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Recording
Get It Out of My Head
No Strings on Me... Yet
Knocked Up Celebrities
Playing By the Rules
Interlude
Ugly Kid Stuff
Babes in Toyland
Awwww
Was He Thinking?
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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
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You Can't Handle the Truth
I've never seen Desperate Housewives, but Felicity Huffman was a pleasure to watch in that odd bygone Aaron Sorkin sitcom Sports Night, and in the various Law & Order episodes she graced as, alternately, a lawyer and an interior designer turned prostitute turned murderer. Glancing at her filmography, I see she was also a belligerent law student in the remarkable Reversal of Fortune.
And now Salon has highlighted another fascinating performance in which she tells Leslie Stahl, her 60 Minutes interviewer, to cut the crap. Stahl pulls the usual question out of a can: "Is this the best experience of your life, being a mommy?" (And while some might imagine that Stahl managing to get that question out without actively spitting saccharine is a testament to her professionalism, I would say that I don't appreciate anyone who isn't my kid calling me "mommy.")
Huffman replies that being a mother isn't the best experience of her life and says the whole question is offensive and goes on to say that she doesn't know if she's a good mother.
Everyone, and I include myself here, got bent out of shape when Ayelet Waldman's New York Times piece about her hierarchy of love, but really Stahl's question and the fact that it is so pervasive is just another demand to rate life experience. The answer she was looking for was really reactionary and antifeminist.
Why would it be considered useful or interesting to get women to say that no matter what they've done, having children is the superior experience? Why does everything else have to pale in comparison? Why diminish all other achievements and interests? Huffman had just won a major award for her performance in an incredibly challenging role and Stahl was mildly asking her to disavow her glory.
Rebuffed, Stahl then tried to get Huffman again to focus on her maternal qualities, and was again shut down.
My oldest friend had children early, and I remember one evening when I was visiting, a tremor went through her usually temperate demeanor. "Everyone always says that now that they're here, I probably can't remember my life before I had the kids. I can and it was great!"
Of course having children is remarkable and significant. No one is saying it isn't. But why is there the push to rate all experience? Why does the maternal have to be so special culturally that people have to say that it eclipses all other achievement and interest?
Cheers to Felicity Huffman for keeping her temper and her dignity, for not caving to the demands for cheap sentiment, and for maintaining her privacy while pointing out that her feelings about the maternal sublime are more complicated than a moist-eyed soundbite allows.
posted by Elise at 5:35 AM
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I totally agree with you. I had the same reaction after watching the interview. Kudos to Hoffman for having the courage to say what she was really thinking.
1/24/2006 1:16 PM
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