Well, we know which one Salon Mary Elizabeth Williams would save first if her house was burning down. If you think that the article reads more like seething, unspoken envy of a beautiful starlet that seems to have it all, you’re not alone. The entire piece has a Sweet Valley High mean girl aesthetic, in which a beta-wanna-be-alpha female projects her insecurities onto the popular girl by way of criticism over the most inane things.
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The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”
Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.
thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.
At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”
Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)
But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?
Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.
This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.
If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.
It’s interesting to note that in her acceptance speech, Portman thanked her parents for “giving me my life,” a birth without which the moment would be impossible. But the Oscar is more important than the original circumstance which allowed for Portman to be there, apparently.
And as Portman looked out into the audience at her main competition this year, mother of four Annette Bening, I wonder if she saw an actress who has admitted freely she’s limited her career for her children, who says, “I have all these conditions on which I can work,” but who also cops freely that work “is very important.” “Women aren’t supposed to acknowledge that,” she said in an interview last year, “and pretend that it’s all just fabulous and we love every moment and it’s just a wonder … It is a wonder, but it’s also tiring and really, really hard work and a lot of the time your life is not about you, it’s about what everyone else wants. There’s that selflessness you need to find, and on the other hand, you hire a babysitter and you go out and you do your work.”
Williams hints that the adoration of fickle fans is of greater value than the admiration of one’s own family, and the positive outcomes that affect everyone around said family.
It’s not that motherhood isn’t of huge importance. But there’s a difference between Portman’s conditional acceptance of her lesser triumph last night and Kate Winslet’s simple gratitude toward her “two beautiful children” when she won the Oscar two years ago, or Reese Witherspoon thanking her two children at her Oscar acceptance for “loving and supporting me” — with the caveat that “You should be going to be bed.” Why, at the pinnacle of one’s professional career, would a person feel the need to undercut it by announcing that there’s something else even more important?
It’s good to know that with the prospect of a government shutdown looming, with riots and rumor of war in the Middle East, Williams can devote so many inches to hyperbolic offense at the way in which one woman chose to accept an award. Isn’t feminism all about choice? Oh, but the right kind of choice. If Williams believes that appreciation for children is somehow beneath women then she undercuts the very argument for which she seeks to advocate without realization. It’s comical.
Why, at the pinnacle of one’s career, would you not choose to acknowledge the life within your womb? The role which you will be assuming in just a few months’ time? Williams seems to think that acknowledging one’s joy over impending parenthood undercuts an award, an award that Williams appreciates with a severity that extends far beyond that of a typical fangirl.
Exhibited within Williams’ paragraph are examples of how women chose to celebrate their wins. Choice seems to be a little less than a facade for the left; and how is choice to be encouraged when women are publicly berated for arbitrarily choosing “wrong?”
Any working mom will tell you: They don’t hand out prizes for being a good mother. You just do it, with as much love and heart and soul as you’ve got. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t diminish you as an artist.
If Williams’ is worried about “motherhood” diminishing artistry” it’s a shame. I don’t know a mother, including myself, who doesn’t whole-heartedly love and value their children more than their work. Work doesn’t define a woman, her character, her actions do. If you’re lucky, your children thrive, even if it means you do less movies. If you’re lucky, you’re happy with your choices, as Portman is, without some columnist at Salon deriding you for them. No – if you are lucky you can make your choice freely without someone whose cosmetic advocacy for empowered women is personified in a column which serves little more than backbiting at that free choice. Frankly, I’ve never quite seen someone so out of touch with what it is to be a woman than this author. Attacking a sister in terms of the female sex over her choices is more of an undercut than Portman glorifying her unborn child more than a gold statue which, out of the context of Hollywood fandom, is valueless.
And you don’t have to backhandedly downplay one to be proud of the other.
Who is Mary Elizabeth Williams to deny another woman the freedom of designating, as she chooses, the things of importance in that woman’s life?
The author should take her own advice.
*Slate was initially listed in the headline when Salon was intended. Apologies for the error.
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