Over the weekend, an extremely bizarre op-ed titled ‘Having a baby isn’t a miracle and doesn’t make you a goddess‘ was published in the New York Post, accompanied with a picture of Beyoncé from her instantly-iconic Grammys performance.
In it, columnist Naomi Schaefer Riley (who appears to be America‘s answer to Miranda Devine) rallies against the so-called fetishisation of motherhood, somehow finding column space to both belittle Bey for her celebration of motherhood and belittle Adele for speaking truthfully about her struggles with it.
Have a read of these two paragraphs.
“Well, Beyoncé has never known when to draw the line between what she should share with her husband and what she should share with an audience — see her chair-straddling, tush-wiggling routine from 2014, for instance. But there was another message from her endless Virgin Mary/Sun Goddess routine: Pregnancy is sexy. Motherhood is divine.”
(Spoiler: Schaefer Riley wrote about that 2014 performance, too. She wasn’t into it.)
“There are reports that Adele struggled with postpartum depression after giving birth, but the idea that a woman who is known to millions by only her first name has “lost” herself by becoming a mother seems a little far-fetched. When most mothers say this, they mean that they have had to scale back their professional life or that they spend their days at home changing diapers. But Adele is presumably waxing philosophical here and wants to tell us motherhood is sooooo hard. Oh, please.”
Imagine being the kind of person who starts a paragraph by identifying someone’s mental illness, and ends it by belittling it. Imagine that.
In the (thankfully) short piece, Schaefer Riley also manages to bring up Katherine Heigl‘s experience of pregnancy (which she considers ‘good’, because Heigl apparently knows her pregnancy is something only to be celebrated in private), Kerry Washington‘s (bad, because how dare Washington consider birth a ‘miracle’), and Zooey Deschanel‘s (also bad, because growing another person in your body is *not* an accomplishment, no matter what Zooey says).
It’s exhausting. It’s bad take after bad take, and more than that – it’s an entire rant about pregnancy that is argued solely on the basis of out-of-context celebrity quotes and one utterly phenomenal Grammys performance.
@nypost pic.twitter.com/zCSYXIosLY
— Zendaya (@Zendaya) February 18, 2017
me before opening this: “either a man or a white woman wrote this”
me saving you a click: it was a white woman https://t.co/Rw7TSlomwD
— Juliana Pache (@thecityofjules) February 18, 2017
Y’all so bitter and ugly. Why. Why?? https://t.co/tg68W7kkIW
— lil’ bougie sandwich (@simonefiasco) February 19, 2017
This is by the same woman who wrote “Jay Z Is A Poor Excuse For A Husband” because of Beyonce’s “sexualized” 2014 Grammy performance. https://t.co/oEHWlUT0uz
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) February 19, 2017
Op-ed: I’m jealous of Beyoncé https://t.co/cfhVtfwOUn
— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) February 18, 2017
Women having the ability to carry and bring new life into the world is definitely goddess-worthy. Delete this. https://t.co/M2MiQHcgCe
— Leanne ?? (@LeanneWoodfull) February 19, 2017
EVERY woman that has given birth or carried a child is a miracle worker. Period. All of a sudden that march is a distant memory. https://t.co/Tdy3A4g14I
— Cynthia Erivo (@CynthiaEriVo) February 18, 2017
Considering how many women and children STILL die due during childbirth (even in the U.S.), this is ridiculous. https://t.co/vExFMXfHRl
— britni danielle (@BritniDWrites) February 19, 2017
Imagine being this jealous of Beyoncé pic.twitter.com/uE7yOJiIlJ
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) February 19, 2017
counterpoint: creating life is fucking wild actually https://t.co/6u0uWLMKGF
— thomas violence (@thomas_violence) February 19, 2017
So is pregnancy not a miracle for women who have PCOS or endometriosis, who have struggled with surrogacy or IVF or who have miscarried????? https://t.co/FAEuozLBLX
— Shehnaz Khan (@shehnazkhan) February 18, 2017
What EYE want to see is a thinkpiece (or 47) about why white women feel so threatened by Beyoncé & Serena.
Huh. I should write that. ??
— April (@ReignOfApril) February 19, 2017
There’s something bigger there too. About seeing “everyday” women as miraculous. That’s part of it. Because some would just call us “hosts.”
— April (@ReignOfApril) February 19, 2017
You come at the queen, you best not miss.
