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For nearly twenty-five years, my well-worn copies of the original American Girl books sat untouched on bookshelves at my parents’ house. The American Girl books, the first of which was published in 1986, were formative for me as a kid. So many representations of young femininity to which I was exposed in school, in church, or through popular culture seemed either too saintly or too shallow and ditzy for me to relate to them.

A Young Girl Searching for Good Examples

The Virgin Mary was, well, the Virgin Mary (tough for the average seven-year-old to identify with) and I had not been introduced to many other female saints. Meanwhile, before tougher gals like Mulan and Tiana arrived on the scene, the Disney princesses that we elder millennials saw ran from flimsily demure (the aptly-named “Sleeping Beauty,” not exactly a tower of strength) to recklessly boy-crazy (looking at you, Ariel).

There were exceptions, of course – like the Baby Sitters Club series with its array of relatable girls’ personalities and problems – but few with the kind of gravitas that Little Women and Anne of Green Gables would offer once I hit age 10 or 11. Because of this, the American Girl books became an important transitional era in this bookworm’s childhood.

As It Turns Out, The American Girl Books Aren’t Just For Girls

Sometimes, when the beloved old books caught my eye on my parents’ shelves, I imagined reading them again one day, with my future daughter.

But last year, I gave birth to my third boy, and I may never have a girl. So, I began reading the books to my baby’s seven- and five-year-old brothers, hoping that they might take to them better than they had to other “girl books” (many of which are, as my five-year-old has pointed out, rather short on fighting).

It turns out that my all-too-typical, sports-and-fighting-obsessed boys are riveted by these “girl stories.” This delights me, and not just because I love the stories, too. 

As I read through the books again, I see that they are not only good in themselves, but also bulwarks against both an undue focus on the myopic lens of the present to look at the past and an undue focus on the monolithic lens of identity to look at each person (past and present).

Lessons from the Past, for the Present

Too often, we assume that girls and women were, long before our own existence, so primitive or so oppressed that their lives contain no active lessons for our own. To the limited extent that we engage history at all, it becomes a blur of dates and events that can be hard to relate to emotionally, even if we understand them intellectually. But it is important for kids to understand that the colonial boycott on tea or the underground railroad are not just definitions to memorize, but rather the backdrops against which children just like them had their own wants, needs, and agendas.

Kirsten, a Swedish immigrant, misses the rag doll that her family had to leave in town for many months, even as she shares her family’s broader concerns about winterizing the farm and surviving the season.

Addy, an escapee from ante-bellum slavery, alights in my family’s own Philadelphia and experiences the trials and joys of learning to read alongside rank injustices, including Northern racism and the continued enslavement of family members remaining in the South.

Identifying with the peaks and valleys in these heroines’ personal stories and their character development as they grow up teaches young readers that, while historical context changes, the human condition (in God’s image, and also fallen) is eternal. 

For my sons, the books are also a lesson in the feminist as well as the Catholic understanding that girls have just as much interiority – that is, just as much to offer, and just as much room to grow – as boys do. 

Lessons on Virtue That Happen to be from Female Characters

Each American Girl story takes girlhood and femininity for granted. Each story centers the thoughts, feelings, and virtues of girls that are so busy living full lives that they never pause to consider their relationship to their femininity, nor to harp on it. Their girlhood just is; it is not experienced as either a presumptive limitation or a presumptive strength – because they, just like my sons, are individuals first.

Each girl has her own virtues and flaws, and is learning to demonstrate strength, regard for others, and responsibility of exactly the kind that my husband and I are trying to instill in our boys. We want them to understand that those virtues – while they may often be manifested differently by women than by men – are not gendered.

I consider it unfortunate that American Girl started making “Truly Me” dolls and publishing the accompanying books in more recent years. Of course, the point is for each child to identify with a girl that shares her own era, not to mention her hair color, skin tone, style, and so forth. But the whole point of the original American Girls was that a shared identity as an American girl (not to mention as a human being) was constitutive of all individual identities.

My sons are not even American girls, since they are boys. They are certainly not Swedish immigrants or Victorian heiresses. Yet, as they listen to these stories (as to all others), they assume empathy and identification, not the absence thereof. I pray that continues, and that they will be stronger Catholic men for it. 

We already assume that worthwhile stories about boys belong to everyone. As I read the American Girl books to my sons, I hope they are learning that worthwhile stories about girls are their stories, too.

While Catholic teaching states that men and women were both created equally in the image of God, faith communities and leaders are not immune from the sins of the world - including sexism. Join Samantha Povlock, Founder of FemCatholic, and Professor and theologian Christine Falk Dalessio, Ph.D., for a candid and insightful conversation on the ways sexism can show up in communities of faith, what the Catholic Church actually teaches, and how we can better fulfill the mission to live as Jesus intended. 

Watch the recording here.

Christine Falk Dalessio, Ph.D., holds a doctoral degree in Catholic theology. As a theologian, she focuses on questions of anthropology, personalist feminism, unity and beauty. Her publications include “Filled with Prophecy: The Revelatory and Representational Aspects of the Prophetism of the Body in the Mystery of Male-Female Embodiment"" in Listening Journal and “The Feminism, Prophetic Bodies and Freedom” in Woman as Prophet in the Home and the World: Interdisciplinary Investigations. A NJ native, she currently resides in Milwaukee with her husband and two cats, and teaches theology at Marquette University.

Join us for a live workshop on Thursday September 22nd at 12pm CST / 1pm EST. 

Watch the recording here.

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In the opening scene of Look Both Ways, college senior Natalie (Lili Reinhart) lays out her ambitious five-year plan to her friend Gabe (Danny Ramirez) during a library study session, reminding him that “those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” Gabe counters that while plans are well and good, all we really have is the present moment. They decide to celebrate the present moment with a one-night stand, promising to not make it “a big deal.” Of course, it soon becomes an enormous deal when Natalie discovers that she is pregnant on the night before graduation – or when Natalie discovers that she isn’t.

The Lives of Natalie With and Without a Child

At the moment of her pregnancy test, the film splits into dual timelines, one in which Natalie moves to LA as intended and one in which she returns home to Austin to have her baby. It’s a charming and occasionally poignant trope that nevertheless fails to make the point the writer clearly intended, though it almost succeeds in something far more profound.

Flash forward to the final scene of the movie (warning: spoilers), when the timelines converge at the same place at which they severed: the sorority bathroom where Natalie took her pregnancy test. Both versions of herself stand in the mirror, take a deep breath, and say, “You’re okay.” The conclusion is that no matter which direction life takes, women can turn out okay.

In both timelines, Natalie ends up presenting her work at South By Southwest, well on her way to a successful career as a cartoonist. Because it’s a rom-com, she also ends up getting her man. Thus, we are to conclude that the pregnancy and the decision to have the baby weren’t the future-ending events they seemed to be at the time. Women really can have it all.

The problem with that conclusion is that Natalie’s life as a mother has been both much harder and much more fulfilling than her life working as an assistant in an LA animation studio.

Both Natalies Have Dreams, but Only One Experiences Growth

While both timelines follow the typical rom-com structure (girl finds boy, loses boy, gets boy back), the Austin-motherhood timeline uses character-driven actions to achieve that structure. 

Natalie-as-mom pulls back from a potential romance with Gabe not because she doesn’t have sincere feelings for him, but because she understands the risk that complicating their relationship will have for their daughter. “I love you, but our daughter comes first and I’m afraid of putting our delicate family structure at risk” is a much more compelling plot hurdle than “I love you, but you randomly got a job in Nova Scotia and there’s a bad internet connection.” When compared to Austin Natalie’s journey, LA Natalie’s story feels arbitrary and capricious.

The dual love stories are similarly imbalanced.

The script does a lot of work trying to convince us that LA Natalie’s coworker Jake (David Corenswet) is the perfect guy for her. They both make five-year plans! They both work in film! They both like to quote Ben Franklin! These surface-level similarities fail to compensate for the fact that Jake and Natalie never prioritize each other. He agrees to a year-long job in Nova Scotia without discussing it with his long-term girlfriend. She dumps him the moment distance gets hard. In an allegedly grand romantic gesture, he risks the ire of his bosses to show up for her film screening for one weekend. He’s still going back to Nova Scotia, though, and she seems primed to go back to work for the same boss who recently fired her. Work comes first, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change for either of them.

Austin Natalie’s love interest is Gabe, the father of her child. In true rom-com fashion, it’s clear that Gabe is in love with her from the beginning, despite agreeing to be “just friends.” The two co-parents spend a lot of time discussing how different they are, but the only apparent difference is that she likes to make five-year plans and he doesn’t. Unlike Jake, Gabe understands that love comes with both risk and responsibility. He puts his own dreams aside to support Natalie and their daughter. He gracefully accepts Natalie’s decision not to date him, even as he makes the case that their love is worth the risk. While Natalie and Gabe both mourn the lives they could have had if they hadn’t become parents, they cherish the life they built.

Meanwhile, LA Natalie flounders as she tries to grow professionally without experiencing any significant personal growth. Eventually, her boss and idol Lucy Galloway (Nia Long) correctly identifies that Natalie has failed to articulate an individualized voice as an animator, but then callously refuses to mentor her and arbitrarily fires her. LA Natalie then returns to her parents’ house and somehow finds her voice. Unfortunately, we’re still not sure what that voice is because she hasn’t really learned anything about what it means to be human. Austin Natalie doesn’t have that problem. She has plenty of voice. What she needs is a little sleep and some space to draw.

While both versions of the character end up at SXSW, LA Natalie’s short film is left vague. (It’s something about a bird getting a tattoo.) Meanwhile, Austin Natalie creates a comic based on an experience we witness in the movie: being up late with an infant who refuses to sleep. Night Owl is successful because it reimagines a challenging personal experience and then universalizes it.

While both Natalies have dreams, only Natalie-as-mother experiences growth, responsibility, and the grief that comes with change. Only Natalie-as-mother learns to love something more than her own artistic ambitions and, ironically, only Natalie-as-mother is able to channel that love into art.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think the filmmakers believed that motherhood is the path to fulfillment.

Look Both Ways Accidentally Highlighted the Problem with Girl Boss Feminism

I can understand why some writers have accused this movie of being accidental pro-life propaganda. I wouldn’t go that far, though. it’s clear that the characters are pro-choice and that Natalie chooses to have the baby because that is her preference. I don’t think wallowing in this decision would benefit the movie.

The problem is that LA Natalie is never presented with another heart-wrenching decision. While getting fired does temporarily derail her five-year plan, she’s never asked to take responsibility for anyone or anything outside herself. The writer is so committed to an individualistic, girl boss version of feminism that she didn’t know what to do with Natalie’s character without the crisis of unexpected pregnancy. She couldn’t conceive of another way to force Natalie to grow up. Instead, we get silly scenes about goats being brought into work and lots of complaining about LA housing prices. It didn’t have to be that way.

There is no reason why Natalie’s LA timeline couldn’t have been stronger. Having a baby isn’t the only transformative experience a woman (or a man, let’s not forget Gabe) can go through. There are infinitely more interesting options aside from a cookie-cutter breakup and getting fired.

The fundamental issue, though, is that the writer doesn't seem to understand what to make of her own story. Life isn’t about achieving your ambitions. Life is about learning to love. Prosser set out to write a movie about how setbacks can be overcome in pursuit of your personal dreams, and instead wrote a movie about how ambition is empty without love. This may not be a popular view in a culture centered around self-actualization, but what we want to be true and what we know to be true are not always the same. Ultimately, we all need to step outside ourselves in order to self-actualize. We never get to see LA Natalie achieve this, and the movie suffers greatly for it.

I realize I may be asking a lot of a movie that is essentially a sweet and silly rom-com. But the writer clearly intended the movie to have a feminist message, so it’s justified to evaluate both what the message is and whether it was achieved. Ultimately, the movie falls short because the filmmakers insist on pursuing a misguided moral that isn’t borne out in the storyline. It’s a shame, because this movie could have been something really special.

The Atlantic recently ran an article about extremist militaristic groups that have co-opted the rosary and the concept of spiritual warfare in order to push their violent ideology. The buzz generated around the article focused more on the article’s title (which was later changed), rather than the author’s argument about the dangers of unchecked religious fanaticism.

Though I most often associate the rosary with darling elderly church ladies rather than would-be modern-day crusaders, for years I handled my own rosary with the revulsion and begrudging respect I might have had for a revolver and used the rosary in prayer only under duress. Despite my best efforts, the rosary held memories of violence for me.

Witnessing the Violence of the Mexican Drug War

I grew up along the southwest Texas border in the neighboring cities of Piedras Negras, Mexico and Eagle Pass, Texas. For much of my childhood, Piedras Negras was a relatively quiet industrial city, deemed a safe port of entry compared to other cities along the border. 

Then the strife of the Mexican drug war reached us.

We were in the middle of it before we realized it had begun. Seemingly overnight, our quiet city and neighboring ranching communities became the backdrop for some of the worst human rights atrocities the country has experienced.

Terror reigned and the violence became unrelenting. Armed conflict between rival cartels and armed forces became a weekly occurrence, and the ubiquitous forced disappearances of people within and without the drug trade soon ceased to even make the headlines.

As a culturally Catholic community, we turned to prayer during this time. Perpetual rosary novenas were on-going. We gathered in homes, at churches, and at big community events to pray the rosary, to beg God, the Virgin Mary, and St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes) for an end to the violence, the safe return of our loved ones, and the conversion of those involved in the drug trade.

For a while, the violence only got worse. At the time, I had the distinct feeling that our prayers fell on deaf ears.

With a faith that hadn't matured, a faith that had never learned to doubt, I began to question the darkness.

“Was God really listening?”
“Did He even care?”
"What good could prayers be against men with a surplus of guns, a lack of humanity, and an insatiable hunger for power?”

Days turned into months, and then into years. The violence ebbed and flowed, and many of our loved ones remain unaccounted for to this date.

I put the violence behind me when I went to college. Eventually, the violence back at home ceased. Piedras Negras is no longer a hotspot of the drug war that still rages across the country.  

When the Rosary Brings Back Memories of Violence

During college, I wandered away from the Church for reasons hardly worth revisiting. It’s been four years since I’ve been back. When a lot of my peers were going through their own processes of deconstruction, I was falling back in love with the Church that raised me.

Yet the rosary presented an unexpected stumbling block.

The rosary is often touted as a marker of devout Catholicism and a fail-proof path to sainthood. But I could not reconcile this with the complicated feelings that came back the moment I picked it up. I was bombarded with feelings of terror and despair, images of a silent God, and memories of the numbing recitation of Hail Mary after desperate Hail Mary, of endless litanies that seemed to fall on deaf ears, of nights that only got darker and longer.

What I wouldn’t give to forget what I can hardly bear to remember. 

I was living in Atlanta during the time of my reconversion. When the Southern invocation of a beloved “Mama Mary” sounded foreign to my ears, I realized then that I no longer knew her like that. I could no longer relate to the familiarity my faith community had with our Blessed Mother.

As I’d tried to forget how to pray the rosary, I'd forgotten how to love Mary.

I hardly dared voice my disdain for the rosary. God forbid it’d be taken as direct disrespect to the Blessed Mother when I couldn’t be bothered to explain myself.

Re-Encountering Mary through My Abuelita

I thought I could get away with leaving it well enough alone. I’d grown to love other devotions in its place and I’d learned to negotiate for a different penance after Confession. But the rosary remained inescapable. It’s in my middle name, after all.

I was named Rosario after my maternal grandmother. Even though I never got to meet her, I came to love my Abuelita Chayo in much the same way I learned to love Mary as a child. 

I’ve known of my abuelita’s love my entire life. Her picture has been ever-present on our home altar and she’s the most influential figure in the lives of the people I love most. And she loved Our Lady so.

So it was her, my abuelita, that I was thinking of when I started a 54-day rosary novena in August so that it would end on her birthday, the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary. 

I kept the requests simple. I set up the alarms. And day after day I held onto the rosary even when I didn’t feel like it.

About halfway through, I began to look forward to it as part of my daily routine and in many ways, it has become a homecoming of sorts.

For as much pain as the rosary continues to hold, I’d almost forgotten that it also holds memories of a lovely Marian childhood: a childhood of autumns spent as a matachin dancer for Our Lady of Guadalupe, of warm gatherings during Marian feast days, of May coronations, and of pilgrimages across the country to the most beautiful Marian shrines.

It also reminds me of the women of faith who raised me: my mother and her sisters, who love the Mother of Jesus.

Slowly, I am reminded of the way I used to know her as a little girl. This familiarity I’d forgotten has started to reappear because after all these years, the Mother of Mercy still looks at me with tenderness and in my mother tongue eases my fears as she whispers, “¿Acaso no estoy yo aquí, que soy tu Madre?” “Am I not here, I, who am your Mother?”

Reminders of a Faith Forged in Fire

I don’t know if I’ll ever become a daily rosary gal, if my rosary collection will be at all comparable to that of my grandmother’s, or if my faith practice will ever be filled again with many of the Marian elements I grew up with.

Some days the beads still feel heavy and lead-ladden, and the recitation of the prayers feels numbing. I have yet to subject myself to the Litany of Loreto again or any of the special novenas we prayed out of desperation, like the novena to Saint Jude or the Chaplet of the Precious Blood of Jesus.

‍But I now hold the beads with a faith forged in fire and with a heart that walked out of the darkness, following the Light of Light. I pray the rosary out of love and not desperation, as someone who strives to practice the steadfast love of Mary, the Mother of God, and who has learned to trust God’s mercy and grace above all devotions.

Growing up in Palm Springs, CA, I was blessed to be surrounded by a diverse and supportive community. Many of my friends were of Latinx or white descent (some spoke Spanish, some did not) and the community’s kindness was abundant. I never felt insecure in my identity as a second-generation Guatemalan who did not speak Spanish fluently.

Am I Latina Enough?

It was not until I went to college that questions about my identity emerged. In my first year at Boston College, another student jokingly told me that I should not be able to join the Latinx student club because I did not speak Spanish fluently. I was told that I was not Latina enough.

But in other settings, leaders of organizations wanted me to assert my Latina identity in order to add ethos to their diversity claims. I felt lost and conflicted as people told me where to go and how to identify myself, telling me whether I was “too Latina” or “not Latina enough.”

I love my father's Hispanic background, but I struggle to put myself in a box. I felt classified as an "in-betweener": I did not know how to describe my own identity because it varied relative to where I was and whom I was with. I have difficulty calling myself Latina because others have utilized this title to either benefit themselves for that diversity claim, or to exclude me altogether. This is a challenge that I am still learning to navigate as I get older and develop more confidence in claiming my identity.

Finding Healing Through a Cuban-American Theologian

It was not until I found the writings of Cuban-America mujerista theologian, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, that I began to love and accept the complexity of my Latina identity. Her writing gave me permission to lean into the messiness of my own identity.

Born in Cuba in 1943, Isasi-Díaz moved to the United States at the age of 17. She knew the intimate struggle of finding a home in the midst of displacement. Known as the “mother of mujerista theology” (“mujer” being the Spanish word for “woman”), she yearned to promote an inspiration of liberation within Latinas.

Isasi-Díaz discusses multifaceted identities in her book, La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology. She argues that there is no such thing as a ‘single-site’ person. Rather, we all have different roots and interactions that drive us forward in life. She describes her own experience of dancing between cultures: “We were displaced from somewhere concrete and our ‘original’ selves – our first selves as well as our creative selves – continue to be displaced not only from where we came but also from where we have arrived or have always been.”

Once we leave our place of origin, we never necessarily settle down completely or find that same sense of home again. We keep connecting, physically and culturally, to that place from which we originated. This idea of a multi-site person involves continual transformation. It is important to take in all of the different layers of place and of person.

The Danger of a Single Narrative

In celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, we need more interdisciplinary language surrounding these complex issues. For Isasi-Díaz, narratives matter; there is no claim for neutrality. She is deeply interested in the emotional, the related, and the situation of narratives of reality. For Isasi-Díaz, wholeness is central.

In reading Isasi-Díaz’s writings, I have found healing, a sense of symbolic repair giving form to the devastation in life. Her writing has helped me answer questions about my background that I have been asked by others and have also asked myself. In this way, Isasi-Díaz has given me the gift of myself.

Chimanda Ngozi Adichie’s famous TEDtalk also applies here: There is a danger to a single narrative and to what a single narrative leaves out – and this danger is alive and well throughout Hispanic Heritage month. When stereotypes fill in the gaps of a person’s complexity, it flattens their worth and leaves no room for depth. Isasi-Díaz fights against this single story that I have been told about Latina women, shedding light on these "in-betweeners" who have beautiful and multifaceted identities.

As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, let us remember to look at the complexity of the diverse stories that are involved. Let us be challenged to offer a critical perspective of euro-centered aestheticism and to enter into conversations about the effects of a diaspora space as we celebrate the many narratives of Hispanic heritage.

At the MTV Video Music Awards last month, Taylor Swift made quite a splash when she used her acceptance speech for her Video of the Year award to announce the release date of her new album, Midnights. Swifties had been expecting another one of her re-records, so they were delighted at the news that Swift would release a brand-new, original album next month.

The last time Swift made headlines of this magnitude at the VMAs was 13 years ago, against her will, when Kanye West infamously stole the microphone from her in the middle of her acceptance speech in order to argue that someone else deserved to win. As she revealed later in her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, that moment was devastating – a “foundational trauma” – for the then-19-year-old Swift.

But this year, wearing a dress that purposefully evoked her 2009 look, Swift used her speech to gracefully assert her triumph over this traumatic moment from her past. She celebrated her victory for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” and recognized the fact that an historic four of the nominated films were directed by women. She graciously thanked her fans, coyly announced the new album, and planted one of her signature “Easter eggs,” a hint that the world would learn more about the then-unnamed album “at midnight.” I would guess that Swift said exactly what she wanted to say in her speech this year.

So I was surprised when I opened up the women-run news podcast Betches Sup the next day to find that it was titled, “Where Is Taylor Swift’s Roe Activism?” Rather than celebrating Swift’s success, her poise, and her decision to highlight female filmmakers, the hosts criticized Swift for not using her short two-minute speech to make a public statement on abortion rights. 

But here’s the thing: Taylor Swift doesn’t owe us her opinion on abortion.

Feminism is Meant to Celebrate and Uplift Women

An award acceptance speech is meant to honor and celebrate an artist’s hard work, giving them an opportunity to share the recognition with their team and loved ones. Swift went above and beyond the expectation, joyously announcing a new album. It was a happy, celebratory occasion.

Whether you consider abortion a tragedy or the fall of Roe an affront to human rights, I think we can agree that abortion is not a happy topic to discuss. By pressuring Swift to make a political statement, the Betches hosts in a way tried to swipe the microphone from Swift like Kanye did, commandeering her spotlight to fit their own agenda.

I find it ironic that a group of pro-choice feminists elected not to respect Swift’s choice to use her moment to celebrate her own impressive career accomplishments. 

Women are Entitled to Choose Which Issues They Speak About

Taylor Swift doesn’t owe anyone her opinion on abortion, at the VMAs or otherwise.

The Betches hosts criticized Swift for making a documentary about her journey to becoming politically active and failing at this opportunity to do just that. While it’s true that much of Miss Americana revolved around Swift’s decision to become politically active, not once did Swift mention abortion in the film. Rather, it covered Swift’s turmoil as she pushed back against a team that wanted her to remain apolitical when she wanted to make a public statement because she felt strongly about the 2018 Tennessee Senate race.

However, Swift got involved in that race not because of abortion, but because of other feminist and human rights issues close to her heart. Namely, she was outraged by Marsha Blackburn’s vote against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. She was also concerned about Blackburn’s stances on equal pay for women and discrimination against gay people. Swift said, “Those aren’t Tennessee Christian values! I live in Tennessee. I am a Christian. That’s not what we stand for.” In the end, she made an Instagram post encouraging young people to register to vote. As a result, registration numbers spiked (though not enough to influence the outcome of the election).

Crucially, Swift made that public statement because it was something she cared about deeply, enough to stake her career on. It’s not the only time she’s done so: She made a risky career move to make a point about artists’ rights to own their own work; she spoke in her film about her struggles with disordered eating and body image; and she pursued a painful and public sexual assault trial for just $1 in damages because she wanted to make a point about the dignity of victims.

Swift has demonstrated that she is willing to go to bat for things that are important to her. And for reasons unknown to us, she chose not to speak out against Roe in her VMAs speech. She made her choice, and pro-choice folks ought to respect that. (For what it’s worth, she did tweet about her disappointment in the Roe ruling after it came out.) 

Nuanced Issues Like Abortion Shouldn’t Be Boiled Down to a Soundbite

It’s bonkers to ask any person to express their opinions on abortion amid everything else they need to cram into a two-minute acceptance speech. Abortion is a complex issue, and nearly all of us feel at least somewhat ambivalent about the role of the state in that issue.

Maybe Swift is personally pro-life but supports the right to abortion. Maybe she’s in favor of abortion bans after a certain number of weeks or with certain exceptions. We don’t know.

But to expect her to have a simple, black-and-white rallying cry she can spout off amid her list of thank you’s is to discredit Swift’s complexity as a human being. Like all of us, I imagine she has nuanced opinions – and she has the right to choose whether to share them, and how.

Taylor Swift Doesn’t Owe Us Her Opinions, and Neither Do You

I didn't write this whole think piece to reflect on a soon-to-be-forgotten speech and a sooner-to-be-forgotten podcast. It’s about more than just Taylor Swift and her opinions. It’s about you and your opinions.

You don’t owe anyone your opinion on abortion – not at all, and especially not in an Instagram story.

We live in an age of performative activism: When something happens, everyone is expected to have a neat, shareable, one-slide commentary on it. You don’t have to do that. 

I’m all for talking about politics. In fact, I’m a huge fan of it. Heck, I majored in Religion and Politics in college because I love having these messy conversations. But they’re supposed to be just that: conversations. Real, vulnerable, nuanced conversations, not tweets or Insta stories or a line shouted above the music cutting you off at the end of a whirlwind speech.

A culture that pressures you to have a pithy soundbite to share on issues that can’t and shouldn’t be distilled down is a culture that scorns nuance. The problem is that nuance is where we meet real people. A culture of simplistic rhetoric is a culture that erases real people from the conversation – and it’s through encountering real people that we find common ground and make real progress.

Let’s draw our conversations about abortion away from social media and celebrity circles, and instead bring them into our real lives. Let’s have thoughtful, well-intentioned conversations with friends and family. Let’s take opportunities to listen to people’s lived experiences of pregnancy, discernment, abortion, and parenthood.

Because it’s only through these types of conversation that we have any chance of moving forward as a nation on this issue.

I’m not sure that dating has ever been easy – but it sure seems to have gotten harder during our lifetime.

Blame who you want, but I can’t help but notice a correlation between the dating scene getting exponentially worse and the ubiquity of smartphones. I could wax poetic, but instead I’ll just whine economic: In the dating pool, like in anything else, an increase in supply causes equilibrium price to fall.

In other words: When the sexual supply chain is flooded, it cheapens the product. And unfortunately in this case study, the product is human hearts.

Dating Apps and the Paradox of Choice

Between dating apps, social media, and the availability of online pornography, there are endless options for immediate sexual, emotional, and social gratification. While you might think that the excess of options provides total freedom and even empowers daters to make the best romantic selections, it actually leads to something researchers call “the paradox of choice”.

There are a number of studies by psychologists and economists on why having too many choices debilitates us. The most famous is a 2000 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study by Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark Lepper entitled ”When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?”

Basically, the researchers set up their experiment in a grocery store. On the first day, they arranged a very attractive offering of twenty-four jams and on the second day, they offered a much more humble display of only six jams. While the twenty-four jam display attracted more traffic and overall attention than the six jam display, those who had stopped by the big display only purchased one-tenth of the jams purchased by those who saw the smaller display.

The researchers concluded that while options are exciting and enticing, they actually prevent us from purchasing. An excess of options also often leads to a lower level of satisfaction – even if we do make a purchase – because we can’t help but wonder if we left something better on the shelf.

From Endless Options to Exhaustion

I wonder if you’ve already experienced this first hand in the world of dating apps – because I sure have. Maybe your story went something like this:

You got your heart broken and downloaded a dating app. It was fun for about 20 minutes. A quick hit of dopamine came from realizing that strangers find you attractive (that’ll show your ex!) and then – the high faded. And you’re stuck in the romantic multiverse, where you could choose to date any one or two or two-hundred of an endless number of strangers. That’s the part when you became overwhelmed, exhausted, and honestly a little turned off. 

You jumped in the online dating pool, splashed around for a second, and then drowned in all your options.

Have Dating Apps Made Dating More Difficult?

None of this is meant to negate or deny the many beautiful, successful relationships that started on dating apps. I’m not suggesting that their destination is any less beautiful than the next couple’s. What I am saying is that, as a society and a culture, our attempt at a dating shortcut might be adding unnecessary difficulty to our journey.

Because screens aren’t really that sexy, are they? Even a swipe from the hottest of internet strangers can’t hold up to that magic coffee shop moment when an actual human chances eye contact and a smile at you before nervously looking back down at their laptop.

Not to take the romance out of it, but that feeling in your tummy when you see your coffee shop crush start to pack up their bags and get ready to leave the coffee shop – that feeling of, “Should I ask for their number?” isn’t butterflies.

That’s supply and demand doing what it’s supposed to do: Allowing scarcity to act as a motivator, and thus increasing the perceived worth of your latte lover.

From the bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists. The intersection of faith, power, abuse, and freedom is a tale as old as time and all too familiar today. The ways in which these themes are intermingled profoundly shape our experiences with religion, family, and society. It is at this intersection that we meet Kambili, the main character of our September pick, Purple Hibiscus by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

A 15 year old girl whose life is dictated by her rigidly religious father, Kambili finds herself questioning the way things are at home alongside her brother Jaja after spending time with her equally devout but less strict aunt and cousins. As Kambili begins to explore and question the faith that has been narrowly defined for her, she has to reckon with the abusive nature of her father’s behaviors and the complicated family dynamics that have resulted from it. Can she find her voice and learn to speak for herself? How does she make her faith her own? How does she go back home with her new perspective and taste of freedom? Join us to discuss these important and relevant themes during our September book club discussion!

You can get Purple Hibiscus in paperback or Audible Audiobook. 

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• A summary of key notes from the book
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#FemCatholicBookClub is part of the FemCatholic All Access Pass Membership, where members support FemCatholic and can access our entire video library of expert webinars, book club discussions, and conference talks.

This past summer, Pope Francis made a penitential visit to Canada, marking an important step forward in the Church’s efforts to make amends to Indigenous groups in North America. Even so, the visit was not without controversy. In addition to divided public opinion on the Pope’s apology statements, Indigenous women’s voices were heard and silenced in equal measure throughout the July 24 – 29 visit.

The Catholic Church’s Involvement in Residential Schools

The trip was made in response to findings that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released in 2015 on the role that the Catholic Church played in residential schools for Indigenous children. From the 1880s to the 1960s, these schools forced Indigenous children to assimilate by prohibiting native languages and cultural practices. The Catholic Church sponsored 80 of the 130 Canadian residential schools, where Indigenous students suffered physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse. Over 4,000 children died in the schools’ care, and many were found in 2021 in unmarked graves outside of three schools.

Throughout the pilgrimage to cities in Alberta, Quebec, and the Nunavut Arctic territory, Pope Francis repeatedly apologized for the “evil” committed in the residential schools, condemning the abusive practices as “incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” However, the pontiff’s statements drew fire from critics who felt there was a lack of sufficient emphasis on the Church’s institutional failings in the matter, as Francis’ words instead focused on the actions of individual Catholics.

Indigenous Women Highlighted – and Shut Out

Some were angered for different reasons. Among those was Cree woman Si Pih Ko, also known as Trina Francois. She was present for Pope Francis’ first apology on July 25, after which honorary chief of the Ermineskin First Nation Wilton Littlehead gifted Francis a headdress, which he wore briefly over his skullcap (or zucchetto) before an aide removed it.

Seeing this, Si Pih Ko was outraged. She felt that in failing to remove his own cap before donning the headdress, Francis did not take off the law of the Catholic Church before putting on Indigenous law, the law of their land.

This led to one of the most powerful, unscripted moments of the papal visit, in which a woman’s voice was front and center: Si Pih Ko emerged from the crowd to face the pontiff, and with single fist raised, she began to sing in Cree, her expression pained and her voice raw with emotion as tears flowed freely down her face.

While some present believed Si Pih Ko’s song was the Canadian National Anthem “O Canada” in Cree, in reality, it was “Ka ka na tak,” or “Our Village,” a song asserting Indigenous sovereignty and the power of women in particular.

“I told him, ‘You are hereby served spoken law. We, the daughters of the Great Spirit and our tribal sovereign members cannot be coerced into any law, any treaty that is not the Great Law,’” Si Pih Ko explained later to news outlets, including the CBC. "We have appointed chiefs on our territories. Govern yourselves accordingly. 'Hiy Hiy' does not mean 'Thank you.' It means that I have nothing more to say."

In interviews, Si Pih Ko described a newfound sense of inner peace and closure after this exchange; it came not from the Pope’s apology, but from what she shared with her own voice.

Women’s voices were heard in other contexts as well. On the morning of July 29, the day Francis left Quebec City for Inaquit in Nunavut, he held an audience to speak directly with survivors of residential schools. During his remarks before the press was dismissed for a private meeting with the survivors, he highlighted three holy women, including Mary, St. Anne, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha, who could offer a new model for reconciliation and renewal in Catholic-Indigenous relations. Notably, St. Kateri is the first Indigenous North American Catholic saint, an important touchstone for the over 500,000 Indigenous Canadians who identify as Catholic.

That said, even at that very event where an Indigenous female saint was a key talking point, Indigenous women were not given full representation. Reports shared that a group of Indigenous women – supporters of the survivors – were asked to leave due to a lack of space and overabundance of Catholic clergy present. The women were holding cradleboards, traditional carriers that represented the estimated thousands of children lost to residential schools, making their absence from the event doubly distressing.

True Reconciliation Means Acknowledging the Harm Done

True reconciliation does not gloss over the offense or pretend that it never happened. Genuine contrition acknowledges the depth of the harm that was done and vows to make reparations. For the Catholic Church, such acknowledgement includes the lives lost to and intergenerational trauma caused by the residential schools, and it also includes the need to address the failings of the papal visit that caused further harm to Indigenous women.

As Mandy Gull-Masty, the first female grand chief of the Cree First Nation, emphasized when she shared her thoughts on the papal visit with America Magazine, more work lies ahead for both the Church and political bodies. That work must center the voices of survivors of residential schools and women, and it must include actionable steps forward towards reparations.

She feels optimistic about Pope Francis as a partner in those efforts: “I think with what we’ve seen so far from the pope, there’s an openness from him to really have that partnership working together, walking together, moving forward.”

America is one of the only nations in the world without federally mandated paid leave, leaving the options to do so in the hands of families, companies, and other individual organizations. We'll discuss how to strategically approach your organization on advancing paid leave policies to support women, their children, and families. Join Samantha Povlock and Christina Gebel for strategies on how to plan your approach, raise the issue, and have the conversation to change policies. 

Watch the recording here.

Samantha Povlock is the Founder of FemCatholic, a media company whose reporting on paid leave in the United States started a national conversation and resulted in multiple dioceses already advancing policies. Samantha has navigated paid leave at a Big 4 Accounting Firm and at an international bank, where she also helped start a cross border Parents Initiative to raise conversations about the diverse needs of parents. 

Christina Gebel, MPH, LCCE is a Maternal and Child Health research and policy consultant, trained doula, and lifelong Catholic. She co-founded a community-based nonprofit providing fully-funded doula care for families in Massachusetts without access to doulas. Christina previously worked as a state Maternal and Infant Health Director at Massachusetts March of Dimes, where she helped to introduce multiple maternal health bills, including a bill that would include doulas as a paid benefit through Medicaid, while serving on several state-wide workgroups. She currently resides in Durham, NC with her husband, Raman, a family medicine physician. 

Join us for a live workshop on Monday Aug 29th at 8:30pm EST. 

Watch the recording here.

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When I graduated with my Master of Divinity just a few months before I got married, I discovered quickly that if I wanted to have children and use my hard-earned degree to work for Catholic Church, my choices were going to be limited. My husband’s job at a parish offered no paid parental leave, so I narrowed my job search to places that offered maternity leave benefits. We weren’t anywhere near living in poverty, but we had modest church jobs and our savings cushion wasn’t huge. We wanted to try having kids within a few years and paid leave was an economic necessity for us.

Thankfully, I got a job in a community I loved and was grateful for eight weeks of paid leave when our first child was born. My husband had a supportive pastor and was able to take some sick time and then work from home during those early weeks.

A few years later, my spouse took a job with a diocese that offers twelve weeks of parental leave and I was in conversation about a position there for myself. Only a few weeks after that, we found out we were expecting our second child. We also discovered the parental leave policy did not require a full year of service, but offered ‘one week of paid leave per month worked up to twelve.’ If we were both employed there, we would have to split the leave. Given our timeline, we would be looking at sharing a maximum of six weeks of leave if the position I was interviewing for actually came to fruition. This was both better than expected – and also disappointing.

Decisions Based on Numbers and Fear, Not on Freedom

In Ignatian spirituality, there is a concept of consolation versus desolation, particularly in relation to making decisions. In consolation, we draw toward God and the movements of His love in our life. In contrast, desolation draws us away from God and His active presence. For many women, bearing children is already a complex decision, even in ideal circumstances. It becomes increasingly difficult to make a decision from a place of consolation when you are also calculating weeks of leave, possible physical or mental complications, family finances, and more. Listening to God’s voice becomes difficult – if not outright impossible – when your mind is filled with numbers and your heart with fear.

My heart broke when I realized that no woman who worked in our previous archdiocese received paid leave, let alone any man. I worked very hard to earn my MDiv and was actively thinking about the ways in which I might use my education to serve God’s people. My calling to motherhood has been as profound and clear as my calling to ministry. In many ways, these complex and complementary aspects of my life should intertwine and strengthen each other.

The challenges of paid leave options brought my calling as a parent up against my calling as a minister. Instead of thoughtfully reflecting about where I feel called to use my gifts in ministry and cherishing how these gifts also serve my family, I sift through parental leave benefits and determine how the timing of a new job might fit with growing our family. This kind of conflict only creates more desolation for women as they navigate these kinds of decisions.

The Limits of Paid Leave

Paid maternity leave is a significant need for working women. It is also significantly limited by the common requirement of at least a year of employment. Paid parental leave often does not apply to women whose jobs do not have salaries or benefits. Paid leave is necessary, but also primarily supports women who already have a certain level of privilege. My husband and I are not anywhere near living in poverty, and yet navigating childbirth and parental leave remains difficult. We are also white, heterosexual, have had planned pregnancies, and have reliable emotional and material support from our families. Even with the support and preferred circumstances, we have struggled through countless challenges.

The paid leave conversation is critical and a tangible way that dioceses and other companies can better support women. Paid leave also cannot become another checkbox that implicitly grants permission to not support women more broadly. Women who are hourly and gig workers or who do not work at all are not a part of the paid leave equation. As it exists, paid leave also does not address child care needs, maternal and infant mortality rates, and the slew of additional concerns around childbearing.

All of these concerns force women to decide from a place of desolation. Working for paid leave has to be the first of many steps to offer real consolation for women so that they can thrive not just for the Church, but because of it.

A young woman sits nervously in the exam room of her gynecologist. Her symptoms are typical for a lady in her early twenties: irregular periods, cramping, and facial hair growth. She’s a little  overweight and in danger of developing diabetes, which runs in her family. After taking in her concerns, the doctor diagnoses her with a reproductive health condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and writes her a script for birth control. The doctor promises that this will regulate her periods and relieve her symptoms. With the prescription in hand and instructions to lose weight, the young woman is sent on her way.

PCOS Affects 21% of Women, and Yet Doctors Aren’t Properly Educated About It

This experience is not an uncommon one. As many as 21% of women worldwide have PCOS, a reproductive disorder that often comes with additional risk for metabolic and psychological symptoms such as diabetes, anxiety, and depression. Women suffering from PCOS commonly report irregular periods, pain during ovulation and PMS, as well as thicker hair follicles on the face and chest.

The sources of these symptoms appear to stem from hormone imbalances, which produce mixed signals that confuse the body and keep it from working the way it should. Although PCOS is a common disease, women seeking treatment frequently report frustration and dissatisfaction, feeling they are not being properly educated or supported by their healthcare providers. 

A key factor contributing to this dissatisfaction is a lack of physician education. A 2017 survey conducted by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine assessed physicians for their knowledge of PCOS and their treatment practices. Less than half of the gynecologists surveyed by the ACOG reported knowledge of the criteria they used to diagnose PCOS, although diagnostic criteria has been standardized and internationally endorsed, including by the NIH. Physicians also reported lack of knowledge about the metabolic and psychological components of PCOS. A more recent survey conducted by the ACOG for physicians in training identified similar gaps.

As in scientific funding agencies, the medical profession appears to be insufficiently educated about this disease, although it impacts approximately 10% of their female patients.

Current Treatment Options for PCOS Fall Short

Because of these gaps, the care offered to women suffering from PCOS is often incomplete. Birth control is typically the first treatment option offered to women in an effort to correct reproductive hormone imbalances. However, because birth control acts as an ovulation inhibitor, this treatment option fails to bring the body back to a normal state of functioning. Treatment with the pill also fails to address the additional metabolic and psychological risks.

Another common treatment option is Metformin, which again can improve the reproductive components of PCOS, but not others. Physicians also reported inconsistency in screening for metabolic diseases like diabetes in the 2017 ACOG survey. However, 98% of physicians in training reported conducting such screens, demonstrating some improvement. Regardless, neither survey reported psychological referrals among the treatment recommendations.

Not only are there gaps in current medical treatment of PCOS, there is also lack of support for research to explore new treatment possibilities.

Although PCOS is Common, PCOS Research Remains Underfunded

A 2017 study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism reported that, although PCOS impacts roughly 10% of the world's population, the National Institute of Health (one of the largest research funding agencies in the world) has not funded PCOS research appropriately. Compared to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a disease that impacts a similar percentage of the population, from 2006 to 2015, the amount of money awarded by the NIH for PCOS research was less than 50%. Additionally, the types of grants typically awarded to scientists pursuing PCOS research were of a lower pay scale than the types of grants awarded for RA research, meaning that scientists conducting PCOS research received less financial support on average to conduct their studies.

Without support for investigation into the underlying causes of PCOS, this disease remains a mystery, and effective treatment regimens remain elusive.

Underfunding of PCOS research may be due in part to funding agencies in the NIH misunderstanding PCOS as a purely reproductive illness. Of the institutes within the NIH awarding research grants, 68% of the awards for PCOS research came from the National Institutes of Child Health and Development (NICHD). The NICHD is one of the lowest-funded institutes within the NIH.

Despite the close relationship between PCOS and diabetes, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases – which had among the top five budgets of any NIH agency – awarded no money to PCOS research. The National Institute of Mental Health – which landed in the top 7 most funded NIH institutes at the time of the report – also did not contribute to PCOS research funding.

This distribution of funds and the overall underfunding of PCOS research suggests that the NIH does not sufficiently recognize what current research has revealed about the ways this disease impacts women’s lives. As a result, scientific efforts to uncover underlying causes and improve treatment options are left unsupported.

The Lack of Education About PCOS is Unjust to Women

Lack of education and recognition for PCOS represents an area of injustice to women that is not often recognized. This complex yet common disease is frequently misunderstood and under supported, leaving women suffering with it feeling the same way. A greater understanding of PCOS and how extensively it impacts both the lives of individual women and society as a whole is necessary to address this area, which has long been neglected. As we continue to seek empowerment and justice for women, let us not forget to also look here.