A Mother's Sacrifice

This week brought another round of equally interesting and controversial topics, but none quite tugged at my heart-strings like The Care Crisis in the Philippines.  Parreñas talked in depth about how migrant mothers made the ultimate sacrifice of leaving their children behind with relatives so that they could support them financially from afar in a first-world country. All the accounts from the children literally felt like someone was punching me in the chest. I could not imagine being deprived of my mother growing up. On the flip side, it is exceedingly unfair of the Philippines government to place the blame of unruly children on the mothers when they made one of the most difficult choices imaginable. Parreñas said it quite well, "Government officials and the media could then stop vilifying migrant women, redirecting their attention, instead to men. They could question the lack of male accountability for care work, and they could demand that men, including migrant fathers, take more responsibility for the emotional welfare of their children."

I'd like to use this as a segue into a similar vein of thinking; why are women asked to sacrifice so much? Why is it when a woman is pregnant that she's the one that is assumed to be giving up her career to raise and nurture the child. People are so quick to assert because they're the natural caregivers, but I would challenge that way of thinking from a sociological standpoint, because males are just as excellent nurturers as females, given the opportunity. Why is it that when I google verbatim, "How to balance work and family?" the first result is, "10 Ways Moms Can Balance Work and Family" and there are 676,000,000 other results and the first two pages seem to be focused largely on women? Society is a fickle thing. They expect women to be "superwomen," in this case be good mother and raise your children, but also have a good career. But beware! If you work too much, then you'll be seen as a workaholic and not prioritize your children, or if you don't work an "acceptable" amount of hours, you're not a "real" worker, you're just a stay-at-home mom with some spare time on her hands that she could be doing something else "constructive" with or you're not applying yourself professionally to your career and you should step aside for someone who wants it more. You get the picture.

My concluding thoughts are will we ever find a balance? Will men ever be secure enough with idea of being nurturers themselves and sacrificing their careers if asked to raise their children? It seems funny a touch sad to wish for a world where gender identities weren't so rigid that they would cause problems on who would stay at home and raise children. It's unfair to always expect women to make the sacrifices and be a "superwoman" and juggling it all, just because it's what has always been deemed as sociologically appropriate.  

During this week's seminar discussions, my interest was particularly piqued concerning skin bleaching and its ties to globalization.  According to our text by Eitzen and Zinn, skin bleaching can be traced back to "the internalization that 'white is right'" and because white is the dominant standard." As a Caucasian female, I will never understand the struggle that those of different skin tones feel to fit in, especially when we should be praising diversity and not uniformity. The discussion on this topic was interesting to me in particular because even though we live in a country that supposedly praises diversity and embracing your uniqueness, I can still go to drug store and find a lotion with skin lightening agents. Companies can argue that their products are used for for imperfections for those with Caucasian skin tones, but that doesn't stop these products from being abused in an attempt to conform to globalized beauty standards. It also is unfair that makeup companies do not cater to all skin tones, no matter how diverse of range there is. This is also an example of if you don't fit into the spectrum of foundation colors, you are considered a deviant. My group and I discussed how the world has such a vast array of features and looks that make the human race and truly unique, but the idea of beauty is narrowing and it seems to be predominately white. If someone doesn't conform to beauty standards but is still found attractive, she/he is called "exotic," which is kind of a back-handed compliment in a way.

One huge example I can think of how this applies to real world examples would be the epidemic of photo shopping celebrities on the cover of magazines that doesn't reflect their true skin tone accurately (see). Another example was a model who recently called out makeup artists for being unprepared to work with her skin tone (see). These are both great examples of how the global, universal standard of beauty is still very much white and we are still struggling to accommodate for those who don't fit in said standard of beauty.

There is hope, however. There have been small strides such a Victoria's Secret model being allowed to wear her natural hair instead of the traditional angel waves (see). I hope that in the coming years that the world will relax their beauty standards and ideals and be inclusive for all and that no little girl or boy will feel the need to buy skin lighteners or get plastic surgery in order to succeed in life. If I had unlimited resources it would go to getting harmful materials such as skin lighteners off the market and I would focus on classes, starting at early education promoting self-love and acceptance and rejecting the human instinct for conformity. If we are able to instill these ideals in current generations and future ones, hopefully the idea of beauty will change. But it is crucial that we start now or else standards will continue to narrow and get even more impossible to fit in.