Well, it’s about time! Phyllis Chesler highlights a new museum opening in Manhattan dedicated to what many women consider their most important role: motherhood. Chesler describes the museum:
Here at MOM, the Museum of Motherhood, pregnant women, women in labor, and mothers with children are cherished and displayed throughout the museum as brave champions. The subject is not hidden because it is sacred. It is honored for precisely this reason. The cheerful, brightly colored space is filled with artfully painted plaster casts of real women's pregnant torsos—like so many modern-day versions of ancient fertility goddesses, like so many Venuses of Willendorf.
An increasing number of contemporary women are casting themselves while pregnant. Here, at MOM, they can have an artist paint it to their specifications. The museum also displays and sells a "pregnancy vest" that weighs 40-60 pounds, the amount of weight that many women gain while they are pregnant.
When Chesler asked the Museum’s founder Joy Rose when she became interested in opening a museum on motherhood, Rose gave the obvious answer “after I became a mother.”
I suspect interest in this museum follows the same logic. Personally, I was never really interested in the subject of motherhood until I became a mother; I certainly would have scoffed at the idea of visiting a motherhood museum but now I can’t wait to go.
My first born is now four years old and I sometimes have difficulty recalling my life before he was around. I guess that’s because, for me, a meaningful and memorable life started the moment he arrived.