I Am Beautiful: A Celebration of Women in Their Own Words

"Guilt." A veteran of consciousness-raising,Roiphe knows that stories can effectchange, and she uses them persuasively.Her anecdotes about outstanding mistakesgo a long way to dispel the notionof the available mother who heals allwith a hug. They also help assuage theworking mother's guilt over neglectingher children. (I, for one, gained tremendouslatitude for error from the stories ofher inadvertently leaving her 10-year-oldhome alone when rushing to a hospital,and sending her toddler to a birthdayparty without underpants.)The book is less convincing, however,when it turns from anecdotes to ananalysis of sexism and prescribes newdirections for the future. For instance, relyingheavily on the work of psychologistsNancy Chodorow and DorothyDinnerstein, Roiphe traces the chiefcause of misogyny back to women themselves,to "mother-dominated childhoods,"in which children fear regressionand the loss of self. The idea is thatpeople hate women because they hatetheir repressive mothers. So if things arebad for women in general, they areworse for moms. Quoting Chodorow,Roiphe writes, "We are all prone tomother hating because we live in a societythat says that mothers can andshould do all for their children."The failures of feminism can also beblamed on women, particularly the rageagainst men that became a definingtheme in radical feminist politics andscholarship. Roiphe writes that "Insteadof establishing equality between thesexes, all the banging of the consciousness-raisingdrum had somehow managedto reverse the polarity. Good wasnow female and bad was male." Pronatalism,which Roiphe defines as "theidea that the culture is rife with evidenceof a conspiracy to make women bearchildren," comes in for even stiffer attack.While Roiphe forgives the early exaboutchild care." Worse, she contends, itplays into the hands of anti-abortionistswho use it to position the women'smovement as antifamily. Oddly enough,although women are the problem,Roiphe believes the solution rests inmen. If men would share half the responsibilityfor raising children, theywould attract half the wrath. This wouldnot only diffuse misogyny but also givewomen the time they need to pursuetheir aims and children the attentionthey so sorely need.Women must lead the way: "If wecould make a revolution about whatwomen did, we can make a revolutionabout what men do, what families shouldbe. It is just that we stopped halfway. "This will free us to attend to the next gen-Roiphe traces misogyny back to women themselves; people hate womenbecause they hate their repressive mothers.pression of pronatalism as "a kind ofpolitics-cum-paranoia" of early feminism,"today's anti-baby posturing," shesays, "is something else again. It repelsmost women. It makes it possible for usto avoid serious questions and issues" Controversial paradigm-challengingutterly engrossing"A compelling and intimate portrait of howthe contemporary Goddess movementimpacts women's lives today. The film coversthe emotionally moving experiences ofwomen attending a three-day Austin-basedworkshop taught by author and feministwitch Zsuzsanna Budapest, often called the"founding mother" of the women'sspirituality movement.To Order send check to:Women's Spirituality ForumP. O. Box 11363Oakland, CA 94611To order withVisa or MastercardCall: (510)444-7724Video:Shipping & Handling:Total $34.95A documentaryby Peg |ordaneration of feminist goals: putting childcare back on the agenda, helping womenmake informed choices about reproduction,and finding solutions to infertility.Roiphe's call to bring fathers homedoesn't mean she excludes other formsof family. Examining the various waysfamilies are formed today—homosexualpartnerships, adoptive families, remarriages,families formed with the help ofsurrogate mothers or IVF—Roiphestrives for tolerance, recognizing thatpeople nurture each other and childrenin many ways. And yet, unaware of herown biases, she often undermines hercause. In an otherwise moving definitionof family, for example, she seems blindto the huge caveat she throws into theargument, suggesting that differentkinds of family are fine as long as theyare not substantially different: "If we definethe family as a bond, biological orchosen, which is dedicated to the caringof all. . .then the genders of the adultswill affect the style, the culture, the politicsof that home, but no more."There is, of course, nothing insubstantialabout culture and politics. Roiphesays in her baldest statement of the issue,"Feminism needs to be pro-marriage, becausethat is the best way to make mostmen, women, and their children happy."Her point is that parenting is at least atwo- or three-person job, if not the wholevillage's. But her wish for the return ofthe family, even the broader and moreexpansive families of the present, doesn'tseem to be any less fantastic. This is whyI think she ultimately slips back into acall for "traditional families."48 O N THE ISSUES • Spring 1997