Uncensored Birth Power

This week I uploaded the photos of my birth experiences onto the Facebook page for Ilithyia Inspired. I couldn't upload all the photos because they violate Facebook's terms of use. Giving birth involves nudity, therefore it's offensive. I suppose I could have worn clothes throughout my births to ensure I could share all the photos of my triumphant experiences, but that would have been uncomfortable and hindering.

Birth and breastfeeding activists have long objected to Facebook's removal of photos of two normal human experiences. Consensus is that it is hypocritical for Facebook to remove photos of mothers' precious moments, while leaving deliberately pornographic images of scantily clad women alongside groups, pages, profiles and advertisements.

When a woman begins making birth choices she has numerous fictional representations of birth from television and film and a plethora of 'horror stories' from other women to learn from. As she prepares herself to feed her baby she has already been saturated with images of breasts as sex objects. One important way we learn is through visual analysis. Women need to see normal birth and breastfeeding images to help make sense of these experiences, to inform them and to prepare them for the realities of having children.

It saddens me that while women cannot avoid porn-inspired images of ourselves, the following image is rarely seen:

This is a woman in labour. Her first labour. She's been doing it for over 24 hours. She is standing on her own two feet. She is working with the pain of labour using her innate strength, her breath, her muscles, freedom of movement. No one is touching her. No one is restraining her. No one is telling her how to do it. This is a moment of true autonomous power. This is unhindered birth.

She is not air brushed. Her skin is stretched and wears those marks for life, this is a reality of having children. For a woman who has experienced pregnancy and birth on her terms these marks are stripes of honour: a reminder of all the strength and power she has within. This is an image of self acceptance: this woman has not ripped the hair from her body to conform to beauty standards. She is not self-conscious about the exposure of her breasts, how low they sag, or their saucer-sized areolas. What you make of her beauty is utterly irrelevant to her. She is too busy creating life for such trivial, patriarchal concerns.

In a world where birth belonged to women, images like the above photo would not be rare. Every mother would have a photo like that of herself. Imagine a world where the majority of images of naked women were of those women breastfeeding their children and birthing unassisted. Imagine a world where women's bodies were left just as nature intended and wild pubic and underarm hairs were seen on every adult female. That is the feminist future I dream of. That is the feminist reality that exists in my own home and the homes of my closest friends. A woman's nudity goes hand in hand with her unique power as a human female. It has nothing to do with male sexual arousal or fetishism of her body parts. In this environment women portrayed as sex objects is strange and inhuman.

Women portrayed as sex objects is strange and inhuman, but the pornofication of culture and blind acceptance of patriarchal standards of beauty have created a very sick society. In our sick society it is the air brushed, plucked, censored and fake 'woman' posing to arouse men that is 'normal' and the image above is too offensive to share on Facebook.

When I first published the photos of Harriet's birth on a blog I recieved some hate emails for it and discovered some venomous threads across parenting forums. People hated my body, especially my breasts and body hair (one woman commented that she was glad I had reminded her to get a Brazilian before her next OB appointment). People were very threatened by the fact that I had shared the photos at all. At the time their hatred hurt. But the further I walk along this birth serving path the clearer it becomes that what I do is a feminist thorn in patriarchy's side.

I am a threat to patriarchy and I'm okay with that. I am no longer hurt by mysoginist comments about my birth photos. Rather I feel sad for the women who hate their bodies so much that they inflict pain upon them to alter themselves. I feel angry that maternity systems like Australia's prevent women from realising they can experience power during childbirth. This is why I do what I do and why you can cast your eyes upon my glorious naked form on the Internet.

Women need to know that they can birth with power and autonomy. They need to see that other women look like them in the nude and not like the pretend women in magazines. They need to learn that it is normal to be comfortable in their own skin (or it should be) and that every one has unique physical quirks. For, how can women possibly have positive or easy birth and breastfeeding expereinces while they waste their energy on hating the amazing bodies responsible for creating and feeding their babies?

Facebook isn't going to change it's tune while patriarchal values remain dominant in society. So it's up to us to challenge society (and Facebook) by refusing to censor women's awesome birthing and breastfeeding bodies. It's up to us to counter pornographic representations of our sex with images of our unaltered bodies working perfectly.