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ofalderaan:
This has been a long time coming, but for months I’ve been unsure how to say what I want to say, without offending anyone. But I need to say it, because quite frankly, this is a huge factor in why I have had so little muse for Breha, and why I haven’t been on here. But here it is:
I hate the way that Breha’s miscarriages, infertility, and depression were erased and replaced by a physical trauma in Leia, Princess of Alderaan. And more than that, I hate the way that much of the fandom response has been praising LPOA for “making Breha a badass now” whereas she was “weak and sickly” before. That is a hugely, hugely damaging standard to put onto women — that the inability to carry a child makes them weak and sickly, that suffering from depression makes you weak and sickly, but that if you survive a physically traumatic accident then that makes you a badass.
For a long time, I’ve been trying to combine and accept both Legends and Disney canons on this blog, and in my portrayal of Breha. But with LPOA, and this huge change in Breha’s back story, I’ve found myself completely at an impasse. It upsets me greatly that in a moment where Disney, and Claudia Gray, could have embraced the very real, very valid discussion of reproductive trauma and mental illness, they went out of their way to make it explicitly clear that it was only an extreme physical trauma that led to the Organas not having their own children and adopting Leia instead.
Part of what has made me so uncomfortable with all of this is that I do also like the thought of Breha as the sort of woman who would not hide prosthetic organs. And had this plotline been worked in conjunction with her fertility struggles, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. (Quite frankly, when I first heard about this accident of Breha’s as detailed in LPOA, I remember assuming that it had been some accident during the later part of the Clone Wars, or early in the Imperial era, and thinking that it was interesting that they were choosing to add yet another near death experience for Breha. And then I was extremely disappointed with the way it had been done instead.) But the fact is that nothing that is done in Disney canon exists in a vacuum. There are very clear storylines that were already in existence, and the choice to either accept or erase those storylines are active decisions that are being made by those in charge of what becomes Disney canon. Breha’s miscarriages and depression are cited in numerous Legends canon books – even books that were written to supplement the Clone Wars tv show. Which makes it very clear that there was an active decision to erase that from her backstory with the publication of LPOA. That is what I do now like, and that is why I do not accept the change in her story as canon.
It’s 2018. (Alright, 2017 then LPOA was published.) It is way past time for reproductive trauma to be acknowledged as something that is very real, and deeply traumatic for those who experience it. At this point, anything that continues to erase, or even ignore, reproductive trauma only contributes to the stigmatization of it, the way that women are supposed to act like pregnancy is easy and happy, and the way that public perception looks down on women who aren’t able to easily have children. Fertility struggles are not obsolete even with modern medicine. Reproductive trauma still exists, and still effects countless women in all parts of the world.
Here are just a couple examples of wealthy, high profile women, who undoubtedly have excellent health care, and still struggled through pregnancy, or childbirth. I include these examples because it’s these real world examples that make it even less okay to me that Breha’s reproductive trauma was erased the way it was.
Not long after LPOA was published, the Duchess of Cambridge announced her third pregnancy and also the fact that she was, for a third time, hospitalized due to hyperemesis gravidarum. And for a third time, the announcement was met by countless people berating the Duchess for needing medical attention during her pregnancy. Just a few of the comments that I saw online, that I screenshotted at the time (link):
“Oh please. Millions do it every day.”
“Don’t over dramatize it.”
“It’s having a baby. It’s a lovely time in your life feeling a child grow inside you. Even with morning sickness and all the downsides. Don’t turn it into something gruesome.”
“It’s not torture. It’s having a baby.”
“I really do not get how people can turn a pregnancy into something only a hero can do…women have babies every single day.”
“Women are built to have babies. Stop fussing over this.”
Pregnancy is not always easy. Women are not always “built to have babies.” When that sort of reaction is the norm (and had happened twice before, for both of the Duchess’s previous pregnancies), it is irresponsible storytelling to intentionally change the background of a woman who repeatedly struggled to have children.
More recently, Hilarie Burton gave birth to her second child and in her announcement on instagram, expressed the difficulty that she’d had with her own pregnancies. “We celebrated. We picked out names. And we lost that baby. More losses followed, and as so many couples know, it was heartbreaking. It still is heartbreaking. And every morning of the five years it took us, I’d open my computer at the kitchen table and see the news and I’d grow bitter over the endless parade of celebrities showing off their bumps and babies. I’d weep out of jealousy for how easy it was for them. Didn’t they know something could go wrong? Didn’t they know that there were other women out there struggling? It pained me to see the corporate sponsored baby showers and magazine covers capitalizing on this human miracle that wasn’t happening for us. So when this pregnancy started, we were cautious. I didn’t want to celebrate for fear of jinxing it. I didn’t want a baby shower. I checked her heartbeat every day, up until the day she was born.” (link)
Even with modern medicine, reproductive trauma and fertility struggles effect people every day. It’s real. It’s not just something of the past. It’s stigmatized, and treated like it’s something overly dramatic and that women are just supposed to be able to have babies. Easily, and whenever they want.
In fact, a lot of the time, women aren’t taken seriously when they say that they think there’s a problem. Women that I know have been turned away from the emergency room over severe cramping, when there was actually something serious wrong — just recently, a woman I know was twice sent away from the emergency room, being told to “take a Tylenol,” before, on her third day in a row going to the hospital, she was rushed into an operating room because of a burst ovarian cyst. A close friend of mine lost an ovary under nearly identical circumstances. The only reason she wasn’t sent home a second time four years later was that she had a gynecologist affiliated with the hospital ER she was at who knew her history. If she went to a different hospital, she might have had a different outcome. Women who have experienced both childbirth and ovarian torsion (the condition my friend was suffering from) have reported the pain from the torsion was equivalent or worse; nevertheless, my friend was told that she was being too loud in her attempts to deal with this pain and manage her panic at the possibility of being sent home a second time, being told “Ma’am, you need to be quiet, there are sick people here.” Serena Williams almost died after delivering her child by c-section because nurses initially brushed off her concerns about her own body and health. (There are numerous articles on this so I haven’t cited a specific one.)
The point is? Reproductive trauma is real. It is traumatic, both physically and emotionally. Women who struggle through it are badasses for their struggles.
For Disney and Claudia Gray to erase and replace Breha’s reproductive trauma the way they do is to tell women that “but-for an enormously physically traumatic incident, caused by something outside of your own body, you should be able to have biological children, no problem, and have no reason to adopt.”
And it’s almost that explicitly said in LPOA:
“And it was due to the accident that her parents had elected to adopt a child rather than strain Breha’s body further. Without that one terrible incident, Leia’s life might have been very different.”
There was an opportunity to include Breha’s reproductive trauma as part of this narrative, and it was deliberately excluded. Again: nothing that is done in Disney canon is created in a vacuum. The Legends storylines, characters, and canon, came first. It’s out there, it exists. There had already been a reason for the Organas to have chosen to adopt, and that reason was knowingly erased. There was an opportunity to have Breha’s miscarriages mentioned, and to have her be a supporter of mental health. There was an opportunity for Breha to speak with her daughter about her depression, and how she was able to be a Queen, even in a time of intergalactic war, with depression. There was an opportunity for Breha to express that she and Bail had wanted a child so very much that they had done everything they could to have one, and how it had brought Leia to them and so Breha regrets none of it. There was an opportunity do a small part of at least acknowledging that reproductive trauma is real, and valid, and that people who experience reproductive trauma are valid, and their struggles are valid. But that’s not what happened. All of that was erased, and replaced with a fall down a mountain. And that is, in my opinion, extremely irresponsible storytelling.
My Breha is the Breha who wanted desperately to be a mother. My Breha is the Breha who suffered multiple miscarriages, and sought out the best fertility experts in the galaxy and still could not successfully have biological children. My Breha is the Breha who struggled with depression even while she ruled her planet. My Breha is the Breha who was told that she could not try again to get pregnant during a time of intergalactic war, and who still held her head high in public and brought refugees from war-torn planets onto her planet and welcomed them with open arms. My Breha is the Breha who struggled through feelings of worthlessness because she could not be a mother, but who refused to let her body keep her childless, and went on to openly discuss adoption with her husband. My Breha is the Breha who supported her friend Padmé through Padmé’s pregnancy, even though Padmé was able to have the one thing in the galaxy that Breha wanted most and was unable to. My Breha is the Breha who actively sought help for both her fertility and her depression. My Breha is the Breha who undoubtedly raised Leia with the knowledge that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, and had open discussions with Leia about her depression. My Breha is a strong, badass woman just the way she is.
(Your picture was not posted)
ofalderaan:
This has been a long time coming, but for months I’ve been unsure how to say what I want to say, without offending anyone. But I need to say it, because quite frankly, this is a huge factor in why I have had so little muse for Breha, and why I haven’t been on here. But here it is:
I hate the way that Breha’s miscarriages, infertility, and depression were erased and replaced by a physical trauma in Leia, Princess of Alderaan. And more than that, I hate the way that much of the fandom response has been praising LPOA for “making Breha a badass now” whereas she was “weak and sickly” before. That is a hugely, hugely damaging standard to put onto women — that the inability to carry a child makes them weak and sickly, that suffering from depression makes you weak and sickly, but that if you survive a physically traumatic accident then that makes you a badass.
For a long time, I’ve been trying to combine and accept both Legends and Disney canons on this blog, and in my portrayal of Breha. But with LPOA, and this huge change in Breha’s back story, I’ve found myself completely at an impasse. It upsets me greatly that in a moment where Disney, and Claudia Gray, could have embraced the very real, very valid discussion of reproductive trauma and mental illness, they went out of their way to make it explicitly clear that it was only an extreme physical trauma that led to the Organas not having their own children and adopting Leia instead.
Part of what has made me so uncomfortable with all of this is that I do also like the thought of Breha as the sort of woman who would not hide prosthetic organs. And had this plotline been worked in conjunction with her fertility struggles, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. (Quite frankly, when I first heard about this accident of Breha’s as detailed in LPOA, I remember assuming that it had been some accident during the later part of the Clone Wars, or early in the Imperial era, and thinking that it was interesting that they were choosing to add yet another near death experience for Breha. And then I was extremely disappointed with the way it had been done instead.) But the fact is that nothing that is done in Disney canon exists in a vacuum. There are very clear storylines that were already in existence, and the choice to either accept or erase those storylines are active decisions that are being made by those in charge of what becomes Disney canon. Breha’s miscarriages and depression are cited in numerous Legends canon books – even books that were written to supplement the Clone Wars tv show. Which makes it very clear that there was an active decision to erase that from her backstory with the publication of LPOA. That is what I do now like, and that is why I do not accept the change in her story as canon.
It’s 2018. (Alright, 2017 then LPOA was published.) It is way past time for reproductive trauma to be acknowledged as something that is very real, and deeply traumatic for those who experience it. At this point, anything that continues to erase, or even ignore, reproductive trauma only contributes to the stigmatization of it, the way that women are supposed to act like pregnancy is easy and happy, and the way that public perception looks down on women who aren’t able to easily have children. Fertility struggles are not obsolete even with modern medicine. Reproductive trauma still exists, and still effects countless women in all parts of the world.
Here are just a couple examples of wealthy, high profile women, who undoubtedly have excellent health care, and still struggled through pregnancy, or childbirth. I include these examples because it’s these real world examples that make it even less okay to me that Breha’s reproductive trauma was erased the way it was.
Not long after LPOA was published, the Duchess of Cambridge announced her third pregnancy and also the fact that she was, for a third time, hospitalized due to hyperemesis gravidarum. And for a third time, the announcement was met by countless people berating the Duchess for needing medical attention during her pregnancy. Just a few of the comments that I saw online, that I screenshotted at the time (link):
“Oh please. Millions do it every day.”
“Don’t over dramatize it.”
“It’s having a baby. It’s a lovely time in your life feeling a child grow inside you. Even with morning sickness and all the downsides. Don’t turn it into something gruesome.”
“It’s not torture. It’s having a baby.”
“I really do not get how people can turn a pregnancy into something only a hero can do…women have babies every single day.”
“Women are built to have babies. Stop fussing over this.”
Pregnancy is not always easy. Women are not always “built to have babies.” When that sort of reaction is the norm (and had happened twice before, for both of the Duchess’s previous pregnancies), it is irresponsible storytelling to intentionally change the background of a woman who repeatedly struggled to have children.
More recently, Hilarie Burton gave birth to her second child and in her announcement on instagram, expressed the difficulty that she’d had with her own pregnancies. “We celebrated. We picked out names. And we lost that baby. More losses followed, and as so many couples know, it was heartbreaking. It still is heartbreaking. And every morning of the five years it took us, I’d open my computer at the kitchen table and see the news and I’d grow bitter over the endless parade of celebrities showing off their bumps and babies. I’d weep out of jealousy for how easy it was for them. Didn’t they know something could go wrong? Didn’t they know that there were other women out there struggling? It pained me to see the corporate sponsored baby showers and magazine covers capitalizing on this human miracle that wasn’t happening for us. So when this pregnancy started, we were cautious. I didn’t want to celebrate for fear of jinxing it. I didn’t want a baby shower. I checked her heartbeat every day, up until the day she was born.” (link)
Even with modern medicine, reproductive trauma and fertility struggles effect people every day. It’s real. It’s not just something of the past. It’s stigmatized, and treated like it’s something overly dramatic and that women are just supposed to be able to have babies. Easily, and whenever they want.
In fact, a lot of the time, women aren’t taken seriously when they say that they think there’s a problem. Women that I know have been turned away from the emergency room over severe cramping, when there was actually something serious wrong — just recently, a woman I know was twice sent away from the emergency room, being told to “take a Tylenol,” before, on her third day in a row going to the hospital, she was rushed into an operating room because of a burst ovarian cyst. A close friend of mine lost an ovary under nearly identical circumstances. The only reason she wasn’t sent home a second time four years later was that she had a gynecologist affiliated with the hospital ER she was at who knew her history. If she went to a different hospital, she might have had a different outcome. Women who have experienced both childbirth and ovarian torsion (the condition my friend was suffering from) have reported the pain from the torsion was equivalent or worse; nevertheless, my friend was told that she was being too loud in her attempts to deal with this pain and manage her panic at the possibility of being sent home a second time, being told “Ma’am, you need to be quiet, there are sick people here.” Serena Williams almost died after delivering her child by c-section because nurses initially brushed off her concerns about her own body and health. (There are numerous articles on this so I haven’t cited a specific one.)
The point is? Reproductive trauma is real. It is traumatic, both physically and emotionally. Women who struggle through it are badasses for their struggles.
For Disney and Claudia Gray to erase and replace Breha’s reproductive trauma the way they do is to tell women that “but-for an enormously physically traumatic incident, caused by something outside of your own body, you should be able to have biological children, no problem, and have no reason to adopt.”
And it’s almost that explicitly said in LPOA:
“And it was due to the accident that her parents had elected to adopt a child rather than strain Breha’s body further. Without that one terrible incident, Leia’s life might have been very different.”
There was an opportunity to include Breha’s reproductive trauma as part of this narrative, and it was deliberately excluded. Again: nothing that is done in Disney canon is created in a vacuum. The Legends storylines, characters, and canon, came first. It’s out there, it exists. There had already been a reason for the Organas to have chosen to adopt, and that reason was knowingly erased. There was an opportunity to have Breha’s miscarriages mentioned, and to have her be a supporter of mental health. There was an opportunity for Breha to speak with her daughter about her depression, and how she was able to be a Queen, even in a time of intergalactic war, with depression. There was an opportunity for Breha to express that she and Bail had wanted a child so very much that they had done everything they could to have one, and how it had brought Leia to them and so Breha regrets none of it. There was an opportunity do a small part of at least acknowledging that reproductive trauma is real, and valid, and that people who experience reproductive trauma are valid, and their struggles are valid. But that’s not what happened. All of that was erased, and replaced with a fall down a mountain. And that is, in my opinion, extremely irresponsible storytelling.
My Breha is the Breha who wanted desperately to be a mother. My Breha is the Breha who suffered multiple miscarriages, and sought out the best fertility experts in the galaxy and still could not successfully have biological children. My Breha is the Breha who struggled with depression even while she ruled her planet. My Breha is the Breha who was told that she could not try again to get pregnant during a time of intergalactic war, and who still held her head high in public and brought refugees from war-torn planets onto her planet and welcomed them with open arms. My Breha is the Breha who struggled through feelings of worthlessness because she could not be a mother, but who refused to let her body keep her childless, and went on to openly discuss adoption with her husband. My Breha is the Breha who supported her friend Padmé through Padmé’s pregnancy, even though Padmé was able to have the one thing in the galaxy that Breha wanted most and was unable to. My Breha is the Breha who actively sought help for both her fertility and her depression. My Breha is the Breha who undoubtedly raised Leia with the knowledge that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, and had open discussions with Leia about her depression. My Breha is a strong, badass woman just the way she is.
(Your picture was not posted)
