I got this email last year...

Dear Nikol I thought your site was really thoughtful and cool until today. I was cruising through all the bits that I had not caught before in my other visits when I happened upon your pregnancy page. I don't know how to describe how mortified I was! Your descriptions of women and their bodies was worse than reading Stephen Kings most horrific novels. Women who are pregnant are doing one of the most amazing things within the universe; controlled creation of an autonomous entitiy. They create food from their bodies with which most of the planet was raised on (maybe even you). You defile your own mothers and her miraculous birth of yourself by painting pregnant women in such an ugly light. Usually this the habit of men, because they do not understand in the slightest the miracle of creation and birth. You do not have to like children or want to be pregnant ever in order to respect the processss of birth and childrearing. I figure you think of yourself as pretty feminist and riotesque, and defaming the greatest mystery of womenkind is far from that goal. i may come off as some hippy drippy freak, but I am as punk rock as the rest. There are a lot of punk rock mommies who happen to find motherhood just as cool as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You can shove your page up your ass.

At first it really bummed me out, like everyone must be missing the point. I'm not saying mothers are rotten or stupid—just that to me, it seems crazy, incomprehensible. And I hope I'm not coming off like I think I'm some ultra-look-at-me-with-my-fabulous-vagina-what-a-marvel-of-man-hating-and-womb-worshiping-I-am feminist. I'm certainly not riot (although I did go through an awkward phase of painting little stylized vaginas on my pottery). I, too, know some cool moms—my own mother is the best (she, by the way, shares my distaste for—other people's—small children). But that doesn't mean I have to shroud motherhood in some ethereal auora of holiness. That doesn't mean I have to buy into the idea that all pregant women are glowing instead of puffy and swollen like they've been held under the surface of a lake for a week. And making out pregnancy to be "the greatest mystery of womenkind" is absurd. It's not a mystery; it's pretty elementary. All female mammals can become pregnant. Pretending it's some kind of unique, holy situation makes women inhuman—like we're just lovely vessels for this miraculous process. Before I got around to shoving my page up my ass, I was reminded that a lot of women are with me on this one....