Atta Girl is a new publication on Medium. (More about why it exists in a minute.) Today, I am pleased to be among its published writers.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I got a little weary of the Momala, Momala, Momala in recent weeks. The ‘momification’ of Kamala got me thinking and writing. It led to this article headlined and subheaded:
Here’s how the piece starts:
“Like many, I cheered the announcement of Kamala Harris as Vice President. Why wouldn’t I? She’s whip smart, highly accomplished, and conscientious, among other characteristics. But beyond that, I took a quiet, special pride in the joyful celebrations surrounding her appointment. That’s because Kamala is, like me, a woman who did not give birth.”
You can read the full story here.
Decades of Disrespect
This ‘momification’ isn’t new. So, it got me to thinking about all the other times women like us got the side eye. I’ve written about some of the challenges faced by childless by chance/circumstance/choice women in many previous posts. Accordingly, you’ll see we’ve been fighting some serious disrespect for quite a while:
August 2010 – How We Have Yet to Change
May 2012 – Ms. Tales Anything But Ordinary
October 2012 – The Unintended Consequences of Putting ‘Moms’ on Pedestals
October 2012 – The Invisibility of Infertility: To Pass or Not to Pass
February 2015 – Pope Francis: Let’s Not Promote Prejudice
April 2020 – 1970s: Schlafly or RBG’s World
Atta Girl Mission
Needless to say I am very happy for the new willingness to discuss these prejudices and misconceptions. Props to Gabrielle Moss and Shani Silver, co-editors of the Atta Girl publication. Here’s how they describe their mission:
This is a publication for women and anyone who identifies with feminine gender identities of every age, every background, and every ethnicity, living every kind of life that editorial content never gets around to. This is for anyone who feels left out of the narrative. When you can’t find anything that feels or reads like you, come here. We’re creating the content the internet forgot , for the people the internet thinks are over — and we’re doing it together.
Isn’t it about time we had a publication for a generation of women the internet is forgetting? You can follow the Atta Girl team of writers on Medium as well as on this Twitter account @AttaGirlMag.
Meanwhile, welcome your comments below.
I love your Atta Girl article!
I literally can not hear the word Momala from the day I heard it.
I know her PR team wants to bring her closer to the crowds. But with this she makes damage to the rest of us – childless women. From the beginning I understood this name – that she wants to distance herself from the pitiful women without any children in their lives.
You are so right, Klara! Her PR team worked overtime to ‘momify’ her image and dissed us in the process. So NOT cool. I truly think, every time there’s a glimmer of a shift, that we’ll see some real change, but we always fall back to the same old pattern…
I am afraid that during our lives we won’t see any breaking of the old patterns.
My niece (now in her early teenage years) asked me when she was around 6, if there was a baby in my belly . I replied that there wasn’t and that it never would be. She replied that I was very selfish.
I know that she had to hear this from her mother.
And I am afraid – that when she is an adult and with children of her own, she will terorrize other childless peers with her opinion. And pass this pattern to her daughters.
Terrifying how easily the hostility toward childless women gets passed along, isn’t it? It also feels quite primal. I wonder, too, how much of this prejudice is imprinted in human DNA…