The Entertainment of Traumatized Women

In November of 2015 I was struggling mentally. We had just moved back to Cincinnat from San Antonio, where my husband had gone from cushy Air Force hours where he was home every day at 4:30, to owning his own dental practice and suddenly it seemed like he was working around the clock. Additionally I had just had my 3 baby and I was a boiling pot of resentment for many reasons–fair and unfair alike.

My dear friend Erin invited me to come and stay with her in NYC for a weekend. Erin is a yoga instructor, and at the time she was working with another friend of hers in healing work. Come, she said. So I went. It’s hard to describe the what took place that weekend as I was led through exercises that would crack my exterior wide open like a walnut, revealing a tender and still ailing heart beating furiously inside waiting for fresh air. Like I said, it’s hard to describe.

But what I can describe, and what I do remember was the tender and nurturing care. That weekend was emotionally exhausting and at times I would nap in Erin and her husband’s bed (as we do in Manhattan–bedrooms are not sacred spaces) only to wake and see a warm bowl of soup on the nightstand next to me, or a piece of carefully prepared avocado toast. To have someone literally watching over you, anticipating your needs and then meeting those needs is something we rarely experience outside the realms of childhood and physical illness. It still moves me to tears when I think about the nurturing I received at the hands of a dear friend. The kind of nurturing I’m not sure I had ever received in my life  just because. The kind of nurturing everybody and every body deserves.

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A couple weeks ago I watched the documentary “Framing Britney” about the rise and fall and current limbo, of Britney Spears and the tabloid culture that celebrated and participated in that fall. Spears wasn’t personally involved in the documentary, so her point of view is speculation, but it was hard not to be moved to compassion on her part. To see the way she was stalked day and night by cameras just waiting to capture an inevitable misstep. If anyone were to be filmed all day, every day of their life, of course you’d have fodder. Embarrassing moments, thoughtless words, bad hair days… and to be subject to this day after day after day. It would drive a lot of people, maybe most people, mad.

This is currently what we’re doing to ourselves, is it not? We post everything from a delicious meal to our political views and then we pounce. We’ve become our own paparazzi. Except of course that we choose what we share, and even when we choose it we often get it wrong in the eyes of the masses. So imagine having no choice in what is shared about you? No boundary off limits, no moment too private for public consumption.

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Brene Brown’s recent podcast episode entitled Words, Actions, Dehumanization, and Accountability has really struck a chord with me. She shared it in response to the capitol riots and I pretty much haven’t stopped thinking about it since. From a blog post written by Brene on the same subject she says:

“Dehumanization has fueled innumerable acts of violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocides. It makes slavery, torture, and human trafficking possible. Dehumanizing others is the process by which we become accepting of violations against human nature, the human spirit, and, for many of us, violations against the central tenets of our faith.How does this happen? Maiese explains that most of us believe that people’s basic human rights should not be violated—that crimes like murder, rape, and torture are wrong. Successful dehumanizing, however, creates moral exclusion. Groups targeted based on their identity—gender, ideology, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age—are depicted as “less than” or criminal or even evil. The targeted group eventually falls out of the scope of who is naturally protected by our moral code. This is moral exclusion, and dehumanization is at its core.

Dehumanizing always starts with language, often followed by images.”

Sounds like tabloid culture to me.

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Remember that short story we all read in high school called The Lottery by Shirley Jackson? It’s the story of a small town where once a year all the names of the town are put into a black box and then one name is chosen out of the box? And the person whose name is chosen is stoned to death by everyone else in the town?

It seemed far fetched in high school, but now I see how accurate it is. Everyone is willing to pick up a stone and throw it, filled with relief that they’re not the one being pelted with the stones. It’s tradition after all, which is just another way of saying something we’ve normalized for better or for worse.

I mean yes of course it sucks, it’s awful but gosh… just as long as it’s not you.

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Two nights ago I watched Paris Hilton’s documentary This is Paris (available for free on YouTube) and I must say I was even more blown away by this one. Paris Hilton, the vapid party girl with the cartoonish voice and frivolous lifestyle is not someone I ever thought I’d have a whole new level of respect for, but I do.

Paris participates fully in the documentary, and while you see a lot about her childhood and the trajectory of her life in general, you also come to learn about the deep trauma she experienced in her teens at the Provo Canyon School (a troubled teen facility) of all places. She attended the “school” for 11 months when she was 16, which puts her there sometime in 1997-1999 depending on when she started. It’s weird to think Paris Hilton and I were both living in Provo at that time, but in very different circumstances. The details on her time there are harrowing, but it’s the long term effects I can’t stop thinking about. She just turned 40 (2 days ago) and still has nightmares on a near-daily basis.

And as she describes coming out of the facility and reclaiming her life, she jumped right into the spotlight. And with the gift of more information and hindsight I think, “Ohmygosh of course… OF COURSE we were all watching the aftermath of a traumatized girl.” And of course we participated in re-traumatizing her again and again.

I had almost forgotten about the leaked sex tape. Likely because I have never watched it. As she discusses in the documentary, she was in a bad place after the trauma of Provo and she sought love in all the wrong places. She was coerced into filming this private moment from her then boyfriend who she loved and trusted. She was 18. And when it was leaked to the world without her consent she says, “It was like being electronically raped.”

It bears repeating; she was 18.

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And even if you’re not glamorous and young, a woman’s trauma is every bit as American and enticing as apple pie. Take Lorena Bobbit for example. The woman cuts off her husband’s penis and we don’t think to ask what happened to her?

Now I must admit to taking a pause here for a second… we know that when a woman is raped we don’t ask, “What happened to that man to make him do something so awful?” Am I doing the same thing here? No. 1) There is not an epidemic of women cutting off men’s penises as there is most certainly an epidemic of rape. The very nature of this crime speaks to very unusual circumstances. 2) While we should never victim blame a woman for getting raped, we often do ask, “what happened to that man that led him to rape?” 3) Lorena didn’t just go cut off a random man’s penis, she cut off the penis of her abuser, of her actual rapist. Committing random acts of violence–even if it is a trauma response–is different than an act of violence as a trauma response to the person who is committing trauma/violence against you. I’m no Dr. but it is different. Let’s continue.

Instantly, Lorena is a punchline, as is John Wayne Bobbitt, but mostly Lorena. As a child in the 90’s I remember this story line vividly and it wasn’t until I watched, Lorena, yes another documentary that I highly recommend, a couple years ago about Lorena that I knew anything different. Even as she was acquitted by a jury–thank goodness–the media continued to paint her as a hot-headed, Latina who was basically crazy. Misogyny, racism and xenophobia… yummy. Not only has Lorena gone on to remarry (23+ years) and have a beautiful family of her own, she is very active in domestic abuse advocacy. She has continued to tell her story and help other women come out from the weight of domestic violence, while John Wayne still sends her love letters.

And I can’t think of Lorena without thinking of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. If you’re not familiar with Mary Jo, it was in 1992 when her husband’s 16 year old “mistress” Amy Fisher, came to her house and shot Mary Jo in the head. Mary Jo survived, but once again the media treated her trauma as our entertainment. I’ll never forget when she went on the Oprah show in the early aughts at how surprised I was. She was intelligent, articulate and quite lovely. What? And I’ve also never forgotten how she brought the bloody jacket she wore the day she was shot and when she pulled it out Oprah asks her why she brought it. She says, “To remind people that I was a real person and that I was left for dead.”

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The world. Watch out for the world… The world will try to tell you this and the world will convince you of that. The world is a common church phrase to sort of categorize all the people (gesturing wildly) out there. And I certainly do understand the implications of this phrase and in many ways I agree. The world can be another way of speaking about a mob mentality of sorts. As we know, a mob mentality can be dangerous in all sorts of situations, not just when you’re in an actual mob. I mean the media representation of the women above is an example of this worldly, mob mentality. The media, in this instance, became an overall insidious voice telling us how misguided, cheap and unworthy these women were. We couldn’t hear their individual stories above the din of the mob. There is certainly wisdom to be found in being wary of the world.

BUT I’ve noticed that the world is also a way to collectively dehumanize as well. Whether referring to celebrity culture or general society, when we caution people to be wary of the world, it can be easy to see the individual humans that get picked off left and right as unfortunate but predictable collaterall damage for being part of the world to begin with. It was their fault after all for being so worldly.

As I write this, I’m seeing a pattern emerge which is, the danger of translating and communicating a single individual to very large groups of people–think how we represented and dissected Britney, Paris, Lorena and Mary Jo to the world. And in turn translating very large groups of people to individuals–think of our favorite political commentators on the entirety of the opposing party. It cuts both ways. When an entire group of people is looking at, gawking, and scrolling past an individual, something gets lost. And likewise, when one person looks out upon a sea of people and sees a label like IMMIGRANTS, GAYS, MUSLIMS, CELEBRITY, again something gets lost.

The thing that gets lost? Humanity.

I’m just not sure we were ever built to relate human to human on such imbalanced scales. Qualities we can so easily demonize in the far-away “other”, can so often be tolerated and even understood in our loved ones. And likewise, nurturing and loving care is not something that can be doled out by the masses. There are times in all of our lives that we could benefit from being tucked in, with a warm bowl of soup waiting for us when we wake up, safe in the knowledge that someone was watching out for us, even in our sleep.

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One of the core messages of Brene Brown’s podcast was that shame is not a tool of social justice, but accountability is. Women are not categorically blameless of course and it’s important to hold people accountable for their actions. Not all qualities should be tolerated and understood. Of course not. But accountability is the answer, not shame. Admittedly the waters can feel a little murky when trying to parse those two out because sometimes you do feel shame when you’re held accountable.

And women are just as responsible for the public shaming of other women. Maybe more so. Maybe we recognize the vulnerable position of what it means to be a woman, and how easily it could be us. So rather than fight the power, we pick up a rock and thank our lucky stars that our name wasn’t drawn.

Has anyone else watched any of these documentaries lately and had a similar change in viewpoint for either Britney or Paris and how we as a society consumed their demise? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Also, the big question… what do we do about it all? While social media is part of the problem no doubt, the fact that regular people have a platform to share their stories, to out people in power is one of it’s biggest assets. It’s not everything and it’s not enough, but it’s something. So I’ll ask you… where do we go from here? And honestly, is it even possible for society at large to do better?