Natalie Portman won the Oscar for her performance in Black Swan. In her acceptance speech she referred to her unborn child and motherhood stating that her beautiful love, dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, gave her her "greatest role", which most took to mean her pregnancy.One feminist from Salon has taken issue with those words.
When you're pregnant, especially for the first time, there are a lot of amazed and awed moments in between the heartburn and insomnia. But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?
The writer of that garbage piece of writing, Mary Elizabeth Williams, should be ashamed of herself for denigrating Portman's words, because isn't feminism about choice, about women doing what they want and being proud of what they do?
Isn't it up to Portman to decide, to choose for herself, what she considers to be her greatest role?
If Portman believes giving birth, being a mother, raising a child is greater than her acting work, her movies or anything else she has ever done or will do, then for her it is the greatest role.
Would Williams take that "choice" away from Portman?
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