Mother Jones - Comments for "When Chick Flicks Get Knocked Up"

I, too, would like to see the "images of exceptional thirty- and fortysomething women without bassinets" in films and books. Then again, I grew up at the tail end of Second Wave feminism. From what my culture, including movies, taught me back then, I got the impression that motherhood was tantamount to indentured servitude while the bassinet-free, new feminist woman might be able to have a real career, become a great writer or artist, or, like, drink and hunt down archaeological finds with Indiana Jones.

Later in life, I experienced the horrific shock of the "maternal desire" mentioned in your essay (you are referring to Daphne DeMarneffe, yes?). Had I known how painful and traumatic the grief of childlessness and the biological clock would be -- and had I gotten the impression that I could be a mom *and* a cool chick-flick career gal -- maybe I wouldn't have been so insistent on remaining childfree. Maybe I would have brought some awesome child into the world and (selfishly, perhaps) spared myself years of emotional, hormonal torture. I was naive, and I've paid a price for that naivete.

As much as I am personally upset by how our society now idolizes motherhood and (as a commenter mentioned here) promotes baby culture like it's a commodity, at least these movies acknowledge maternal desire. Perhaps younger women will grow up with a fuller selection of feminist images, heroes, and examples, from moms to bassinet-free, "exceptional" women. Babies don't promise a happy ending to one's life any more than weddings promise a happy marriage, but movies are all about unrealistic promises...

heheh gd olthourgh i didnae raed hahah lol

Please stop calling films that have female leads "chick flicks"
it's a disservice.

Educating children helps everyone in society, even the 'child-less.'

What I find truly interesting is all the women who are waiting to have children and then doing wacky things when they are forty-years-old in order to conceive.
What is especially interesting is that generally, they are women who are successful in careers and very intelligent. Before this century, women didn't have very effective birth control (or careers), so most fertile women had children. They also married younger, increasing the chance of getting pregnant when they were younger and more fertile.
The question here, I think, is if our human gene pool is eliminating the 'career-minded' women from the gene pool. Maybe if they are so focused on their careers, they wouldn't be good parents anyway.
I'm not a social darwinist, but I think it is important to remember that Darwin said that it was neither the smartest nor strongest that survived, but those most able to adapt. Women who think they can wait until they are forty aren't adapting.

Amen. More movies bringing women to reckon with their one true function in this life. HA! Reproduction is done without much thought most of the time, as is obvious from these fertility flicks. It is a fact of the biological life on this planet. One is sadly mistaken if one pins ones hopes and dreams for a happily ever after life on an infant. Poor baby.

These movies are a reflection of our culture. Haven't you noticed that American society is captivated by babies? Pick up any popular schlock, such as People, US Weekly, Newsweek, Time, et al, and you'll find pages of pictures and accompanying text extolling the virtues of babydom. What had been a natural part of life - child birth - has been appropriated into a consumer industry. The spokespeople? Well-known celebs and their 'baby bumps'. The purveyors? Mass media in all its forms. The profiteers? Mass media, the clothing industry, baby food industry. The chumps? The American public, namely the males and females being urged to 'get preggers' so they can be just like everyone else. Mindless. Duped. And completely asleep to any of what I just wrote. Wow. Perhaps I ought to jump on the bandwagon and figure out a way to profit from inducing anxiety, fear and frustration on behalf of millions of people.

I think you are over-reacting to movies created by a stripper (Juno) and a man who thinks fart jokes are funny (Knocked Up). Of course, for the record, all men think fart jokes are funny.
These are silly movies, made for a laugh. The End.
To attach too much consequence to a silly Hollywood movie is like the right wing crazies using gay marriage as a wedge issue.

I really do not see how it can be a problem to depict women having babies as opposed to childless women. What I do see a problem with is the way most expectant mothers are portrayed as superficial, not educating themselves and just going along with things. When are we going to see empowered, knowledgeable women choosing to have, keep or even put up for adoption (not in an inconsequential Juno way) a baby? When are we going to see motherhood as something other than sleepless hell or upper class trendy accessory? What is anti-feminist in these movies is not the fact that women are pursuing motherhood, it is the way it is depicted that is downright demeaning.

Seems to me that if Juno or Knocked Up had an abortion in the plot, the movies would be a lot shorter.
Really, I think there are better things to worry about than silly movies.
Like a criminal president? Just a thought.

So motherhood is automatically too conventional and therefore anti-feminist? I couldn't disagree more. It's not the fact of breederdom that is conventional or feminist/anti-feminist but rather the way in which a woman accommodates motherhood into her life. To push together all recent movies about getting pregnant is to paint with far too broad a brush.

For instance, in "Knocked Up," her pregnancy is inconvenient, her partner an uncommitted, unhelpful man-child, her job initially unsupportive (and only later supportive because it suits a commercial purpose, one that takes a physical toll on her has she is made to stand for quite a while interview movie stars during her third trimester and obviously uncomfortable). The wink to the corporation is about the only conservative aspect. To paint her decision, as a fully-formed, economically independent adult, to keep a pregnancy is a strange thing, one I think the pro-choice side (of which I am a proud, committed member) does at its peril. I haven't seen all of the other movies portrayed (in part because I was evidently too conventional, anti-feminist and conservative and actually went and had a baby -- by choice!), so I can't comment on their political ramifications, but they seem rather different in their tones from each other and from "Knocked Up," so evaluating them together seems weird.

Most importantly, a woman choosing to continue an unwanted pregnancy isn't automatically conservative (and it's still very much not conventional), especially when it's a clear plot contrivance, one without which there would be no movie. To take it seriously as a message film because of that contrivance requires that we do so with other similar contrivances, giving them ridiculous thematic credibility. Are we to now consider the liberalism or conservatism of the intrusion of the state into the marital contract because of the movie "What Happens in Vegas"? Sometimes it's as simple as moviemakers wanting to cover new ground in a familiar genre (i.e., not wanting to remake "Nine Months" or "She's Having a Baby" but still making a movie about wacky babymaking adventures). The personal may be political, but the personal as depicted in movies about babies is as unrealistic as the personal as depicted in all other ways -- economically overadvantaged, filled with leisure time not possessed by the people who are supposedly depicted at that economic level (which I suspect is supposed to approximate upper-middle class but is unattainable even for people whose income is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year), and with property out of the league of almost everyone in the U.S. To look for political messages in them (beyond rampant consumerism, of course) is kind of silly.

And if you think I hate breeders of both sexes then try this movement.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.childfree?hl=en

Breeders and their public schools exploit childfree taxpayers while they destroy the planet!! NO ZONING!!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/childfreetown/

"How about first we work harder to prevent pregnancy and if there is a child we don't punish the child or his/her Mother by withholding the help they will need!"

Careful. That sounds dangerously like "lets force women the women we deem 'unsuitable mothers' to use birth control" and then "let's reward sexual irresponsibility with money!"

Where does personal choice, and more importantly personal responsibility, fit in here?

So, MJ now runs ads for the Pacific Research Institute?