Elizabeth Broadbent

Like so many women, I never know what I’ll see in the mirror. Sometimes I catch sight of myself in a window and cringe, appalled at my own body.

I didn’t trumpet these views to my mommy groups, of course. I wasn’t crass. But when a girl let her daughter cry it out, I decided the tot seemed a tad withdrawn. When a mom told me all her sons were cut, I nodded politely while thinking, she is so deluded. She made up a medical excuse for a pass on child mutilation. When I saw mothers in the grocery store, carseats in tow, I paraded by, baby in wrap, nose in the air. At least those moms could see another option.