Good Grief...Feminism and Facebook

Warning, serious post ahead. Well, sort of.

I just read the article "Get Your Kid Off Your Facebook Page" by Katie Roiphe where she asserts that having your child's picture as your profile picture on Facebook is equivalent to saying, "I don’t matter anymore," and essentially removing your identity and replacing it with that of your child. I'm all for feminism. My friends know I'm the first one to ask if you want some sort of feminine subjugation pointed out. However, as far as equating having my child's picture on my Facebook profile as cyber-suppression, I call bullsh...

First, when did my Facebook profile move away from being a fun little page used to help me waste time and turn into a symbol for my entire being? As much as I fight it, I am aware that modern life is getting closer and closer to Neuromancer every day, but I think that for most of us (at least I hope) our entire identity is not wrapped up in Facebook and that give little thought to what others think of our pages.

Assuming that people do actually put that much thought into their cyber-personas, I still don't see it as taking away from myself to have a picture of my kid as my profile picture. I grew up with a mom who did lose her identity in being a mother. I know what that looks like. One picture simply does not equal that. To me, having a child, the whole process (no matter how difficult and strange it might have felt to me) was the most empowering experience. Putting my child's picture as my profile picture is just showing off...a "look at what I can do!" assertion. If I put a picture on my page of me in a blue dress, does that identify myself as a person who only wears blue? Just because I want to show people what I incubated for 40 weeks doesn't mean my entire identity is wrapped up in him.

What do you think? Is my Facebook profile really that important when it comes to our identities?