Skip to main content

The Violation of Mimi -- Invitation to Write #57

For Writers:

Singer Mariah Carey views her body as a temple, even going so far as to insure her legs for two million dollars. While a lot of her fellow divas, such as Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera, have had children, Mimi has declared that having a child "would leave me feeling violated."

Mariah has an interesting way with words, and to use a word like “violated” to describe the process of childbirth does make one pause for a moment. To be sure, what childbirth does to the mother’s body could easily be described as violent and tramatic, but a violation? A synonym for “violate” is “defile,” and both words carry with them a sexual connation. But does a child really make a mother “impure” or “dirty”? And does consensual sex that results in childbirth actually constitute “sexual abuse” as the word violate implies?

Far be it from me to suggest that everyone should have children, but perhaps it would benefit everyone to study the meaning of words – if for no other reason than for the “nostalgia” of it, as Mimi herself might say.

What word would you use to describe childbirth? Using that word thematically, develop a childbirth story – either from your own experience, or from someone’s experience close to you.

"I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth." - George Eliot

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...