Our thought for the day comes from the pages of Bitch magazine (“feminist response to pop culture”, for the uninitiated) issue #44 (“The Consumed Issue”). The magazine offers an interview with Pamela Tanner Boll, co-director (with Nancy C. Kennedy) of the documentary Who Does She Think She Is?, a film about the meaning of being both an artist and a mother.
While I don’t agree with everything (or, perhaps even the majority of things) I read in Bitch, I have found it to contain some of the most interesting articles regarding feminism and its implications.
The film’s trailer makes in interesting point…that when we take a good, hard look at female writers and artists, we seldom find mothers in their ranks. Think about it…Emily Dickenson, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keefe, Edith Warton, Eudora Welty.
None of them ever had kids.
In the BITCH interview, Ms. Boll says, :
“It is difficult for women to be full of themselves, to give themselves permission to be big and bold…It’s hard for women to even say to their friends that they have four hours of writing to do on a book that’s been rejected once and that people already think she’s crazy for writing….The worst thing a mother can do is put away her dreams out of a sense of obligation and duty. That doesn’t inspire her daughter if she is always seen as tired and harassed. We need to see our mothers as joyful, going after their dreams.”
Thoughts??
