'Are You MOM Enough?' Happy Mother's Day from Time Magazine

Seriously?

What the heck is up with that "Are you MOM enough?" headline? And, for that matter, what would possess Time Magazine's editors to pair such a shamelessly Mommy Wars-baiting kind of question with an intentionally salacious (not maternal, not nurturing) image of a nearly 4-year-old boy, who's identified by name, standing on a chair with his mouth on his slender, tank top attired twentysomething mother's exposed breast?

This cover is not about provoking a rationale discussion or even a lively debate about the pros and cons of attachment parenting or extended breastfeeding, two subjects certainly worthy of intellectual dissection. The cover isn't, as the editors claim, simply promoting the lead story inside the magazine which profiles America's leading attachment parenting advocate, who happens to be a seventysomething pediatrician. It's about titillation. Yeah, I said that.

Once you get past the cover, the magazine's lead story is entitled, "The Man Who Remade Motherhood." The accompanying articles (available for Time subscribers and on sale tomorrow on newsstands) are about Dr. Bill Sears and his attachment parenting philosophy which includes the promotion of extended breastfeeding through at least the first year of a baby's life and beyond, co-sleeping with the baby, not letting a baby "cry it out" and wearing the baby around in a baby sling. Other articles include a woman's tale of extended breastfeeding and a token analysis of attachment parenting and comparing its tenets to what science has discerned by studying its practice. Again, I think that these are important subjects to assess, particularly when it comes to tension between attachment parenting and the ability of women to work outside the home.

However that cover does a disservice to breastfeeding and flouts what breastfeeding advocates repeatedly say about it: It's not sexual and we need to get beyond seeing breasts as sexual objects and recognize that they're purposeful, functional parts of the female anatomy after a woman has a baby.

I'm a very low-key breastfeeding advocate, having nursed my babies for a long time, and think women should be able to do it wherever and whenever they and/or their babies need to. But this cover isn't about all of that. It's about newsstand sales. The magazine's editors should be embarrassed by their craven exploitation of this woman and her son, whose friends will be able to Google this image of him, at almost 4, suckling his mother's breast. Did anybody think about the impact of this photo on the kid?

Image credit: Time Magazine.

Notes on Politics: Michelle in Hot Water, 'Time's' Cover Girl and Kagan to Court

Michelle Obama in Hot Water

While President Obama was celebrating his birthday in Chicago, his wife and their 9-year-old daughter Sasha were traveling abroad in Spain. When the Obamas' Spain itinerary was released, there wasn’t much of an outcry.

Until the photo of our First Lady, looking glamorous and chic while walking through the streets of a southern Spanish town, started getting circulated, most prominently on the Drudge Report. Until reports about the hefty vacation price-tag and the details of the trip were revealed: They were staying at a ritzy, five-star hotel -- where the rooms go for “up to . . . $2,500” -- with 40 of Michelle Obama’s friends on a get-away vacation, to which the Obamas took Air Force Two and brought along 70 Secret Service agents, costing taxpayers major bucks, reported the New York Daily News.

Given the dire economic climate in the United States – including a new report out today saying that the jobless rate is just under double-digits nationwide – this is bad timing. And Michelle Obama’s taking a whole lot of crap for it. The Daily News’ Andrea Tantaros likened the First Lady to a “modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation” while the peasants beg for an extension of unemployment benefits because they can’t find jobs because no one’s hiring.

Tantaros wrote:

“I don’t begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime – the First Family included. It’s the extravagance of Michelle Obama’s trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. Toning down the flash would humanize the Obamas and signify that they sympathize with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.”

All of this hullabaloo reminds me of the kind of flack directed at Nancy Reagan back in the day with her pricey china. Nancy certainly got rhetorically smacked around quite a bit for appearing clueless about the obvious contrast between struggling Americans weathering the early 1980s recession and her regal “Reagan red” designer duds and high-end taste.

Time’s Cover Girl

Time Magazine did something daring. It placed an 18-year-old Afghan woman on the cover this week. What’s so button-pushing about the photo is that the woman has no nose. (She also has no ears but that fact is covered by her hair and a veil.) Why no nose? Because her husband – from whose family she had fled because they severely beat her and treated her like a slave – cut it off. He also removed her ears and left her to bleed to death.

Next to the jarring image on Time’s cover are the words, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” “. . . Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined,” wrote Aryn Baker. Baker quoted an Afghan parliamentarian as saying, “Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved.”

The juxtaposition of the photo alongside the headline -- the if-the-United States-leaves-we'll-subject-other-girls-to-this-fate sentiment -- hasn’t set well with some folks who say that the United States didn’t embark on a war in Afghanistan to “nation build,” but now, somehow, building and fashioning this nation into something more democratic and western has become the U.S. military’s charge. The cover, with its accompanying headline, has been lambasted as manipulative pro-war advocacy. Either way, I can’t get that photo out of my head. It’s damned haunting.

Kagan to Court

After she’s sworn in as the 100th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts this weekend, Elena Kagan will join two other female justices on the Supreme Court, giving this court more estrogen than it’s ever had.

“Will three finally be the magic number that effects real change for women in terms of pay parity, access to education and sexual harassment in the U.S.?” asked Meghan Casserly in Forbes.com.

She continued:

“A study from Catalyst in 2007 suggests it will. In their study of the U.S.’s 500 largest companies, Catalyst found that the point where women effect change on corporate boards is three. Three women on the board proved to be the point where return on equity, return on sales and return on investment capital saw the biggest improvement. The bottom line: stronger than average performance results when at least three women serve.”

I’m just hopeful that there will soon be a day when a woman being nominated to the Supreme Court -- or to a corporate board for that matter -- won’t be something historic. It’ll just be a run-of-the-mill PR announcement.

Image credits: Torres/AP via the New York Daily News and Jodi Bieber/Time Magazine.

Women Pols -- of Both Parties -- on Receiving End Sexist Attacks

Last week, it was Sarah Palin who Newsweek editors put on the cover of a newsweekly in running shorts to coincide with the release of her memoir, Going Rogue. The editors argued that the photo was the most "interesting" one they could've selected from the thousands of Palin to place on their cover.

The cheap shots at Palin -- which were not about her policy positions -- prompted me to write this column about how powerful women pols like Palin and Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, have been subjected to sexually oriented attacks which don't get lobbed at their male counterparts. (I also complained that, if you actually go around and tell people that it's wrong for women to be judged by their bodies, make-up, clothing and sexual attractiveness, you're obliged to object when women on both sides of the political aisle are subjected to it.)

Now comes this photographic commentary from Time Magazine: A Photoshopped image of a female Democratic senator with a pretend glob of semen in her hair, a la There's Something About Mary. A male journalist decided it'd be funny satire to depict Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, whose vote is considered pivotal to the health care legislation, looking like Cameron Diaz in the slapstick movie. Broadsheet writer Tracy Clark-Flory wrote this about it thusly:

"On November 19, the image was posted to The Page blog, which is written by Mark Halperin, and ran with the caption, 'Senator Landrieu's latest position on proceeding on health care debate here.'

As Media Matters points out, this only adds to 'a broader, sexist right-wing narrative that the U.S. Senator from Louisiana is, as Glenn Beck put it yesterday, 'a high-class prostitute' engaged in 'hookin' -- all because she lobbied Senate leadership for expanded Medicaid funding for Louisiana in the Senate health care bill in what was characterized by the media as an exchange for her 'yea' vote to proceed with floor debate on the bill.'

. . . So fellas, you've already illustrated her with ejaculate in her hair and called her a prostitute -- what's next? I shudder to think."

Over on the Huffington Post, the response went a little something like this, ". . . Mark Halperin is the worst and should be publicly scorned."

I do, however, disagree with Media Matters when it argues that this "sexist narrative" is applied to women only by conservatives. It's applied to women by women and men from both sides of the political spectrum, and to pretend that it's only conservatives who do the sexist attacking is turning a convenient blind eye.

Image credit: Broadsheet.

Failing Miserably with My Oscar Picks

Watched the 47-hour Oscar telecast last night. Why is it when it seems as though the show's producers are sincerely making attempts to trim the program's time, it seems even longer?

The good: Kate Winslet winning her first Oscar, Winslet's father loudly whistling so she could locate him in the crowd, Tina Fey & Steve Martin cracking up the place, Ben Stiller doing a spot-on Joaquin Phoenix and those cute-as-a-button Slumdog Millionaire kids who were collecting stars' autographs.

The so-so: Enough with the camera shots of Bragelina (particularly when Jennifer Aniston was on stage, steps away from them . . . just tacky), the too-long dance number (even though the HSM duo was very earnest) and, while I loved the individual speeches to the actor/actress nominees -- it was like giving each actor, most of whom would go home without a statue, a thoughtful, touching, individualized gift -- it tacked on too much time. The Academy Awards ended after midnight. My DVR stopped recording just when they were making the mini-speeches about the Best Actress nominees, so I was lucky to be able to switch over to live TV so as not to miss too much.

As for my own personal Oscar picks? Per usual, I stunk at predicting the winners, while my husband -- a casual pop culture observer who I force-march through countless films, particularly of the indie ilk -- thoroughly trounced me. I'd selected the top nine categories and out of those, I successfully identified four winners. The husband? He got seven of the winners.

Among those I accurately predicted: Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire; Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (though you'd have to have been a moron to bet against a Ledger win); Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Best Animated Feature, WALL-E.

I know what you're thinking . . . how could such a self-professed Winslet fan have bet against her to win for The Reader? Well, I thought that perhaps the Academy voters didn't want to go with the "sure thing." Plus Winslet's on the cover of this week's Time Magazine (printed BEFORE the Oscars were aired) under the headline, "Best Actress." I thought it seemed TOO predictable. I decided to be wild and pick Meryl Streep for Best Actress for Doubt. My bad.

I also thought that while Sean Penn collected raves for his portrayal of Harvey Milk, that voters would go for the feel-good comeback story that is Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Wrong-o. As for picking the WALL-E Original Screenplay and The Reader Adapted Screenplay, incorrect on both counts.

Oh well. So I'm not very good at prognosticating when it comes to contests like this, which is why I always fare so poorly with my brackets during the NCAA men's basketball tournament. I tend to overthink all my choices, then allow my own personal biases to seep in. Bet you want me in your basketball pool, don't ya?

Image credit: Time Magazine.

Time Says 'Maxed-Out Moms' Key to Election Success

Move over "hockey moms." Apparently, according to Time Magazine, "maxed-out moms" are the new end-all, be-all voting bloc that John McCain or Barack Obama need to secure in order to win a four-year trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, room and board included.

What the heck are "maxed-out moms?" Time Magazine defines them thusly:

"Meet the woman of the year: White, high school-educated and probably on the north side of age 50, she is getting the worst of the bad economy. She's worrying about whether her daughter will be able to afford college and her father his medicine. Her husband can barely afford the gasoline it takes to get back and forth from a job he's in danger of losing--and with it, their health insurance. She's getting her hair cut less often and sometimes has to put her utility bill on her Visa. She's the woman doing the laundry at 11 p.m. because it's the first chance she's had all day to do it."

These women are called "pragmatic," as opposed to partisan, and are considered by pundits to be "the ultimate swing voters and the ultimate late deciders."

Oy. I don't like this tendency to label of certain groups with the assumption that all or most of the folks who fit the above description would vote similarly. (I recently blogged on the Picket Fence Post about my distaste for focusing on a "[FILL IN THE BLANK] Mom" vote.)

I understand that the presidential campaigns internally have to figure out which voters are most likely to be persuaded to move into their column, mostly by where these undecided voters live and how their home state figures into the Electoral College equation. (Remember, national polls are meaningless, regardless of how many times and with how much fanfare the news networks rush to announce their fresh poll numbers. It's the polls in the so-called "swing states" -- those states where it's uncertain whether the majority of voters will go Democrat or Republican -- and how those states factor into the Electoral College numbers that matter in the end.) It's simply lazy on the part of the media to use gimmicky shortcuts in an attempt to try to make sense out of this election.

Do all women whose kids play soccer -- assigned the moniker "soccer moms" (a group to which I'd belong simply because my daughter plays soccer) -- vote similarly and hold the same views on public policies? No. Do all dads who follow NASCAR vote in the same fashion? Nope. So please, political media gurus, let's stop with the oversimplification. It's patronizing. Instead of trying to carve up the electorate into tidy little groups, why not spend time explaining, in plain language and with snazzy charts, what the heck this proposed $700 billion federal bailout actually means to the average American and how it would play into the presidential candidates' plans for either tax cuts or healthcare?

Image credit: Time Magazine/Brooks Craft/Corbis.