Unplanned Children & Guilt

"My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, 'You may regret not having the baby.'"

I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and - in the beginning - unwanted pregnancy.

I've known this for, oh, more or less forever. I've also had the suspicion, though not confirmed, that an abortion talk happened somewhere in that early period when my mother was still freaking out and desperately wanting her sporty two door convertible. My parents are both ardently pro-choice, so it would be strange if there weren't the barest minimum of a conversation about it.

This hasn't had much of an impact on my life. At least, not the negative kind. Because even though I am the product of an unplanned, unexpected, and initially unwanted pregnancy, I was (and am) a beloved child. I am also a wanted child, and it has always been easy for me to recognize that the two issues - unwanted pregnancy versus wanted and valued child - are separate and very different.

That doesn't mean, however, that my parents don't have regrets, regrets directly relating to me, and my being born. My mother, for instance, still can't get over her loss of the sporty two door. My impending birth was also the reason she missed the funeral of her favorite aunt, and then I didn't even have the common decency to be born that day. No, I waited until my due date, because I'm generally punctual but not excessively early. I'm pretty sure they regretted having me that time I got a D in English and then burned my report card in an effort to destroy the evidence. I'm also fairly certain the time I didn't come home or call was another one of those "regret ever having her" times in my parents' lives. There were other moments of regret. Trips they couldn't take, money they didn't have, time they no longer had to work on their relationship. And although I know I'm not the center of the universe and that my parents would have in all probability found other things to fight passionately about if I didn't exist, I'm sure there were many times when they were fighting about me one or both of them wondered if their lives - their (potentially not legal) marriage - would have been better off if instead of having sex they just watched some television that fateful night.

This isn't to say that my parents don't take a certain amount of pleasure in being parents. They do. They revel in it. And because my parents weren't ready to be parents, our relationship has a weird, slightly dysfunctional, side to it where we are and have been friends as much as I'm their daughter for most of my life. As a side note, this whole side to my relationship with them is one of the reasons I never rebelled.

So, even though I have a ridiculously good - if dysfunctional - relationship with my parents, even though (Ds in English aside), I have (generally) been a rather low stress venture for both of my parents in terms of parenting, even though my parents love me and respect me and, almost more importantly, really like me, they have still had regrets. Some big, and some small. Some more long term, and some that were more like flashes. Because part of life is regretting the path(s) not taken.

This is why I find the response Kourtney Kardashian recounted her doctor as saying, the one at the top of the post, as being so entirely disingenuous. Because it simplifies life. It makes it seems as though children never cause regret, and as though abortion always does. That isn't true. Children, even wanted, planned for children, come with frustrations and pains and - yes - regret. As much as children bring light and life and joy and love and wonderment and fulfillment, they bring a lot of the negative stuff as well.

More than pushing birth, though, claiming that going through a pregnancy will result in no regrets is harmful because it creates an environment where the women who do experience regret are shamed for that completely natural feeling. It creates an environment where women keep those feelings bottled up, don't talk about it because it is so unnatural, because to talk about it is to be a bad mother. And that is the last thing a doctor should be pressing upon any woman. Because it contributes to a view that motherhood is an inherently pleasurable act, an act all women gain fulfillment from and enjoy doing. An act that in no way at times makes them want to rip their hair out or wonder when they get to go shopping for their own clothing, when they get to take care of themselves and get their two door in the midst of bottles and surly teenagers and mini vans.

We need to recognize that most decisions carry with them a bittersweet realization of the path unchosen. And if that bittersweetness comes when we order a chocolate-mint chocolate chip ice cream cone and then lust after the vanilla-mint chocolate chip ice cream in a cup, then it comes in conjunction with more important decisions. We need to fully recognize the effects of parenthood. We need to talk about them, air out those particular facets of life, and still remain positive that for a lot of people - most people - children are well worth any of the regret they bring. That is an adult conversation. The other one is stuff of fairy tales.

A Review of Dollhouse's "Stage Fright", Part 1

This review, having gotten way too long, has been split. Enjoy.

First things first: I think one of the main problems with Dollhouse are the Actives themselves, by themselves, with little or no personality. The dialogue there is stilted and forced, and kind of eye-rollingly bad. I know they're adults, so they can't get away with cute little kidisms. I know that they are wiped, so there can't be any pop culture references or any emotionality other than being extremely docile. But there has got to be something to save moments like this one:

Because it just isn't working and it detracts from the rest of what is a pretty good episode.

The beginning, with Rayna in a cage, is particularly symbolic. Even as she steps out of her fake cage, she's still trapped in the cage created by her own celebrity; and she reflects the Actives' experience. In this episode, written by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, there is the clearest indication of what Dollhouse is trying to say through its use of the Actives. First, Rayna is manipulated by Biz into accepting Echo/Jordan as a background singer; Biz is the one who warns Rayna that Echo/Jordan seems to have "attitude", Biz is the one who motions for Rayna to discuss the decision, and we are left with the impression that Biz is the one who had Echo/Jordan sing the song that Rayna loves. Rayna's position in her pop world is also highly constructed, something she herself notes when she admits that she is a "factory girl" after confessing that she's miserable:

"I gotta be happy, I gotta be grateful. I gotta be rebellious, but just enough to give me cred so that people know I'm not a Factory Girl. But I am. I don't exist. I'm not a real person. I'm everybody's fantasy. God help me if I try not to be. You weren't grown in a lab, but I was. Been singing for my supper since when, and for when, and for everybody else. God put this voice in me, and forgot to make it mine."

There is so much crammed in that one monologue the head reels. First, it is an indictment of celebrity culture. But it indicts celebrity culture for the same reason Whedon seems to want to explore "what we want from each other sexually, how much power we wanna have over each other". Rayna is just another type of Active; she is just yet another person treated as an object. She doesn't feel like "a real person", and she doesn't have ownership over the talent that has catapulted her to stardom. At some point in her life, probably quite young since Biz mentioned 'the Mouse', she lost her autonomy and her ability to be herself for herself - and do what she wanted to do without thinking about the affect it would have on her career and how it would distract from the fantasy image her fans at large saw and demanded. We as a culture feel a right to celebrities; we feel like we know them, or that we are owed some of what makes them 'them' - because we buy their CDs and tickets to their movies. The whole reason there are magazines like the National Enquirer and Star and shows like Entertainment Tonight is because we want access to the lives of people we think we know, and who we feel should be more than happy to open up to us because we "made" them who and what they are. And then we wonder why they crumble, why they have "'shave your head, flash your junk' whacky phase[s]", and we gawk all the more. Because they exist dually as both people and products in our society, and neither are very much respected.

The second part of it all that lends to the strange vertigo that partially makes this show so uncomfortably compelling. For the first time, the client engaging in double entendres doesn't know she's engaging in any such thing, or that she is a client. Rayna may not know that Jordan is a Factory Girl, grown in a lab, but we do. And that makes both of their stories all the sadder; they're interconnected in this life without knowing it, both are being manipulated without knowing it, and their friendship is as false as any other relationship Echo is programmed to have. It makes Rayna all the more tragic a figure, even as she becomes one of the less than savory people of the piece. She is ultimately alone.

The other aspect of Rayna is that even as she is that tragic figure made into an object by her handlers, she is not a good person. One could theorize that her position as an object has been one that has dulled what she sees as her obligation to others, has left her cold, miserable, and unable to feel. This same story has played out in Whedon's works before, first with Dushku's own Faith and later with Firefly's Saffron (or, Yo-Saf-Bridge). These three women operate under the assumption that they are alone and that everyone else in the world merely wants something from them. Yo-Saf-Bridge sums up this philosophy best when she says, "Everybody plays each other. That's all anybody ever does". And though she is not outrightly evil as the first two are, that is what Rayna does, because that is life as she experiences it. She is played by Biz, so she in turn plays her stalker, and her fan. She plays so many people and has been played by so many people, she doesn't know what to do when a (falsely created) genuine friend doesn't play the game. What she wants is for the game to stop and for the cage to open, to be free. She just doesn't know how to go about getting it, because without the realization that there is a world in which genuine relationships can thrive, she doesn't know there is any other escape from the game other than freedom from life itself.

Along with Rayna's predicament come two ideas consistently present in Whedon's work, and those are self-determination and strength in living. Echo/Jordan brings up both, telling Rayna, "You don't like your life? Change it"; and when Rayna responds pitifully with, "They won't let me", Echo/Jordan drives it home with "You make them let you." This is an idea that Whedon has explore before, both with Buffy Summers doing things like breaking away from the Watcher's Council to restructuring that same Council when she needed them to changing the very nature of what slayerdom means; and with Malcolm Reynolds, who couldn't live under Alliance rule and so bought a ship and just kept flying in the spaces the Alliance hadn't yet reached. Life, Whedon seems to postulate, is what you make of it; and his other postulation is that you'd better damn well make something of it. When Rayna would rather die than fight, Echo/Jordan tells her, "You know, the last thing I thought you'd be was weak". Maybe it is Whedon's atheism, but the idea of not living, of taking the easy road off of this mortal coil, seems to not be a real option in his world. To want to die is weak, like Rayna is described as and like Angel claims that he is in the BtVS episode "Amends". Buffy herself puts it best when she says, "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live." At the end of the episode, faced with real and everlasting death that doesn't create a grand finale, Rayna rediscovers this will to be brave and to remake her life.

"Do You Wanna Go Count Our Gold?"

This, in my humble opinion, may be the funniest Sarah Haskins video, ever. Even better than the one about vampires - or yogurt!

I gasped too when they cut to Angelina Jolie during Jennifer Aniston's presentation, but it wasn't for the "OHMYGOD" emotional fireworks of it so much as it was that I just thought it was (a) completely unnecessary and (b) diminished these two accomplished and, I suspect, three-dimensional women - one presenting an Oscar and one who had already won an Oscar and was nominated for another - to one lone characteristic, that being two women in a perpetual Cold War over a guy. And yes, that guy is Brad Pitt, but really now. It has been I don't know how many years, but at least a couple; I would think the story over these two would die down. But then, I guess I'm ignoring the impulse to think of women in relation to men, and both Jolie and Aniston seem to always be connected due to their relationship with one man in particular.

I find this particularly odd because nothing ever extremely exciting has ever truly gone down. I mean, if Jennifer Aniston went insane one day early on and tried to take out Angelina Jolie, I could see everyone waiting with bated breath for the continued bloodbath. But aside from the somewhat sensationalist way Jolie's relationship with Brad began, there is seemingly no "there" there. Of course, maybe I'm ignoring the main component of this whole thing, that being that this particular strain of media really and truly can't imagine 3 adults actually not having Jerry Springeresque moments when they are *gasp* in the same room. After all, these are people who have regularly seen celebrities assault paparazzi with fists and canned food. Maybe the reason why there is still so much blasted attention on this whole nonissue is the fact that Aniston never went after Pitt or Jolie with a steak knife, and Jolie never drop kicked Aniston into a wall. Perhaps what the Access Hollywoods and the Entertainment Tonights are waiting for is a release from what they see as an unbearable tension. The fact that Aniston and Jolie may actually not really give that much of a damn about it all anymore, or at the very least actually having other aspects of their lives that are more important, doesn't even seem to cross any of these people's minds. Which is why it is important that we have people like Sarah Haskins to highlight the truly ridiculousness of it all.

Matt Damon Rocks (Or Why Famous People Should Not Be Maligned For Voicing Opinions)

I really wonder about certain perspectives. Like, the idea that famous people - actors, musicians, writers, etc. - shouldn't talk about politics or policies. These are people that we basically - though most of us passively - stalk. We buy (or just flip through) magazines with their faces on it, pictures that are oftentimes taken through incredibly powerful photolenses from large distances. We want to know what they are wearing, what they are eating, what they are drinking, how they parent, and what products they endorse. We'll buy perfume if it has been endorsed by someone we like. We'll drink more Starbucks. We'll show more interest in designers or cuts or jackets. But the second someone opens their mouth about something truly important, we tell them to shut up. We tell them that they have no business discussing matters of the state.

Kid Rock says, "I truly believe that people like myself, who are in a position of entertainers in the limelight, should keep our mouths shut on politics... ...Because at the end of the day, I'm good at writing songs and singing. What I'm not educated in is the field of political science. And so for me to be sharing my views and influencing people of who I think they should be voting for... I think would be very irresponsible on my part". But here's the thing. As a citizen of these here United States of America, anybody anywhere has the right (and some would say the responsibility) to think about, talk about, and debate the nature of American politics and politicians. Most people aren't educated in the field of political science. But that doesn't mean that we should not think about the issues and discuss the issues. We shouldn't vote for someone (or not) just because Kid Rock (or Matt Damon) told us their opinion on that person. But these people should not feel hindered in giving their opinion either. Because as a citizen, that is their right. They should be allowed to say, "I have misgivings because", or "I support this candidate because". They have a right to voice their opinion on this thing that at the end of the day really matters. They have a right to use their celebrity to bring focus to issues that matter to them. They have a right to expect us, their fans, to recognize that they aren't deciding who we should vote for, any more than they decide what we should buy or what we should drink. But if we scrutinize their every choice, who they date and what they eat and how they lose the weight from what they eat, then they should be able to voice their opinion about a choice we all get to make every four years. Because being less than scholarly doesn't seem to stop anyone else from voicing their sometimes astute and sometimes obnoxious opinions about any number of issues. And since these are people who live in this country, they have the right to talk about who and what they think would be better for this country.