Why stories of celebrity miscarriages often send the wrong message.
I was playing with my son in the living room, with Access Hollywood blaring in the background while I waited for the news to come on. My ears perked up when they starting talking about Nancy Kerrigan, as I’m a lifelong figure skating fan. I watched as the Olympic star tearfully revealed that she had suffered 6 miscarriages. She ultimately had her second and third child through in vitro fertilization. After the story ended, the show’s anchor shook her head and in a solemn voice, said “she’s so brave to open up about that.”
Something about that line made me roll my eyes. This is the common response any time a celebrity reveals that she suffered a pregnancy loss. We are told that she is brave for going public, that she is courageous to “open up”about her heartache. The senseof solidarity and the awareness their stories create are indeed praise-worthy, but I fear that by calling celebrities “brave,” we reinforce the idea that pregnancy loss is something shameful to be hidden away. Being brave requires combating fear, but what is there to fear about sharing one’s experience with pregnancy loss?
The focus on bravery also takes away a woman’s sense of agency in whether and how she grieves, and makes her feel somehow abnormal. I’ve seen this firsthand in my interviews with women who have had losses, and from reading posts on Internet message boards.
For example, one woman asked “why am I brave for talking about my child? Everyone else does!” Being brave set her apart, made her different from every other mother who’s preoccupied by thoughts of her children. It makes her uncomfortable, as if she had done something extraordinary when she just wanted to be like all the other moms.
And what if another woman doesn’t want to talk about her loss, or doesn’t identify it as the loss of an actual child — does that somehow make her the opposite of brave? Weak, or perhaps repressed? By labeling openness as bravery, we set a standard that pregnancy losses are universally devastating events, and that all women should grieve them as such. And this simply isn’t the case.
Another woman exclaimed that “I hate being called brave! How could I be otherwise? This is just what my life dealt me and I have to deal with it.” The fact is, many brave or “strong” people don’t feel that way. They may feel devastated or powerless, but they still wake up the next day and have to keep living. The same is true for women who have had devastating pregnancy losses — they’re not in any mood to be called brave when they’re just trying to fumble through daily life and get across to the other side of their sorrow.
But Kerrigan’s story has more to teach us. When I went to the comments section on Internet articles about Kerrigan, expecting to read people praise her honesty or express their sympathy, I found some truly brutal messages:
Imagine whining about not having three children!!! She had one easily and also had a stepson. And then, with the help of technology, she got three. Jeez. I’m glad the marriage has lasted. And yes, miscarriages are terrible. It’s nice she could afford all the fertility treatments…But heck, two would have been enough. Her husband was 54 when that third kid was born. TOO OLD!
Sorry she had the miscarriages, but she is no darling angel. Broke up managers marriage, then they lived happily ever after. She lived in the house with him and his wife beforehand. Talk about betrayal.
It’s unfortunate that she had multiple miscarriages, but she now has three healthy children. Many couples are unable to have any children or they lack the financial means she has to seek alternative medical methods to conceive. It may have been difficult and emotional, but she needs to get over herself.
All I can think is that Nancy Kerrigan is a self-pitying, self-agrandizing pig! She already has two chidlren more than any responsible human being on this fatally overcrowded earth should have. There are plenty of children who would love a good stable home. Adopt!!!
What a double standard. On the one hand, Kerrigan is lauded for her bravery in speaking out about her losses, and on the other, she is vilified for being too rich, too self-entitled, too old. Again, the experience of pregnancy loss — and women, by implication — are stigmatized and undermined. These comments send the message that you shouldn’t grieve a loss if you have money, that you have forfeited the right to grieve if you don’t have a spotless marital history, that you should be happy with any children you have and not hurt that you can’t have more, that you should feel guilty for desperately wanting biological children and be content with adoption.
These comments prove to me that there is a culture of silence and stigma around pregnancy loss, which is itself tied up in unfair expectations of women. This culture is hard to detect sometimes, but in these comments, it hits you in the face.
You might think that since Nancy Kerrigan is a celebrity, she’s more of a target than your average woman experiencing pregnancy loss. Most women probably only get sympathy when they open up, right? Wrong. Ask any woman who’s told people about her loss(es) and you can bet that someone, at some time, told her that she “can always adopt” or at least she “already has one child.” Her profound disappointment, her yearning, her desperation about that lost pregnancy, that specific lost child, are minimized and even dismissed. And so she tries to keep quiet.
Rather than just creating solidarity, responses to celebrity miscarriages suggest that perhaps women really do have something to fear in speaking out about their losses.
