Raimunda’s treatment of her daughter Paula shows the unconditional love and protection that a mother is supposed to feel for her daughter. Or does it? Is Raimunda supposed to be seen as overreacting? Is she taking her own experiences too much into account and forgiving something she shouldn’t forgive in her daughter? Or is trauma, particularly sexual violence, something so big that there is no “right” way to react or deal? I don’t know how to answer this, but the movie clearly shows examples of mother-daughter relationships that are a little bit different and harder to get at due to the extremeness of their circumstances.

At the biggest level in my mind is the view of the nation itself as a mother. The “motherland” idea has been around for a very long time. In art, the nation is consistently represented by a woman- like Lady Liberty (France) shown here.

The idea of the nation as mother probably harkens back to the “Mother Earth/Mother Nature” idea- the land itself is a female goddess in many ancient religions. But there is definitely more to it: a woman, and especially a mother, is the very symbol of what should be protected. Soldiers must protect and defend the motherland as they would their own mother- the nation is the mother of all its citizens- but also as they would mothers in general who represent the only hope of their nation/race/cause surviving.

This is particularly interesting in contexts where women/mothers do fight (as in many anti-colonialist or other subversive movements, in Israel, recently in India). It adds a new dimension to the women-as-soldier debate because it implicitly reinforces the gender roles- women are to stay home and produce more soldiers for the nation while men go to fight. In many of the subversive movements, women are permitted to fight but not to hold leadership roles.

An interesting portrayal of this dichotomy can be found in the movie Whale Rider. Although the Maori are not at war, they are fighting a social battle, and their “nation” is in desperate need of protection. Although Paikea shows signs of leadership aptitude, and although she comes from the leading family and bears the prophet’s name which marks her as leader, she is not permitted to assume the role because as a woman she has other duties to the nation.

Then, there is this idea of a “national obligation” that women be mothers. The corollary to the gender roles decreed by this nationalistic ideal is that all women MUST be mothers and produce heirs to the national identity. This ties in with the “baby bust” idea (this article is about China, but it has also been highlighted in Western Europe and among white Americans). If population rates are falling below replacement levels, and particularly if the people in power are not at least replacing themselves, this becomes a national crisis, even though continued high birth rates elsewhere compensate for the species survival. The nation requires a constant input of new citizens by its mothers (and not just by immigration, implicitly). The expectation that women will reproduce gets tied up in these political nationalistic dialogues, reinforcing the social belief of the same.

In the Indian film The Terrorist, Malli finds herself torn between the “man’s role” of being a suicide bomber and sacrificing herself for her cause and the “woman’s role” of bearing the next generation of fighters. Her pregnancy confuses and distracts her from the role of hero/martyr. Although her motives for saving her unborn child’s life may be primarily selfish rather than nationalistic, the fact that she will also be simultaneously fulfilling her obligation to the nation by producing its heir does complicate the picture of the film. In this film as well, the leaders of the movement are men. She is trained by men. She is a very good soldier and loyal to the cause, but we get the feeling in the movie that the cause is a heavily MALE cause.

Malli’s involvment can be traced back to her brother- not necessarily to her own drive- and these factors as well complicate the picture of nationalism. To what extent are women/mothers involved in the planning and conceptualizing of a nation and to what extent are they merely its objects? Can a woman feel identity with an idea which she could not play a role in defining and whose ideals may not always coincide with her own? Is her identity always tied to that of her family- her father, her brothers, her sons? If they are identified with the nation, and she is identified with them as family, is she by extension identified with the nation? Or is her identity with the nation separate from theirs? These questions tie back historically to questions of women’s citizenship.

I am sure that the answers to these questions and the roots at the center of this immense tangled web of nationalism, womanhood, and motherhood, are all tied as well to time and place. I am sure that solving the puzzle for America today would yield a different answer than for India today, and both would yield different answers from either Europe or India 500 years ago. Nationalism is constantly evolving, and womenhood/motherhood have (at least recently) been evolving as well.