What’s Up With Hollywood Part 2
January 7, 2009 | By: Liz
So my rant about Hollywood actresses now out of my system, I have decided to undertake a new project. I am going to start surveying (and my DH has agreed to assist me and provide his input) as many movies, books and other media stories about infertility and adoption. I want honesty in this industry, so I want to see how honest and/or accurate Hollywood, the press, and authors are about infertility and adoption. I love Adoptive Families’ Magazine’s Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down column. I loved reading about gestational surrogacy on the front page of The New York Times Magazine. But I want to see more about how people are addressing it.
I recently came across a book entitled “Motherhood after Age 35” at an adoption conference I spoke at. I was curious. It seems so common these days for women to have children after the age of 35, why write a book about it? What’s different about being a mother after Age 35? I’m going to find out.
I went online on the internet movie database and compiled a preliminary list of movies about infertility and adoption. The movie Juno was awesome, how many others are as accurate or sensitive? I noticed that one of my favorite new books Knit Two by Kate Jacobs has a sub-plot dealing with infertility. The Discovery Channel has a show on adoption: Adoption Stories (hey why are there no infertility stories? There are a dozen shows on having babies but why aren’t their any on infertility?)
And so I begin. Tonight my DH and I are watching a movie entitled A Smile Like Yours starring Greg Kinnear and Lauren Holly. I have also purchased Miss. Conception starring Heather Graham. These are just a few of what I suspect will be a very long list of movies and books. I am hoping I will be pleasantly surprised. I also am hoping that I will get to spend some quality time with DH and get some good reading in.
I will post my reviews under a new category (Infertility In The Movies etc. under the Check This Out Blog category) and I welcome feedback and suggestions for other titles to watch/read. Maybe I’ll add a suggested reading/viewing list to The Two Week Wait Care Package
We shall see . . . .
Filed under: I'm Just Another Angry Infertile Woman
Tags: adoption, books, hollywood, infertility, movies
Evelina Sterling says:
Liz–
What a wonderful idea! I’m very interested in exploring the media representations of infertility too. In fact, I’m working on a paper now looking at the representations of infertility in popular print media from 1960 (a whole decade before IVF) until the mid-2000s.
We have come a long way in the cultural understanding of infertility during this time period. For example, just in our lifetime alone we went from thinking 30 was too old to have a baby (there is even a documentary called “Joan at 30” which follows an “old” woman age 30 who is pregnant) to now when people don’t blink an eye when they read that a 50 year old woman gave birth to a baby or two (they even say to me…you don’t know FOR SURE that she didn’t use her own eggs!).
Anyway, if you want to get your project off the ground, give me a call, I would love to help. Perhaps we can even get something published on this topic for the world to read! I think all of these inaccuracies do a big disservice to those going through infertility as well as our field in general. Just let me know and good luck!
All the best,
Evelina W. Sterling, PhD, MPH, CHES
http://www.myfertilityplan.com
On January 7, 2009 at 7:06 pm