Modestly Yours

I just read an interesting article called Portman and Her Critics on a site called Modestly Yours. Not only is Portman getting crap from feminists for having said, when she received her Oscar for "Black Swan," that motherhood will be her greatest role, she's also getting crap for that statement from conservatives who say she's glorifying being an unwed mother! Here is a comment I left on the article:


"Like Shanna, I too am a feminist. I don't think there's anything wrong with being an unwed mother (when I was still on myspace I was friends with the group 'Single Mothers By Choice.') However, I am married, but my husband and I are choosing not to have children for a myriad of reasons, one of them being that I want to focus that energy into my work (I'm a photographer and a writer, and I just don't have that much energy to go around!)But even though I personally am CHOOSING not to have children to focus on my career, I have no problem with Natalie Portman saying her greatest role will be motherhood. That's HER CHOICE. Madonna has called her children her 'greatest work of art,' and Sally Mann once said in a lecture in response to her photographs of her children, 'You can say I'm a bad photographer. Sometimes I think I'm a bad photographer. But I KNOW I'm a good mother.' And if Madonna and Sally Mann are not strong women, then I don't know who is."

I wonder what people who frequent a site celebrating modesty will think of my giving Madonna as an example of a strong woman!

I would also like to add here that many women-- many feminists, often of the Goddess-worshipping variety-- see their ability to bear and nurture children as empowering, as an embodiment of life-giving creation that is theirs alone; a microcosm to the macrocosm of the Great Mother Creatrix of the Universe. I personally will take a pass on that, but if they find that empowering, then they have my full support and respect!