Oh, NYT, how I’ve missed thee. Lazing about, growing content with my ignorance - well, no more! Not with such eyebrow raisers as “Perfect, With Childbearing Hips,” by Andrea Askowitz (The NYT, 02/17/11). Yes, this is a “Modern Love” piece, and yes, it may be cheating, but I been on my break, so let’s giddy up:
Askowitz, a Miami native and most notably (seemingly, given the NYT coverage), author of “My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy,” chronicles her journey through pregnancy and impregnation (sic) through this article: “The donor I picked was 6-foot-2, played baseball in college and said in his audio interview that he loved his mother.” (ibid). Mother-loving aside, this article lacks some steam for me.
Sure, she faces adversity, but that’s not the point, she just seems averse to having a second child: “I hated pregnancy and delivery. I would never get pregnant again. But I could make another woman pregnant. I had sperm” (ibid). Oh man, if I had a nickel for every time I said that to myself.
No LGBT appeal, no real-world appeal, what are we to take from this article? Askowitz launches into a description of a woman’s waist-to-hip ratio, “Scientists have discovered that the lower the body’s waist-hip ratio (medically known as the WHR), the more attractive the woman. Marilyn Monroe, for example, had a 0.7 WHR, meaning her waist was 30 percent smaller than her hips. Salma Hayek and the Venus de Milo also have small waists relative to the size of their hips” (ibid). Well, if the Venus de Milo had it, it must be true.
Askowitz follows with play-by-play of her match.com history; finding a woman with a suitable WHR, who also happens to be considering childbirth, Askowitz strikes: “On our first date, Victoria told me she was planning to have a baby, alone if she had to. She knew I had done it alone, but she didn’t know I still had eight viable sperm vials. I don’t normally believe in love at first sight, but at the end of that first lunch, I wanted to offer Victoria my sperm” (ibid). Creepy, right?
Eventually, Victoria decides she’s ready to do it, have identical half-children with her partner: “The nurse instructed me to stand between Victoria’s legs. I held the syringe steady with my first two fingers, like a cigarette. I looked into Victoria’s eyes again and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ Today, we have a 7-year-old daughter and a son approaching 2. They have the same almond-shaped eyes and pudgy feet, like little muffins. They share half of their biology, but much more, they share two mommies, the family I always wanted” (ibid). First, I’d like to thank the NYT for offering a stage for us newavers, how would we live healthy, fulfilled, alt lives without this kind of coverage? Second, “I held the syringe steady…like a cigarette,” gross.
MKS
