Dame Gwyneth Paltrow Thinks My Life Is Meaningless

Not only am I fat, which obviously makes me human garbage, but I am also not a mother and have no plans to be one, which, no doy, renders my life a hollow shell with no "real meaning."

Paltrow is so "happy" that her good friend Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé are expecting and admits that becoming a parent really puts everything in perspective.

"I think motherhood is the biggest blessing of all time and it give your life real meaning," she points out. "It's always interesting when you're a woman with success and you've achieved a lot, and then you have a baby and you realize everything you thought was an achievement really is nothing until you have a kid, and I think that will be [Beyoncé's] experience."

Someone needs to introduce Gwyneth Paltrow to the concept of "I language." It's fine and dandy if she finds motherhood to be her "biggest blessing of all time," the thing that gave her life "real meaning" and rendered all of her previous achievements relatively insignificant, but it is gross and offensive to universalize that experience and thus suggest that any woman's accomplishments pale in comparison to motherhood, that every woman's life is devoid of "real meaning" unless and until she becomes a mother.

And, you know, it's not just gross and offensive to women who cannot have children, and to women who choose not to have children, but it's also gross and offensive to the millions of women around the world who are not fortunate enough to have a choice about motherhood at all, the women for whom motherhood is not a carefully planned option in a lifetime of available options, but an inescapable fate, by virtue of forced marriage, rape, lack of access to free or affordable birth control, lack of access to safe and/or legal abortion.

Motherhood is not always a blessing. And, for many women, choosing to not be a mother is one of the most radical, self-defining, meaningful acts they will make in a life full of meaningful acts.

It is evidence of privilege to not know these things.

Speak for yourself, Gwyneth Paltrow. Please.

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