Category Archives: My Two Pence

“I Think I’m Better Than You.”

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The World Wide Web: Eroding Subtlety Since 1990

I wrote a post recently on Facebook, in which I congratulated myself on doing a damn good job of parenting my daughter. I’d had a particularly cruddy day, filled with a variety of Unpleasant Things. Sick of the crushing weight of mummy guilt, I had a moment of why-the-hell-not proudness. Why shouldn’t I feel good about myself?

The problem is, it didn’t make me feel good about myself. The following morning, I back-tracked and took my post down. Saying that I was brilliant hadn’t made me feel proud at all. In fact, I felt like a bit of a shit bag. I realised I’d overstepped a line – and, thanks to the dear old internet, I’m certainly not the first.

Call me old fashioned, but I can’t seem to get comfortable with the concept – peculiar to social media – of “bigging oneself up.”¹ It took me a long time even to feel at ease with the mummy blogging medium – which is, by its very definition, an utterly self-absorbed pastime. The idea that anyone else should be even slightly interested in any of my stream-of-consciousness tripe still fascinates and horrifies me in equal measure.

Without meaning to perpetuate the Oh-I-Say British stereotype here, I’ve always thought it’s rather better to have someone else point out your successes than to hold them up yourself and order everybody to look at them (“GO ON: LOOK AT IT!”). I prefer my humour – and the people whose company I keep – self deprecatory and wry. Which leads me nicely to today’s God That Annoys Me award, which goes to this puke-inducingly smug baby vest.

It embodies all the reasons why, while self confidence is something to be admired and aspired to, it’s also something one ought to be a bit humble about. It oversteps the same line I did: the line between being proud, and being offensive, divisive and judgemental. The message it carries – ostensibly that breast is best² – is a well known and scientifically endorsed one. But it’s the undertone of the message that offends. It’s inherently smug, and implies that the mother of the vest-clad little monster is somehow better than any passing mother who might have bottle fed her baby with formula. Using your baby to advertise your parenting politics is a dangerous business indeed. I don’t think the message bears any true malice; it’s just a misguided joke.

But isn’t that the problem? I wonder if the world in general – and the emotive realm of parenting, in particular – might be a nicer place if we all chose our words a bit more carefully. It makes all the difference between, “I’m better than you,” and “I think you’re doing a great job.” I’m all for saying what you think when it really matters, but the internet is so full of people talking so hard and fast and loud, that the power of someone’s words to make or break a person’s day seems to have been forgotten in the furore.

¹ I still do it. It’s a pitfall of social media, and a hard one to avoid. God only knows how many people have snorted in disgust at my self important status updates and blog posts over the years.

² Oh, don’t even get me started on this. The UK’s astounding lack of savvy about encouraging people to breastfeed is my current soapbox subject. And hardcore “lactivism” can kiss my ass, for starters. Yeah, I said it (breaking all the rules of the post I just wrote. It’s my blog and I’ll be a hypocrite if I want to.).

Awakening

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I had a blog entry going round and round my head last night in bed, and no laptop to hand, so I scrawled it in my journal instead.¹ Please excuse the lack of style, but I tend (as I think I’ve mentioned before) to exercise a laborious and time-consuming edit-as-I-write process on the computer, so I find the permanence of the biro a bit daunting. It does have advantages – economy of words being the main one; but I digress. Here it is, in all its handwritten glory. Sorry if my dreadful handwriting takes a little deciphering…

This post is dedicated to my good friend, M, who embodies the idea of living in the everyday world whilst living, at the same time, somewhere altogether nicer, better than anyone else I know.

¹ One of my dearest friends bought this journal for me. Her eclectic – and somewhat French – tastes are a constant source of joy to me, as is the journal itself. I am a stationary fetishist, of course.

Boo Hoo – How to Sell Clothes by Telling People They’re Ugly

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I wrote this today and sent it to boohoo.com. I am not expecting a reply. If you want to know what Plain Jane is – or indeed who boohoo.com are – feel free to use Google. I’m sure as hell not giving those jackasses a bunch of free links. And don’t blame me if you’re a little bit sick on yourself.

Dear BooHoo.com,

I’ve just seen an advert on MTV Rocks for a programme called Plain Jane, a series so astoundingly shallow and vacuous that it made me want to tear my television set from the wall and send it to the government for a refund of my license fee. The trailer for this masterpiece of modern entertainment proudly announced that it was brought to me by boohoo.com.

At what point, when you were building your fashion business, did you decide to chuck your ethics unceremoniously down the toilet? Probably around the same time you decided to build a fashion business.

In a world where Katy Perry single handedly undoes the last fifty years of feminism by squirting cream from her tits on MTV, my daughter has to grow up while you – so desperate to sell her a pair of hotpants – employ a “fashion expert” to flounce about on the TV and tell her she’s a fat, ugly Billy-No-Mates. I’d stick her in a monastery for her own protection if it wasn’t for the fact that the only industry I despise more than fashion is organised religion.

I don’t know how you sleep at night, knowing that you’ve added just a little bit more misery to the world; a little bit more self-loathing; a little bit more truth to the biggest lie of all: that real beauty is something you can buy for thirty-five quid from a tacky website with, frankly, some inexcusable usability issues (really. Talk to your web designer.). But then, if ethics ever kept you up at night, I guess you’d have a few more pictures of fat people on your website. It wouldn’t do to admit the truth, would it? If people knew the airbrushed girls on your website weren’t really beautiful, they’d have to stop buying your tat for good and actually wear clothes they liked. Self esteem would be the new black.

I implore you. Rethink your marketing strategies. You have one chance to make this world a better place. Take it.

I first got angry about the fashion and beauty industry when I started my Make Up Down project. Seriously, you just wouldn’t believe the shit that goes on.

PND Charities – Something’s Missing

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This year, I’ve decided to take part in National Novel Writing Month. Bearing in mind my current mental wellbeing – or lack thereof – it probably seems completely barmy, but hear me out. The benefits of writing as therapy are well documented and, frankly, I’ve tried everything else at this point – except drugs, which I’m saving for last (prescription, not recreational. I did those first. They were rubbish, and arguably what got me in this mess in the first place. There’s an ad that says “Don’t do drugs, kids,” if ever I saw one.).ยน Continue reading →

Breastfeeding Support: The Big Picture

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Breastfeeding help & support in the UK needs a complete overhaul

Breastfeeding. It’s a big fucking deal. (I never know how to tackle the big subjects. Am I doing okay?)

Everybody knows that it provides a great start for baby. Everyone knows the proven benefits. Everybody knows that it’s good for mother-baby bonding. We’ve all heard it all, trotted out for us by midwives, doctors, hospitals, magazines, blogs, baby groups, breastfeeding clinics and breastfeeding mums. Everybody knows that sometimes, for a million reasons, it just can’t happen. Everybody knows how hard it is to be a mummy.

So why – when there is so much talk of support and encouragement and “doing what’s best” – is there so much anger, guilt and resentment? Why is uptake still so low? Why do people feel so alienated and bullied that terms like “breastapo” have become accepted?

It seems to me that the whole approach to breastfeeding in this country (and in our society) is fatally flawed. While the people in a position to influence women clearly mean well, they have succeeded only in creating an imaginary divide between breastfeeding and formula-feeding mothers, pitching them against each other at the very time when they should be supporting and reassuring one another. I’ve met mothers who are afraid to say they formula feed, lest they be labelled as a shoddy parent, and others afraid to admit to breastfeeding, in case they are considered smug or even militant.

There appear to be two major things missing in most breastfeeding support services – and in the realm of breastfeeding generally. Empathy and the ability to see the bigger picture.

For some mothers, breastfeeding happens pretty easily. No, it’s not a walk in the park. Your nipples hurt like a bastard and you probably ring the post-natal ward at 4am at least once in the first week, decrying your milk supply (and lack thereof), but essentially, after a few days or weeks of false starts, it begins to come naturally. An enormous number of people, though, have an absolutely shitty time of it and still go on to breastfeed successfully.

You’d think that both sets of people would be excellently placed to encourage and advise mums about breastfeeding, but no. Human nature has to get in the way, of course. Instead of having empathy for people who are wrestling with breastfeeding, I see a lot of blame (“Well I found it easy so she must be Doing It Wrong.”), bullying (“I kept on trying and made it through so you MUST PERSEVERE AT ALL COSTS.”) and sympathy (which is just patronising). Do a quick internet search for practical, unbiased advice on breastfeeding and, instead, you’ll turn up hundreds of well-meaning but seriously misguided articles that seem smug, condescending or downright aggressive. Something needs to change. People on both sides of the so-called debate need to start trying to really understand the individuality of each situation, and approach every case from a neutral viewpoint. A lot of breastfeeding support is like being in a relationship with Emotional Baggage Betty: too hung up on preconceptions and previous hurt to judge you as an individual.

For too many commentators, the issue is all blacks and whites – and no shades of grey. They dismiss a girl who says her breasts are for her boyfriend and not for her baby as selfish and stupid. But when a girl says, “My boobs are for sex and nothing else,” something has gone wrong on a scale far beyond just one person’s body image. People are quick enough to say that breast is always best, but they rarely consider the price some women pay for it. How does post natal depression, for example – and its devastating impact on new families – offset against the health benefits of a breastfed baby? A woman still feeling guilty about her breastfeeding choices when her child is in school? That’s plain wrong.

Health professionals are in on it too. They hide the options from us for fear that telling us the occasional bottle from time to time is okay will make us all “give up” and go running for the formula. They keep telling us there will never be a problem with our supply, instead of telling us that yes, sometimes it happens and there are loads things you can do to give your boobs some help. Jesus, nobody even tells us how goddamned HARD it’s going to be, and that we will cry and call our husband an arse-face and fear that our milk will never be enough for a baby this hungry! Hiding this stuff doesn’t encourage us; it disempowers us. How can we make an informed decision when we don’t know all the options? How can we be prepared when we don’t know what to expect?

If we want to give our babies the best start in life, we need to think beyond the small picture of breastfeeding. We need to take a long, hard look at the way breastfeeding in this country is promoted and encouraged and then we need to say, “Hey, Plan A was a piece of shit. And now for something completely different.” The Great Breastfeeding Divide doesn’t actually exist. It’s just a monster-under-the-bed, grown out of all the ugly insecurities of early parenthood and stirred with the wooden spoon of well intentioned but ultimately crappy advice. We need to demand more breastfeeding support but, much more importantly, we need to demand BETTER breastfeeding support.

I’ve been holding off on writing about breastfeeding for the past few months, but was inspired to stick my two pence worth in after reading a post about breastfeeding support for men over at the DaddyNatal blog. It’s just the sort of good, judgement-free information we need more of. Thanks, DaddyNatal, for helping me find my voice on this one.

Five a Day

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  1. Read to your child for at least 15 minutes a day.
  2. Play with your child on the floor for ten minutes a day.
  3. Talk to your child for 20 minutes with the TV off.
  4. Adopt positive attitudes towards your child and praise them frequently.
  5. Ensure your child has a nutritious daily diet to aid their development.

These are the five guidelines released by the government, in a proposed campaign to help people get their parenting right. You probably think they sound pretty obvious, but luckily, they’re not aimed at you. As usual, the middle-class-bubble brigade have come out swinging. “It’s a waste of money!” they cry. “It’s all common sense – what sort of an idiot doesn’t know this stuff?” Well, let me enlighten you.

  • The sort of person who didn’t have a comprehensive education where the worst thing that happened to them was the older kids beating them up for wearing black lipstick.*
  • The sort of person who made some bad choices when they were too young to know that it would mean watching their life chances slide down the pan.
  • The sort of person who simply doesn’t have any choice about the situation they find themselves in – be that poverty, abuse, disability, ill-health, or whatever.
  • The sort of person who thinks she’s safe in her Guardian-reading, attachment-parenting bubble, only to find that post natal depression has robbed her of any inspiration she might once have had, leaving her holding a baby and wondering what the fuck to do next.

    • * This happened to me. It sucked. But in the big scheme of things? Not really.

Plenty of people I’ve talked about above are corking parents, and simply don’t need this advice. But what about the ones that do, and the plenty more I haven’t mentioned?

“It’s the nanny state!” shriek the newspapers (imbeciles to a man), and parents – unable, as they frequently are, to take any kind of constructive advice – agree. Jesus Christ. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and demanding that you read your kids the Conservative manifesto every night before bed.* It’s a bit of general good advice; they’re saying, “Hey, you’re a good parent. But if you do these five things every day, you’ll be a great parent! And your kid will probably grow up to have a few more life chances than you did. And they won’t be a psycho.” Some people need it. If you don’t need it then brilliant, but if you take a dim view of basic education for parents, you’re a jack-ass. Why should children should pay the price for society’s failure to educate their parents?

* Just to clear this up: I hate the conservatives. This might be the only good idea they’ve ever had and it’s certainly not going to save them from eternal fiery damnation.

And just in case you think I’m speaking theoretically here, I should tell you that I needed this advice. When my post natal depression was at its worst, I spent my days bouncing between thinking I was a horrible mother, being a horrible mother, and wanting to die. I remember telling my mum that I was worried about not talking enough to my daughter, and when she suggested reading aloud to her while she played, I literally hadn’t thought of that. I was so wrapped up in my self-loathing, that I just couldn’t find any inspiration. I wanted to read parenting books, but I couldn’t sit still for five minutes without wanting to jump out of the nearest window.

If someone had handed me a list and said, “Here’s five things you need to do to be an awesome parent,” I’d have hugged them. I may also have punched them – it depends if they caught me on a good day or not. The point is, I needed that advice, and thousands of other parents out there do, too.

So if you feel the need to roll your eyes, ask yourself this: do you read to your child for fifteen whole minutes, every single day? Do you cook them a wholesome, nutritious meal at every single mealtime? If not, then shut your mouth and open your mind.