The First Time I Fought Back
Or, what will it cost HGTV for you to breastfeed
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In my parents attic, I found a letter written by fifteen-year-old me. It stated “my hearts desire”, the full plan for my life. This was before vision boards and Pinterest, so I was clearly ahead of my time. Acting appears nowhere in the letter. No, at fifteen I had the meager goal of becoming President of the United States of America, having eight children and retiring to a farm. Fifteen-year-old Bethany was gonna go big and go home.
I had always imagined my life with lots of children in it. Most of the millennials I know from who are from big families, like me, either wanted to emulate that model or swing the other way and avoid parenthood completely. Most of us wound up in the middle.
Choosing the right time to have a child while on any career path seems fraught with obstacles. Choosing the right time to have a child when your body is the instrument in which to carry that child and also the instrument by which you receive work, is an absolute fools errand. So in my early thirties, with a theatre career in full swing and a growing film career, I stoped trying to figure out the right time and just did it.
Y’all. I could not get a job when I was pregnant.
I insisted that I wanted to work. There wasn’t any reason I couldn’t be someone’s secretary or lawyer or waitress or mayor. The breakdown doesn’t need to mention that the character is pregnant; pregnant people exist in society everywhere. Just let me audition!
Totally agree!
That’s a great point.
They said.
Could not get an audition.
I began to gain the tiniest understanding of what my colleagues - who are of the global majority, or disabled, or gender non-conforming - feel when watching the default characters continually be straight, white, able bodied males.
Toward the end of my first pregnancy, I finally booked my first recurring television role on ‘The Game’. A pregnant character (fine!). The role wasn’t much but they made me look absolutely gorgeous and sent me home with a paycheck; I was extremely grateful.
This was the era when Kerry Washington was doing a season of Scandal while pregnant. “They shoot her chest up!” people would tell me. “She just puts a pillow on her lap and you can’t even tell!” I grew tired of explaining that the industry works around your “situation” if you were the star of a hit show. It’s a very different experience for the day player offering that star her glass of red wine at the bar.
It’s quite a pickle, being a non-celebrity actor and also being pregnant. I booked my second recurring role very early on in my second pregnancy. I had no guarantee on number of episodes and wanted to be as “easy” as possible to keep writing for, so I kept it a secret. Here I am, 9 weeks pregnant on Turn in a corset:
By the time I birthed my second child, I was ready to get back to work. My first booking post-pregnancies was a promo for HGTV. That’s right, HGTV, the network made for mothers. I’d play a realtor and make $1,000 for a day of work. Yes. Let’s do it.
I would miss my baby but, in a society that doesn’t value children enough to guarantee paid parental leave, many don’t have the choice to work or not. It wasn’t the kind of acting work I feel passionate about, but I felt lucky. One day on a set would be good for me.
The following is taken directly from emails, which I recently revisited for the first time in years.
“Oh!” I mentioned to my agent while confirming the booking, “I'm breastfeeding my newborn (she's 1 month old) so I'll need to make sure I can pump while I'm on set. I'll need a room with an outlet and some privacy.” Knowing we were dealing with a bunch of men running the shoot, I emphasized how important this was while not getting too graphic (don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable with my crazy lifestyle choice!). “I'd say it takes about 20 minutes every 2 1/2 - 3 hours. It doesn't have to be exact and I can be flexible but I need to make sure that's taken care of as I can get sick and have problems with nursing if I'm not able to do it regularly.”
I received a prompt response through my agent from the casting director (who, whether it matters or not, is a woman): “They would like to recast. While Bethany’s breastfeeding in and of itself is not an issue, the demand on the time out that often for that long is one they can’t promise nor guarantee. They’re running on a tight schedule those days... To possibly slow or stop production if there is an issue with timing for her isn’t doable.”
I was shocked. Sure, I’d heard horror stories of women trying to work and breastfeed; but after my first was born I pumped in my trailers for both Stranger Things and The Walking Dead. The PAs were my biggest champions and ensured I had what I needed. I couldn’t believe it was a problem for a single day shoot.
What I did next makes me so sad for brand-new-mom-of-toddler-and-newborn Bethany.
I told my agent that I had spoken to my doctor (I don’t think that I actually did. This was my second child and I knew what I was doing) and “since I'm going 4 hours between feedings at night, it will be fine during the day as well. I will probably get there early and just pump right before we get started. If I have to use my car to pump, that's fine…”
It’s hard for me to look back now at the place of groveling I was put in for - what I saw as - a glorified industrial shoot.
The response was quick. They’d already recast.
Production was “really uncomfortable with the idea of having any kind of time restraints.” I was assured everyone was really worried about my safety. They hated the idea that something might happen if they couldn’t afford me a 20 minute break every 3 hours.
I’ve known dudes on sets that have taken longer dumps.
My agent then told me that they’d make a note when submitting me in the future so it wouldn’t be a problem.
That’s when I lost it.
I asked her to please never note it as I was not cool with anyone discriminating against me for feeding my child and that I was pretty sure this was all illegal. Except I said it with some winky faces. Because that’s what you do in 2016 when you haven’t been able to get a job for months and just lost your first one because your body is in a state of lactation which clearly NO ONE ELSE on any of these emails understands in any sense, and you want to be able to get another job with/through/around these people again.
Keep in mind, you’re sending these emails while an eight pound ball of life is sucking liquid out of your body, which happens to be one of the most natural and normal things in human history, but you just happen to live in a time where EVERYBODY FREAKS OUT ABOUT IT. So.
I took a day to be angry and cry a little bit - about these sweet folks, so concerned for my well-being - and then, like a good elder millennial, I took to socials. I let facebook and Twitter (dead naming is wrong, but not in this instance) know that HGTV had fired me for breastfeeding. And honestly, the internet did its thing. People, especially the woman kind of people, were outraged. This is what the internet was invented for, y’all. That and viral videos of moms yankin kids out of their dad’s home office during a live stream interview on CNN. Those two things. Everything else on the internet can go, as far as I’m concerned.
For several days it grew. People were sharing and retweeting and threatening boycotts. Another agent finally called and said they supported what I was doing - but couldn’t say anything publicly because, you know, relationships. The casting director sent word through a friend that she “felt terrible” but she never reached out. Then, I got an email from one of the VPs of HGTV. She wanted to talk through what had happened.
It was all very “we’re-trying-not-to-get-sued”.
There has been discourse, ad nauseam, over “cancel culture”. I have read the think-pieces and engaged in the conversations about its failures and merits, and I’m over it - thank you very much! Since humanity hadn’t coined the phrase yet, it wasn’t thrown at me during this incident. You could call it “cancel culture”, but I see it as a community of people standing up for one vulnerable person. A young woman who had no power to defend herself unless joined by enough other voices - enough voices that people with power finally heard.
Perhaps if I were willing to play the system at its own game I would’ve threatened to sue. But, I didn’t want to sue over a single day of work; I just wanted the single day of work. I had earned it. So instead, I made my case to this Girl Boss VP that it should never happen to another woman on her watch - no matter how far down the chain. She tried to play it off, since they hadn’t “officially” booked me yet. Perhaps, the unbooking had been due to other factors besides breastfeeding. Thankfully, I am a phone shy person and do most of my communicating through email. It’s all there in writing!
Pro tip: GET IT ALL IN WRITING FOLKS!
She apologized for what happened.
They sent me $1,000.
And the nicest bouquet of flowers I’ve ever received.
My agent did not take commission on the money or the flowers.
The bouquet kept for a real long time. I’d stare at it while my baby drank from me and the toddler played with trains on the floor. I kept trimming the stems diagonally until the last bloom finally browned and drooped and it all became compost for the garden. The vase still sits on my stovetop, holding cooking utensils, covered in grease splatter. Sometimes it catches my eye while frying the eggs or stirring the oatmeal.
I have not been offered a job or an audition for HGTV since. The casting director did begin calling me in again 5 or 6 years later. The agent, wisely, did not note that I was breastfeeding until deals had been closed. I subsequently pumped in my trailer through a season of Ozark.1 But I have never been assured of any policy changes from any of the businesses or corporations along the way.
Sometimes I think of all the individuals who must stand aside for one small injustice to occur.
This is why I can’t tell everyone to stand up for yourself. Fight back. Say something. Fighting always comes at a cost and it’s hard to quantify what that cost might even be. For me, the cost of not fighting feels much higher. The cost of not fighting is a human being who demeaned herself enough to say she would pump in her car and “call her doctor” and long-delay what her body needed for the needs of a stupid, stupid promo video. Demeaned herself enough to say all that, and was still brushed to the side.
It isn’t lost on me that were I not a sweet picture of “ideal” motherhood, I most likely would not have even gotten that far. Would a Black mother have been able to speak up, for fear of being dismissed as merely angry? Would an unmarried or Queer mother have been afraid to speak out, for fear of retribution turning right back on them for not conforming to society’s expectations? I believe I was able to get as far as I did, in this one small instance, because of the societal sympathies my status held: young, white, in a heterosexual marriage, and generally fitting the patriarchal standard for sweet and pretty.2
Still, I’m eternally grateful for the community who was willing to surround and raise their fists for one young mother. I’m grateful they supported her feeding her child the way she wanted. I’m grateful to my younger self for not caring if she ever worked for the network that championed the GoodWife/Mother myth. She spoke to a Vice President of a massive corporation and imagined she had a voice.
I’ll never know if it impacted or changed anything. Like a ripple in the creek, perhaps, it made a difference for a moment, and then disappeared. But a ripple is a ripple. Maybe, the first time you fight back, the first time you tell them you’re not discardable, maybe you become stronger - for the next time. Maybe you’ll be willing to risk your societal status for someone who hasn’t been afforded as much.
I’d like to tell that young, breastfeeding, mother, actor, professional human with dignity and dreams: it won’t be the last time you’ll fight.
I won’t become President of the United States of America but maybe I’ll play her on TV. I won’t have eight children but I have two really great ones. And a tiny-mini farm in the backyard of my city house (and I’m not even retired yet!). Dreams morph and change and grow and fade. We fight for the things that turn out to be the most important and let go of trying to control how far the ripples ripple.
And now, your weekly bonuses…
Notable and Quotable
“Orpheus was a poor boy
but he had a gift to give
He could make you see how the world could be
in spite of the way that it is.”
~from Hadestown, by Anais Mitchell
One Obsession Away
Wherein I share what I am obsessed with this week.
The way my kid looks when he is concentrating on something. When he’s practicing his cello and when he wants to be playing it, his face gets a little twisty and his eyes focus on some distant Something.
I can’t describe it. And I’ll never point it out to him. The gift of being unselfconscious is so fleeting - and it fades as we grow up. I’ll spend the rest of my life working to get back to that place.
Obsessed.
Out: looking at your own face on zoom
In: focusing on some distant something and forgetting what your face is doing
Happy to give credit where credit is due: Feldstein-Paris cast me in Ozark and made sure production would take care of my breastfeeding needs.
For more on our obsession with “ideal” motherhood, check out Sara Petersen’s work. Her description of aspirational motherhood (as exemplified by Kate Middleton) is spot on.
Bethany 2024!
“I’ve known dudes on sets that have taken longer dumps.” Saying it like it is!
WOW, so much to go through in order to just take care of some normal life stuff in a days work.
As always, thanks for sharing!