Saturday, June 12, 2021

In Her Words: ‘Designing motherhood’

Objects pertaining to women, mothers and pregnant people
Natalia Mantini for The New York Times

"Museums neglecting designed objects that address the needs of women's bodies is not an accident."

— Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Consider the menstrual cup.

A repository for bodily fluid, it was first patented in 1867, a half-century before the commercial tampon arrived, and even a decade before the pad. A rubber model appeared in the 1930s, but its prevalence was curtailed by World War II, when rubber was in short supply. Enter the disposable tampon, which has dominated since.

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Now a team of design curators, health care practitioners and advocates want you to reconsider the menstrual cup, remove it from the still pink-hued feminine hygiene aisle, and look at it as an object, not of private utility, but of beauty. It sure beats a wad of cotton.

Designs vary, but in its most common iteration, it is bell-shaped and elegant, flexible, durable and washable. Its history is tied to fashion: the first commercial cup was devised by Leona W. Chalmers, a onetime Broadway star who created it because she wanted to wear her costumes of white silk without fear. Chalmers was ceaseless in championing her version for "modern women," and, it seemed, she was far ahead of her time: the cup has recently proliferated, with sales gaining momentum. Tampax introduced its own version in 2018.

"What makes it so beautiful also, it's affordable, it's environmentally conscious — it's just one object that one needs, rather than a lifetime of buying pads and tampons to discard," said Amber Winick, a design historian. Winick and Michelle Millar Fisher, a curator of contemporary decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, believe that the menstrual cup is museum-worthy, along with the breast pump, the speculum and the IUD — devices that normally are not valued for their aesthetics and are often culturally invisible.

Their provocative new book and exhibition series, "Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births," makes the case that there is a whole world of objects pertaining to women, mothers and pregnant people that have been overlooked from the perspective of form and function, and unstudied in terms of how their designs came to be.

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"Why," the organizers write, have these artifacts "remained so hidden, even as they define the everyday existence of so many?"

It is, in part, a problem of perspective and access, Millar Fisher added in an interview. "These objects are often used by people who have not had the power to write history, make decisions or frame material culture," she said. "They have just not been part of the conversation, out loud, until recently."

"Designing Motherhood" begins with a small exhibition, which opened in Philadelphia in May at the Mütter Museum, a medical museum known for its collection of anatomical oddities. A larger exhibition is to open in September at the Center for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia. The pandemic meant the two exhibitions no longer ran concurrently, as originally planned, but the idea was always to blend audiences from science, medicine and design, organizers said. The duo worked with Juliana Rowen Barton, a curator and historian focused on the intersection of gender, race and design, and Zoë Greggs, an artist and curatorial assistant, and partnered with Maternity Care Coalition, a community nonprofit in Philadelphia that primarily helps low-income families, as they developed their project.

Its cornerstone is a book, due in September from M.I.T. Press. In sections devoted to reproduction, pregnancy, birth and postpartum life, it winds through social and medical history, highlighting innovations, like a sleek new concept for the speculum, and inventions of necessity, like the Del-Em, a 1971 "menstruation extraction" device, still adapted for abortions today. Both are on view at the Mütter Museum.

Natalia Mantini for The New York Times

The female form is almost certainly one of the most visualized parts of art, and among the most represented in collections. Yet "museums neglecting designed objects that address the needs of women's bodies is not an accident," Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, said in an email. "Rather, it's symptomatic of an historically male dominated curatorial and industrial design field; of a culture that prioritizes fantasy over biology; that privatizes birth; that commodifies women's bodies. Design museums are in a unique position to illuminate social and historical inequities and advancements through product innovation, but still hesitate."

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, a historian and the author of "More Work for Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From the Open Hearth to the Microwave," said that, while museums have come a long way from narrowly defining "women's interests," it is still rare to have items related to women's bodies put on a pedestal. "There's very little about sex and very little about reproduction — nobody wants to get involved in interpreting that stuff for the public, it's just too hairy, and so they don't do it," she said. "'Designing Motherhood,'" she said, "is a pathbreaking effort."

Keep reading the story here.

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In Her Words is edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Judith Levitt.

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On Politics: Data for Progress comes of age in Biden’s Washington

The liberal think tank is comfortable with mainstream influence. Some activists say it has sold out.
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By Lisa Lerer

National Political Correspondent

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. I'm Lisa Lerer, your host.

Jamaal Bowman, who defeated an incumbent congressman during New York's Democratic primary last year, saw an influx of donations to his campaign after a survey form Data for Progress showed him leading in the race.Lucas Jackson/Reuters

President Biden mentions it in private calls. The White House reads its work. And Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, teams up with its leaders for news conferences, blog posts and legislation.

The embrace of Data for Progress by the highest ranks of the Democratic Party is a coming-of-age moment for a left-leaning polling firm and think tank that is barely three years old.

This week, legislation that was championed by the group and that would pour nearly a quarter-trillion dollars into scientific research and development passed the Senate. Earlier this year, Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy, led a successful campaign to nominate and confirm Deb Haaland as the first Native American cabinet secretary.

Part of the group's early success reflects a Democratic Party that shifted to the left during the Trump era. But it also signifies the maturing of a new generation of liberal activists, who are grappling with how to wield political power when they're no longer the opposition.

For Data for Progress, the strategy is Politics 101: Politicians like policies that are popular.

"The secret sauce here is that we've developed a currency that they're interested in," says Sean McElwee, the executive director of the group. "We get access to a lot of offices because everyone wants to learn about the numbers."

The big "secret"? Polling data that's targeted, cheap and fairly accurate.

Aides to Democratic congressional leaders say Data for Progress can quickly poll on policies — like expanding the Child Care Tax Credit or unemployment benefits, or spending $400 billion on senior care — that would be considered too specific for a full survey by some other polling firms. And by finding ways to do operations that pollsters traditionally outsource, the organization can charge tens of thousands of dollars less than more established firms, according to McElwee.

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Data for Progress then uses those quick-turnaround surveys to push its version of a progressive agenda, boosting liberal candidates in primaries and persuading Democrats to rally around popular liberal policies once in office.

It doesn't hurt that McElwee has a talent for self-promotion.

"Does anyone put out polls to push media narratives more effectively than @SeanMcElwee," quipped my colleague Shane Goldmacher last summer, after a Data for Progress survey that showed Jamaal Bowman, a client of the group, leading his primary race prompted an influx of liberal donations and energy into his campaign to defeat a longtime congressman in New York.

For his part, McElwee, 28, once described himself as "Radiohead for donors — you can't really explain why I'm good but everyone knows that I'm good at it." (Data for Progress is funded by a mix of private donations, paid polling work and support from foundations that back its policy research on issues like climate change.)

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Of course, for many political activists, strategists and officials, leveraging approval ratings to push an agenda is a pretty basic political strategy. But in a world of young progressive activists who often argue that a central goal is to bring left-wing ideas from the fringes into the mainstream, the Data for Progress approach can be controversial, criticized in some quarters as shrinking expectations and selling out a bolder vision of racial justice and economic equality to appeal to wealthier and more moderate voters.

"Imagine Sean McElwee giving a keynote address at the Walmart Center for Racial Equity — forever," wrote Matt Karp, a history professor at Princeton and a contributor to the liberal magazine Jacobin, warning of a left that gives away too much of its agenda to a "corporate Democratic Party."

McElwee and his organization, which now employs nearly two dozen data scientists, policy experts and communication aides, say spending their political capital now that Democrats control Washington is kind of the point.

"The point of being a progressive and being involved in politics is to make progress happen," said NoiseCat, an activist and author who was Data for Progress's first employee. "At a certain point progress should mean we got x and y thing done that made people's lives better. I think it's kind of ironic that a lot of progressives forget that the main point is we're supposed to do the progress thing."

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Over the past three years, McElwee made his own shift from self-described "Overton Window mover" to a more pragmatic approach, coming to embrace Biden — "I don't like him very much," he said in 2019 before meeting with his campaign less than a year later — and moving away from calls to #AbolishICE, a slogan he helped popularize that became a rallying call for the left in 2018. (Only about a quarter of voters backed the idea of eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to polling at the time.)

Now, his group advocates what McElwee has called a "normie progressive theory of change," backing liberal candidates who can build broad coalitions around popular policies. Think lawmakers like Representative Lauren Underwood, who flipped her suburban Illinois district, rather than more firebrand progressive leaders like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

On policy, they've come to embrace what they believe are the most popular parts of a liberal agenda as a way of persuading voters who might be skeptical of bolder rhetoric. Emphasizing a clean electric standard, instead of a carbon tax, for example. Or focusing on passing Biden's agenda through reconciliation rather than fighting over abolishing the filibuster, a proposal that currently lacks sufficient support among Senate Democrats.

Data for Progress is also trying to move more into electoral politics, hoping to expand its list of campaign clients beyond Senator Elizabeth Warren's re-election race and the Senate campaign of John Fetterman, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor and one of the state's most prominent Democrats.

"We're relatively young, but my belief about progressive politics is that first and foremost we have a moral obligation to win," McElwee said. "The demands in a lot of corners for policymakers to hold positions that are highly unpopular is wrong."

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We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We'll try to answer it. Have a comment? We're all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com or message me on Twitter at @llerer.

By the numbers: 17

… That's the percentage of people in 16 countries who think democracy in the U.S. is a good example for other nations to follow, according to a new survey conducted by Pew Research Center.

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Fridgegate and calls to release E-ZPass records: Whatta town!

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posted by Goatz @ 4:00 AM   0 comments