Downscaling.net

The buzz all over Twitter today was Jillian Michaels. People dumping on Jillian Michaels and people defending Jillian Michaels from the dumpers.

I thought today was supposed to be all about boobs?

And all this brouhaha about Michaels, the drill sergeant trainer from NBC’s “Biggest Loser,” is over an out-of-context quote, a poor choice of words and a misleading headline.

In case you missed it, and if you did you don’t have a Twitter account, Michaels gave an interview to Women’s Health magazine. In it she said she did not want to become pregnant because of the effect it would have on her body. She also referred to the possibility of adopting a child as “rescuing something.”

The quote was highlighted in a news brief by the Huffington Post, and one of its online editors headlined the brief “I won’t ruin my body with pregnancy.”

Then all hell breaks loose when women around the InterWebz start analyzing the remark. Some bashed, some applauded.

Full disclosure: To say I am not a fan of “The Biggest Loser” is an understatement. I think that show is terribly cruel and totally unrealistic in its approach to weight loss. Humiliation is not a motivator to me, and voting someone off may be the way of the reality TV world, but when people are struggling to save their own lives, it just abhorrent to dramatically stage their exit from what they often perceive as their last, best hope.

I am also not a fan of Michaels.

I am a fan, however, of a lot of women who blog. Smart, intelligent, funny women who express themselves with honesty. And I am a huge fan of free, open, honest expression.

I just wish that, as women, we’d stop giving each other so much shit over every choice we make.

Many women choose to have a career and a family or some combination of both. We have some brave women in the recent past to thank for that, because I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, when women fought for these rights.

Now that we have all these options that are rightfully ours open to us, we somehow feel the need to beat each other up for exercising our own free will. So what if the woman doesn’t ever want to get pregnant? It’s her body and she has a right to do whatever she wants to with it. She has no right to pass judgment on women who do choose to have babies and I can see how what she said could be construed as demeaning. But she was only referring to herself.

She says she has lingering body issues from being a fat kid. Join the club, Jillian. I suspect your work on that show has added to more people’s lingering body issues than it has helped.

I can’t pretend to see inside the woman’s head and heart and frankly I don’t want or need to. If she thinks she has too much emotional baggage to give birth, OK. That’s probably a wise decision. And one that is hers to make.

And if other women find their bliss by raising a happy, healthy family, that’s wonderful. As women, we should celebrate that. We should celebrate that we have the freedom to do what we like with our bodies and minds. And if our bodies get a little saggy because we make a family with them, then so be it.  It took more than pregnancy to get my body is the terrible shape it’s in.

Women should support each other.

If we could only get to the point where we help each other and not bog ourselves down with body image issues, with career vs. family guilt, and with bitterness about every remark someone makes in an interview or on a blog, we’d all be so much better off.

I will add this: As a journalist I can tell you that, unless I get to spend a lot of time with someone, an interview is at best a snapshot of what that person revealed during the course of the conversation and may not be a complete profile of who that person really is.

How much time the reporter spent with Michaels, I have no idea. How probing were the questions? No clue.

Michaels said some dumb things — as mentioned in a brilliantly written blog post linked to above: you rescue a puppy, Jillian, not a child.  I doubt she can claim she’s been misquoted because the interview is probably on tape, but there is more context that led to those remarks than you find in the briefs taken from the whole story. Still, she is a public figure and she should choose her words more carefully.

I do, however, think the Huff Post made a mistake with that headline. It’s inaccurate and misleading and they should take it down.

And I think we all just need to chill the fuck out already.  Celebrate women. It’s BoobQuake Day! If that can’t make you happy to be a woman than I don’t think we can be friends.