Contempt for Women: Just another punching bag

I'm just going to ask it. Why are people hating on Nadya Suleman so much? I know, most will not recognize her name, so I am probably going to have to use the awful name the media has given her: the "Octomom." That is the only time I will use it, for I think it enables us to not view her as a human being but instead distance ourselves from her humanity and use her as a punching bag. She has a name, and it is Nadya Suleman.

No one tries to understand her motivation, her emotional or mental make-up, and certainly no one seems to focus on caring about the children who are now here.

I opened my Newsweek last week and was delighted to see someone trying to get to "the other side" regarding Nadya, but I kept wanting the writer to go further. The thing is, it's tricky, the current feeling is all hate for Nadya, so even though the article was a mild attempt to get at deeper complexities of the issue, the writer will still--no doubt--receive hate mail for being "too nice" to Nadya.

What's wrong with us? Why do we kick people when they are down? And more specifically, why do we love to just shit all over women?

Do I think it was wise of Nadya to have the first set of babies let alone the second? No, but I find myself focusing instead on a question like, "What was her doctor thinking?" Someone said "yes" to Nadya Suleman.  Someone cared more about money and/or ego than about this woman or her children's lives. 

Why do we have such disdain for Nadya, but we love Angelina Jolie with her mission to have her own oversized brood? Or why do we love the TLC show Jon and Kate Plus 8? Kate had eight babies and she has a television show (although there is a underbelly of contempt for her too since cameras have caught her being snippy with her husband on the show). There is an acceptance and even a legitimizing force in our media to have multiples, yet when someone who may have emotional/mental problems copies what she sees applauded in our culture, we jump on her like a lion that hasn't eaten all year. We don't just pounce and move on, we ravage the carcass even after there is nothing left to pick at.

People scream that they won't give her a penny, but it's not really she who needs those pennies. Her children do. You know, the ones we profess to care so much about. People shout that her kids should be taken from her, but splitting siblings from one another and from a mother who does love them is not really wise or compassionate. People scoff that her face has had too much plastic surgery and that she looks like Jolie, but our society force-feeds the idea to women that they have no value if they do not look a certain way. Again, my question goes to her cosmetic surgeon, "what were you thinking?"  Why don't we care more that there are butchers who sit and wait for their prey. And for any amount of money, they will carve every inch of us up.

Women have value in two ways in our society... as mother and as sex/beauty object. But we hate her for her extreme desire to meet both societal needs. We create the beast, but shun her when she does what we have created. It all seems so wrong to me. The situation makes me sad, not angry. Yet others have a visceral hatred. People don't just want her to wisen up, they want her dead. She has had death threats!

And now, with a porn producer offering her a million dollar movie deal, we see what this has all been about. We want to hate someone.  Porn offers are not what they once were. I remember when Dana Plato from Different Strokes was in Playboy. I understand (even if I detest it) that people had morbid curiosity about a female they saw in a pre-raunch television show--how might she look naked?  That is not what the latest offers to be in porn are about. People want to see Nadya in porn so they can scoff at her, so they can continue to feel superior to her, so they can show that "stupid bitch" what she is really worth.

Thankfully, she turned those offers down, or we would have been barraged by more zingy one- liners and interviews about what a whore she really has always been. It repulses me to think of people masturbating with and through contempt for Nadya, turning her from mother to her inevitable place as whore. But what's new? People have been "getting off" on her suffering in some form for months now.