Simulacrum
Imagine giving a young child a watermelon Jolly Rancher and explaining, “Here. This is watermelon.” The next day, do it
again. “Mmm…watermelon.” The next day, she asks for watermelon. Another Jolly Rancher. Delicious. She likes
watermelon. As she gets a bit older, you show her where watermelon can be found. You even teach her to read the word
watermelon: j-o-l-l-y-r-a-n-c-h-e-r. It’s her favorite. This goes on for years. Then, one day, someone asks her if she’d like a
slice of watermelon. Would she ever! So they cut her a nice thick slab of a big, juicy watermelon. This doesn’t look like a
watermelon. Feels decidedly un-watermelon-ish between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Most of all, this tastes
nothing like watermelon. Jolly Rancher’s interpretation has become ingrained in her as “real” watermelon. For as many times
as she tastes watermelon—even if she comes to love it—it will never be the standard by which she judges the watermelonness
of a thing’s traits. To her, it will always be an imitation.
The term “simulacrum” has been applied in a variety of ways, to mean a number of things, by a handful of philosophers.
Some have used it to simply mean “a copy.” The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard took it a step further, though, and used
it to identify these representations that are used so frequently and so widely as to become accepted as the thing itself - so much
so that the original thing begins to look false. The representation replaces the original and the “real thing” begins to appear as
an imitation.
I recently attended my first homebirth, and it occurred to me that the average American birth experience is littered with
simulacra.
This thought first struck me shortly before I gave birth to my own daughter last November. I was laboring along quite nicely
when my nurse asked if she could monitor me for a few minutes. Once on the monitors, the nurse began admiring my
contractions (I was truly flattered, as one might imagine). She said to my husband, “This is a really impressive pattern of
contractions—for not having any Pitocin.” Had I not been, as it were, preoccupied with said
contractions, I may have engaged her. Even from Labor Land, I was thinking, “I smell a simulacrum.” It was as though she
had forgotten—momentarily—that the purpose of Pitocin, at least theoretically, is to imitate a natural labor pattern like my
own. But I imagine an L+D nurse probably sees more “augmented” labors than not, and so my labor probably did look “almost
like the real thing” to this nurse.
At this birth, though, there was a point at which we were all on the floor—the laboring mother leaning back into her own
mother, and her partner and I on either side of her, holding up her legs. And I had this thought—I wish I hadn’t—as my feet
fell asleep from sitting on them too long, and my back cramped and my arms began to tremble just a little; I thought, “We’re
like human stirrups.” No sooner had the thought crossed my mind but I thought, “(Gasp!), Simulacra!” And that’s just it—
who looks at stirrups in the hospital and thinks, “Huh, what crude representations of the calloused hands of the women of old,
who would gather around a laboring woman to offer strength and support during childbirth.” We see it, most of us, the other
way around.
Of course these simulacra aren’t limited to birth; they’re everywhere. Someone once told me my son was just using me as a
“human pacifier,” as if I thought to stick my nipple in the baby’s mouth one day when I noticed that it bore a striking
resemblance to that plastic and rubber contraption that makes babies so happy.
The bottom line is, I’m glad for so many reasons that I attended this particular birth, but one of them is that it reminded me
that before hospitals and surgery and forceps and anesthesia, before fetal heart monitors and foley catheters and intravenous
antibiotics, birth happened, and it worked. And it works now. And the next time I find myself holding a laboring woman’s
leg, I won’t think for a moment that I am “like a stirrup.” I’ll think that I’m like a million women who have done this before
me.
Susan Kennard
From Fall 2007 Issue IV
Imagine giving a young child a watermelon Jolly Rancher and explaining, “Here. This is watermelon.” The next day, do it
again. “Mmm…watermelon.” The next day, she asks for watermelon. Another Jolly Rancher. Delicious. She likes
watermelon. As she gets a bit older, you show her where watermelon can be found. You even teach her to read the word
watermelon: j-o-l-l-y-r-a-n-c-h-e-r. It’s her favorite. This goes on for years. Then, one day, someone asks her if she’d like a
slice of watermelon. Would she ever! So they cut her a nice thick slab of a big, juicy watermelon. This doesn’t look like a
watermelon. Feels decidedly un-watermelon-ish between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Most of all, this tastes
nothing like watermelon. Jolly Rancher’s interpretation has become ingrained in her as “real” watermelon. For as many times
as she tastes watermelon—even if she comes to love it—it will never be the standard by which she judges the watermelonness
of a thing’s traits. To her, it will always be an imitation.
The term “simulacrum” has been applied in a variety of ways, to mean a number of things, by a handful of philosophers.
Some have used it to simply mean “a copy.” The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard took it a step further, though, and used
it to identify these representations that are used so frequently and so widely as to become accepted as the thing itself - so much
so that the original thing begins to look false. The representation replaces the original and the “real thing” begins to appear as
an imitation.
I recently attended my first homebirth, and it occurred to me that the average American birth experience is littered with
simulacra.
This thought first struck me shortly before I gave birth to my own daughter last November. I was laboring along quite nicely
when my nurse asked if she could monitor me for a few minutes. Once on the monitors, the nurse began admiring my
contractions (I was truly flattered, as one might imagine). She said to my husband, “This is a really impressive pattern of
contractions—for not having any Pitocin.” Had I not been, as it were, preoccupied with said
contractions, I may have engaged her. Even from Labor Land, I was thinking, “I smell a simulacrum.” It was as though she
had forgotten—momentarily—that the purpose of Pitocin, at least theoretically, is to imitate a natural labor pattern like my
own. But I imagine an L+D nurse probably sees more “augmented” labors than not, and so my labor probably did look “almost
like the real thing” to this nurse.
At this birth, though, there was a point at which we were all on the floor—the laboring mother leaning back into her own
mother, and her partner and I on either side of her, holding up her legs. And I had this thought—I wish I hadn’t—as my feet
fell asleep from sitting on them too long, and my back cramped and my arms began to tremble just a little; I thought, “We’re
like human stirrups.” No sooner had the thought crossed my mind but I thought, “(Gasp!), Simulacra!” And that’s just it—
who looks at stirrups in the hospital and thinks, “Huh, what crude representations of the calloused hands of the women of old,
who would gather around a laboring woman to offer strength and support during childbirth.” We see it, most of us, the other
way around.
Of course these simulacra aren’t limited to birth; they’re everywhere. Someone once told me my son was just using me as a
“human pacifier,” as if I thought to stick my nipple in the baby’s mouth one day when I noticed that it bore a striking
resemblance to that plastic and rubber contraption that makes babies so happy.
The bottom line is, I’m glad for so many reasons that I attended this particular birth, but one of them is that it reminded me
that before hospitals and surgery and forceps and anesthesia, before fetal heart monitors and foley catheters and intravenous
antibiotics, birth happened, and it worked. And it works now. And the next time I find myself holding a laboring woman’s
leg, I won’t think for a moment that I am “like a stirrup.” I’ll think that I’m like a million women who have done this before
me.
Susan Kennard
From Fall 2007 Issue IV
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