A Non-Parent's Belated Defense of Miley

Things I don't need Target to sell

Last weekend's opening sketch on SNL featuring Miley Cyrus (you can watch it here) prompted me to finally go and watch her infamous twerking performance at this year's VMAs. I had, of course, heard all about it, mostly from a dear friend who is the mother of a one-year old daughter. Her Facebook posts immediately after the VMAs made it clear she was concerned with the normalization of over-sexualized behavior in young women, i.e., if the media kept this up, by the time her daughter was twelve she'd be swinging from a pole.

Now it may just be because I don't have a daughter to visualize swinging from said pole, but my response to Miley's "show" was precisely this: what was all the fuss about? I stopped watching MTV sometime in the '90s, but I do catch the odd music video in the gym and can confidently state that young, scantily clad women dancing like strippers is hardly groundbreaking stuff. Instead, for all my mother-friends, I offer two signs of hope from Miley's performance.

First, she was surrounded by plus-sized back-up dancers. Setting aside the fact that they were wearing over-sized teddy bears on their backs, let's hear it for seeing some babes with back front-and-center on a major awards shows. Isn't it a positive trend to show some normal-sized asses on TV?

Second, she was wearing sneakers. Granted she wasn't wearing much else, but, at least from the ankles down, Miley Cyrus looked age-appropriate. She could dance in those shoes, which is more than you can say about Madonna in her Superbowl performance a few years back when she could hardly stand up in her stiletto boots. I am far less outraged about a young pop star gyrating in a sequined leotard than I am about the way stripper shoes have now become part of mainstream women's fashion. It used to be that platform, 4+ inch heels were only available at Frederick's of Hollywood, but these days you can get a pair anywhere from Target to Barney's. And ladies, I didn't spend five years of higher education studying economics not to notice that's down to one reason and one reason alone: we (at least some of us) are buying them!

In my mind, the beginning of the shoe apocalypse happened one morning when I spotted Ann Curry on the Today Show (yes, it was back when she still had that job) wearing a pair of stripper shoes with her otherwise staid attire. I was so outraged I even posted on Facebook about it. Since when did shoes you can't even walk in become go-to professional attire? What ever happened to Audrey Hepburn and the kitten heel definition of femininity? In my mind, it was far darker day for feminism when Ann, a woman representing a strong, successful role model, broke out the stripper shoes than it was when Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter twerked.  

Taking Turns as Trailing Spouses

Without a doubt, not having kids has made it easier for my husband and me to be mobile, taking advantage of opportunities to work in London and Berlin. Along the way we have both been in the position of being a trailing spouse, i.e., the person following the one who has a job. We wrote about it on a piece over on LiveAbroad.com, which you can read here. You'll hear all about our failed attempts to re-invent ourselves: I as a modern-day Julia Child, my husband as "David Bowie in the late '70s, but fatter and decidedly less creative." Hope you enjoy.

How to Play & Other Stuff I Learned from my Five-Year-Old Niece

Image from https://www.facebook.com/DisneyPrincess

Based on a very unscientific examination of the childfree community on Twitter into which I have self-selected, my stance on the subject is middle-of-the-road. I am neither a principled objector to kids on the basis of environmental or population issues, nor someone who hates kids. I simply lacked ambition in the arena of motherhood; my life without kids failed to seem incomplete. Congruent with my feelings on the matter, I am entirely comfortable admitting that by not having kids I am missing out on certain things. This seems no stranger to me than acknowledging the equal and opposite truth: that parents make sacrifices for their children.

Last week I spent some time with my five-year-old niece, who lives in another state, and caught up on some lessons I may have otherwise missed. On our first evening together I babysat for a couple of hours while my sister went to an appointment. I had arrived armed with a Disney Princess activity book, and, given my niece, M, is something of a princess aficionado, was feeling rather confident that we would have no problem entertaining ourselves while my sister was away. Upon unwrapping the book, M immediately tore open the pack of gems—plastic rubies, emeralds and topaz with sticker backings—ignoring the colored pencils and stencils and coloring book pages of princesses on which we were supposed to draw ball gowns and adorn them with said jewels. Much to my distress, she took straight to sticking the gems to one and other, announcing "I'm making jewels!"

"Shouldn't we save some to decorate the princess' necklaces?" I asked, trying to mask my rising sense of panic while vainly flipping to one of the coloring book pages to try to interest her in a princess stencil.

But it was too late. She was going to use all those stickers right up before she even noticed there were pictures of princesses to decorate with the darn jewels. Gems were everywhere: in the carpet, on her elbows, and, yes, a few successfully stuck together to make what I can now, with the benefit of hindsight, see were her logical attempts at facsimiles of real-life, three-dimensional gems.

And then it dawned on me that my agitation was because M was not playing "right." Of course not being a form from the IRS, the Disney Princess activity book doesn't come with a set of rules. This is just as well because M. doesn't yet have a concept of how to play according to the rules. And long may it be until she gets one because then she'll turn into someone like me who thinks there is a right way and wrong way to do everything, even PLAY. After taking a moment to briefly hate myself, I joined in with M in sticking some jewels together. Later when she used up all the Little Mermaid stickers on the very first page of the coloring book, I didn't even flinch.

My second lesson of my visit came the next morning. When M. woke up, still groggy and in her Disney Princess P.J.s, she went straight to the coffee table, which hosts a selection of construction paper and markers and such, and began work on various crafts. She had produced a kite, a butterfly and a handful of ice-cream cones by the time we lured her to the breakfast table. When I left for work she was busy composing a song and dance about vegetables (admittedly the vegetable angle was my sister's idea). M wasn't going to be nominated for any Grammy Awards, but she didn't care. Her urge to create was native, and there was nothing she couldn't do armed with a ball of hot-pink yarn and a red ukulele.

M reminded me that the act of creation was the ice cream and the hot fudge and the whipped cream of that particular sundae. Any assessment of whether or not the end product is any good is the maraschino cherry, and everyone knows opinion about maraschino cherries is as polarizing as Hilary Clinton. The magic is in the doing. And so, after two days, I left with one of M's creations, a heart-shaped kite, tied to my carry-on bag. It's not as subtle as a string tied around my finger, but I'm keeping it as a reminder to write and live with fewer rules and more abandon.

Americashire FREE Kindle Download

From August 29-31, my childfree memoir, Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, is available as a FREE Kindle download. To download it from the US Amazon store click here. To download it from the UK Amazon store click here. Happy Labor Day weekend reading!

David Sedaris on the Madness of Modern Parenting

One of the funniest things I've read this summer is David Sedaris' Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. My favorite essay in the book is Attaboy, in which Sedaris ponders the madness of modern parenting. He skewers everything from the penchant for presidentially-named toddlers (think Madison) to the way children today can apparently do no wrong. When the piece veers down the path to the good old days of when he was a kid, Sedaris draws a stark contrast to the toddler-tyrant-run homes of today, writing of his own parents: "They did not live in a children's house. We lived in theirs." In other words, he articulates what every sane person has thought when subjected to, say, watching a mother ask her three-year-old if he or she would like skim or 2% milk in their babyccino as you stand behind them in a five-person deep line at Starbucks while running progressively later for work (or does that only happen in L.A.?).

Buy the book, but you can also listen to Sedaris read the essay, Attaboy, aloud here.

The Childfree Life: The Oprah Problem and Other Myths

Photo-illustration by Randall Ford for TIME

Last week's Time magazine coverstory caused a backlash for, among other things, propagating certain stereotypes about the childfree life. In the aftermath, I thought I would republish a slightly revised version of my own piece on myths about being childfree, which first appeared back in June 2013 on the Choices blog.

I already know what you’re thinking. You’re about to read something fabulous and envy-inducing. Because surely, since I chose not to have kids, I must be living the life exotic AND making a difference along the way. It’s not your fault for thinking this. It’s not even Time magazine’s fault for printing that cover featuring a childfree couple relaxing on the beach. No, that blames lies directly with Oprah.

While the childfree life has become quite stylish with celebrities today–everyone from Rachel Ray to Ellen and Portia to John Hamm and his girlfriend, Jennifer Westfeldt, are doing it–the flagship celebrity for the childfree cause is Oprah. And this is a problem because the woman is such a damn overachiever. It would be one thing if I could quietly rock the corporate life mediocre and write a bit in my spare time. But no. Thanks to Oprah, I am expected to own my own television network, publish a magazine with my picture on the cover every month, and educate all the girls in South Africa. Anything less and I am failing to live up to the career superwoman assumptions that have been mistakenly bestowed up on me as a childfree woman.  (My sincere apologies to all my exhausted, discriminated against, working-mother friends. I know I am supposed to be smashing glass ceilings on your behalf, and I really do feel bad about this when I use my middle-manager paycheck to buy a third glass of wine.)

Hang on to your seat because, now that I have busted the first myth about childfree women being career powerhouses, there’s more to debunk. Let’s start with the polite but misplaced belief that my marriage must be awesome because my husband and I have so much time to focus on each other. Au contraire, my naïve mother-friend. In fact, sometimes I think it was a mistake that my husband and I didn’t have kids, primarily because we don’t get the benefit of having that distraction for eighteen years or so. There are no exhausting efforts getting a little one to eat or sleep, or, later, crazed schedules chauffeuring them around to school and soccer and ballet.

In the absence of such demands, you actually have to make conversation with your spouse.  Like every day.  And because my husband is the one between us who’s in touch with a feminine side, his favorite insult to throw at me in a fight is that we don’t have anything to talk about anymore.  My instinctual reaction to this is, “What on earth do you expect after twelve years of marriage?  What, exactly, is the quality level of discourse you require during every single breakfast and every single dinner of every single day?” The irony is that, of late, our go-to topic of conversation is one that is also popular in the homes of parents of young children. This, of course, is poop. I chalk this up to being middle-aged–I certainly don’t remember being so scatological before forty. But now, the morning contents of the toilet bowl, or lack thereof, are a reliable topic of conversation. 

I have just one final bubble to burst for all the moms out there, which is you would be full-figured at forty even if you didn’t have that kid. That’s just what happens to our metabolism when we hit middle age. I am embarrassed to tell you that I’ve gained the best part of twenty pounds since I got married. Admittedly, this is also because I get to drink a lot more wine than you do, moms, and that goes straight on the belly. I never had to cut back for a pregnancy, or to breastfeed, or because I might get drunk and drop my infant.  Hell, I wish I could blame my post-marital weight gain on not being able to lose the baby weight.  It’s much more dignified than being an old wino.

So what does all this tell you about the childfree life? Well, for me, choosing not to have kids wasn’t a sacrifice I made for something else I wanted to do (be a CEO), have (a “fulfilling” marriage) or be (unnaturally super-hot well into middle age). Lacking sufficient enthusiasm for what is quite possibly the hardest job on earth, it was simply a choice I made. And so here I am, a childfree woman in all my middle-manager, scatological, slightly bloated, wine-drinking glory.

Jennifer Richardson is the author of Americashire:A Field Guide to a Marriage, the rural idyll memoir for every woman who ever questioned having kids. You can find Jennifer online at:

www.americashire.com

www.facebook.com/americashire

www.twitter.com/baronessbarren

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17691662-americashire

www.pinterest.com/baronessbarren

Great British Summer Goodreads Americashire Giveaway

Last summer the UK had the Olympics, but this summer isn't too shabby either. The Stones finally played Glastonbury, Andy Murray won Wimbledon, and, according to Twitter, Kate Middleton is in labour as I type. Yes, yes, I know it's off-message to write about childbirth in a childfree blog, but even I'm excited by the imminent arrival of the royal heir. My Anglophilia is trumping my childfree-ness in this instance.

In any case, to celebrate all things great about this Great British summer, there's a Goodreads giveaway for my book, Americashire, running now through August 8th. Hurry on over and enter now. It's open to UK residents as well as many of the notable former colonies (by which I mean Australia, Canada and the U.S.).

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Americashire

by Jennifer Richardson

Giveaway ends August 08, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win