Cloaked

In her 1976 memoir of parenting, The Mother Knot, Jane Lazarre reflects upon the appearance of parents with young children:

…it did not represent a lack of interest in sexuality or even in aesthetics, but a willingness to don the most practical uniform for the work at hand. And we would see beyond the soiled clothing and rumpled hair to the naked, open, still youthful bodies underneath the cloak of parenthood. [1]

There are complex implications of the ‘cloak of parenthood’ for the mother’s body and identity. The ‘soiled and rumpled’ appearance described by Lazarre focuses on practicality as a uniform donned for the work of mothering. But mothering is not a job — it is a role that for most becomes a permanent part of their core self-actualization. So, how does motherhood change the way a woman’s identity is perceived and read in terms of her bodily presentation? A 1998 study by Friedman, Weinberg, and Pines found that sexuality and motherhood were mutually exclusive in others’ perception. [2] In their study, both male and female participants overwhelmingly perceived that the more sexual a woman appears to be, the less likely it is that she is a ‘good mother.’ This finding raises the question: What assumptions do we make about someone’s sexual activity and parenting ability based on appearance? Perception of women’s bodies in the West is still informed by a patriarchal mythology that for centuries has defined the female body as summed up by Arienne Rich:

on the one hand as impure, corrupt, the site of discharges, bleedings, dangerous to masculinity, a source of moral and physical contamination…on the other hand, as mother the woman is beneficent, sacred, pure, asexual, nourishing; and the physical potential for motherhood. [3]  

These collages explore the aesthetic that sits between these two descriptors of womanhood: mother and sexual being.

Notes

[1] Jane Lazarre, The Mother Knot (1976): 64

[2] Friedman, H. Weinberg, & A.M. Pines, “Sexuality and Motherhood: Mutually Exclusive in Perception of Women,” Sex Roles, No. 38, (1998): 781–800

[3] In Moyra Davey (Ed.),  Mother Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press (2001): 92