Walking back into the house with a new red satin teddy for tomorrow’s two-hour booking, I glanced down at the Sydney Morning Herald and spotted the two headlines: “Cancer deaths much higher for Aborigines” (no shit, we needed another study to tell us that colonialism is bad for Indigenous people’s health?) and directly below it, this headline: “Girl, 12, turns her life around after removal from mother”
Huh. Since when is forced removal a good thing for kids? I wondered.
Answer: when the mom is a hooker and the kid–no, the daughter– is fat.
Turns out this article is about a sex worker who’s had her “obese” “unhygenic” daughter removed from her. Nothing triggered this article. It was written just to demonstrate how “prostitutes” make fucked up, unfit mothers who let their kids get fat and obviously don’t know how to raise proper little middle class white girls who eat “healthy” and play sports.
There is mention that the woman exposed her daughter to “inappropriate sexual issues”. What the fuck does that mean? That the daughter knew she worked? That mom didn’t enforce middle-class white norms around sexuality?
There is reference to the mom possibly having mental health issues. Y’know what? I’m the daughter of a single mom and a fuck of alot of them have mental health issues because it’s BRUTALLY HARD TO BE A SINGLE MOM. Instead of punishing mothers for failing to be perfectly happy robo-women, how about providing support and self-determination so they don’t drown? And by support, I’m talking decent wages, culturally appropriate childcare, educational opportunities and respect. And as for sex working moms? DECRIMINALIZE AND DESTIGMATIZE.
But mostly the author delights in sharing how the girl had “turned her life around” with, among other things, a “less sedentary lifestyle” and substantial weight loss. Wow. I feel confident that this removal would not have happened if the child had been a boy because a girl child is much more likely to be seen as emotionally unwell due to fatness. This is specifically the policing and punishment of working class femininity–both the mom’s and the daughter’s.
This removal, this violation of a mother’s right to raise her own child, is the perfect example of how fatphobia can be used to legitimize state violence against poor and working class women sex workers– in some incredibly vicious ways, up to and including stealing their own children.
I find myself in a somewhat similar plight. While I do not have children, I do have dogs. My neighbour has found out I am a prostitute and has taken it upon herself to “run me outta the neighbourhood” and has made numerous complaints to animal control about my dogs barking. These complaints have been completely false and are a pattern of her harassment and attempt to drive me out of the area. I have spoken to other neighbours as well as the tenant in the basement of my home if they heard my dogs bark. They said they have not and that the woman is making it up to harass me. I called the cops and lets just say they have not been so responsive to me.
Anyhow is it just me or is being a whore a subset of being a bad mother? Why is this woman’s profession of any importance when it comes to her ability to parent? I mean we would never see an article about a city worker whose child is obese getting taken away. It does not make good news. But a whore? Oh yeah because we all know us whores are immoral/stupid/criminal people (being sarcastic). And being a whore certainly has something to do with being a bad parent *rolls eyes*.
There could be a number of reasons why this girl is overweight, none of which have anything to do with her mother being a whore.
common prostitute, you raise some really good points there, as does the writer of this blog. Social stigma and prejudice are all too often sneaky little ways of controlling and maintaining poorer people in our society, those with less opportunity, education, money, access to health etc and as you so rightly said, would we see this happen if it were a city banker with a fat child? No! Whores are always in the direct line of fire but we are the same and face the same challenges in work as any other person…good days bad days, great freedom, some pain in the ass moments. However, most of the violence and the problems we face are down to bad laws or social stigma. LET’S CHANGE THAT!!!