Saturday, June 23, 2007

Brush with Fame

An honest-to-goodness famous person (well, to me) showed up in my prenatal yoga class today: Ariel Gore. Her book, The Hip Mama Survival Guide, was a lifeline to me in my first pregnancy. All the stuff out there--books, web, online communities--I was finding about pregnancy and birthing was either sanctimonious or sticky-syrupy-sweet or some freaky passive-aggressive combination of both, and her book was a breath of fresh air. I even participated in the Hip Mama online community for a while (under the username momesq, if there are still archives out there somewhere from 2000-2001), but eventually the militancy of some of the users (you're a bad mama if you immunize your child/shop at the Gap/don't co-sleep/use medicine instead of homeopathy) made me feel like a real fifth wheel (Adriana has written about crunchy parent sanctimony quite eloquently in this post and others).

Anyway, for the next several weeks, I hope (she was in line to pay when I left the studio, and her first class--today--was free) I'll see the famous author on Saturday mornings.

3 comments:

MWR said...

Homeopathy is so comically wrong that it beggars belief. People who think otherwise are confused about how the physical world is set up, or about math, or about both. And the mercury has been out of vaccines for some time now with no change in autism rates. Non-shocker.

I've left a longer comment on the Adrianna post you link to.

Heather Richardson said...

did you vaccinate your boys? (not judging, just curious)

Anonymous said...

Absolutely yes. Even from chickenpox (the only one about which I had any degree of reservation).