Tag Archives: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Pregnancy, Performance, and Perfection

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Laurie and Debbie say:

adichie

We are both fans of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s writing, so we noted last month that she is now a mother, and were impressed with how and why she kept her pregnancy very quiet,.

… only a few knew about her pregnancy and the ensuing birth of her child, and explained that her decision to withhold information about it to the public stemmed from the ever-growing performative aspect of pregnancy.

“I have some friends who probably don’t know I was pregnant or that I had a baby,” she said. “I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy. We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood.”

Adichie … refused to answer further questions about her child after her prescient take. When the [Financial Times] reporter asked about the baby’s name, she simply replied, “no, I won’t say,” accompanied by what the interviewer described as a “disarming smile.”

In this very audience-focused age, many human experiences have become performances. Most life performances, however, at least can be done by people of both genders. Pregnancy is limited to people with biologically female bodies, and is most commonly the experience of people who identify as women.

And like all things women do, it provides the patriarchy with an endless source of ways to oppress women. A pregnant woman is known as an “expectant mother,” and here are some of the things she can expect:

  • Complete strangers will feel free to judge her failure if she drinks alcohol in public.
  • Her boss and colleagues will simultaneously hold her to at least as high a work standard as she has ever been held to, and to a complete, unwavering commitment to being delighted at the prospect of having this child. Failing at either counts as failure.
  • Her medical advisors will often hold her to a ridiculously high standard of diet, weight, and exercise, while also again demanding that complete commitment to delight. Failing at either again counts as failure.
  • Everyone will feel free to tell her how well she’s doing, and where she’s falling short.

Historically, there have been periods when visibly pregnant women were housebound because they were “unseemly,” periods when maternity clothes were supposed to hide the pregnancy as long as possible, periods when (affluent and rich) women were instructed to do nothing during pregnancy and periods when they were advised to be extremely active, regardless of how they felt.

Most cultures have some level of claiming pregnant women as a social resource, an unspoken “You’re breeding for all of us, so we can manage your pregnancy.” In 2016, that claim takes the form of “let us see your performance so we can decide if you deserve a 10.”

Adichie is, in a very powerful way, refusing to play in the cultural sandbox. She claims her life as her own and no one else’s, and it would appear that she will do the same with her child’s life. She is forcing the world to treat her as the fine writer and thinker that she is.

We salute her.

 

Trapped in the Wrong Body … Maybe, Maybe Not.

Laurie and Debbie say:

The oh-so-common cultural narrative of trans people is that they were born “trapped in the wrong body.” Of course, while this is the lived experience of many people, nobody’s story is simple.

Writing in Buzzfeed, Thomas Page McBee takes on the belief that “trapped in the wrong body” and trans are the same thing.

in the two years since I began injecting testosterone, I’ve grown increasingly suspect of the fascination with the “trapped” narrative. From talk shows to The New York Times, trans children to celebrities, the idea that trans folks are tragic or even heroic saddens me, because within the pity and pithy hope they generate lies a darker reality: The sensational portrayals dehumanize trans folks by making us strange. If I’ve learned anything by living in this body, it’s that when anyone’s dehumanized, we all are.

We’re more alike than not. Here’s my story: I saw myself, like a sculptor sees a face in the stone, become clearer and clearer with each passing day. I got to work on the business of being, constructing an approximation out of Ace bandages, then swagger, then surgery, then testosterone. I grew, over time, to be the man I am; and though I’ve felt the panic of dysphoria, I mostly had the sense of evolving. I didn’t feel trapped, exactly — only a sense of becoming.

McBee’s point is that sensationalism is dehumanizing. We take that one step further:

Single narratives are dehumanizing.
In her exquisite TED talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie applies this principle to xenophobia (fear of strangers):

When I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove.

What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.

In his article about trans narratives, McBee goes on to talk about an upcoming British movie, My Genderation,, a documentary designed, says Raphael Francis Fox, one of the directors, to “provide a window on what it’s like to be trans* in modern-day Britain, without shock tactics or upsetting the person being interviewed.” (There’s a six-minute trailer at McBee’s blog post, and a lot of film clips at the movie link.)

What’s true of of complex trans stories is true of all human stories. “Why should you care about our stories,” says McBee (and Adichie would agree),

when they don’t follow the pristine arc that starts with being wrong and ends with us riding into the sunset, real at last? “We all have feminine and masculine in us,” Fox offered. “Gender affects everyone.”

The truth is, trans people illuminate a crucial aspect of the human condition, not anymore salacious, tragic, or beautiful than anything else. If there’s a lesson we can share, a great truth or tragedy, it’s this: We’re living it all, right in front of you, in our bodies and our many, varied tellings.

Thanks to kaberett for the McBee link.