{"id":1626,"date":"2021-11-11T09:40:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-11T14:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?page_id=1626"},"modified":"2022-01-08T15:45:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-08T20:45:40","slug":"brodie-leo","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/brodie-leo\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMother\u2019s Little Helper:\u201d How Second-Wave Feminist Publications Warned Against Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mother&#039;s Little Helper (Mono)\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OusADDs_3ps?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cMother needs something today to calm her down<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And though she&#8217;s not really ill, there&#8217;s a little yellow pill<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She goes running for the shelter of her mother&#8217;s little helper.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333\">\u201cMother\u2019s Little Helper\u201d by the British rock band, The Rolling Stones, tells the story of a housewife who abuses Valium, a common benzodiazepine. While both men and women were addicted to minor tranquilizers in the 1960s and 70s \u2013 35 million Americans were prescribed Miltown, another benzodiazepine, in 1956 alone \u2013\u00a0women were disproportionately prescribed these drugs (Metzl 241). Valium was prescribed to women at twice the rate of men (Cant 9). Hundreds of thousands of women in the 1960s and 70s were targeted by advertising and over-prescribed minor tranquilizers including barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which cause calming of the nerves, severe drowsiness, and ultimately, addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This collection of texts from second-wave feminist publications \u2013 personal narratives, poetry, visual imagery, and relevant research \u2013 reveals their creators\u2019 concerns about tranquilizer addiction and the subjugation of women through prescription medication.<\/p>\n<p>The speaker of Anne Sexton\u2019s \u201cThe Addict\u201d becomes indefinitely numb. A Valium advertisement portraying the drug as a cure-all appears repurposed in a July edition of <em>Everywoman<\/em> as a warning. Readers of <em>New Woman\u2019s Times<\/em> relate their personal stories of addiction, and an ex-psychiatrist explains how not to become \u201cPrincess Valium.\u201d In a 1974 issue of <em>Her-Self<\/em>, research reveals that women are prescribed unrequested tranquilizers twice as often as men; in an issue published a year later, a poem\u2019s narrator breaks free from Valium and rediscovers her will to fight the oppression that was prescribed, both by her doctor and the patriarchal society he represents.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Brodie Leo<\/p>\n<p>Works cited:<\/p>\n<p>Cant, Gilbert. &#8220;Valiumania.&#8221; <em>The New York Times<\/em>, 1 Feb. 1976, p. 9. <em>The New York Times<\/em>, www.nytimes.com\/1976\/02\/01\/archives\/article-16-no-title-americans-are-spending-almost-half-a-billion.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2021.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mother&#8217;s Little Helper (Mono).&#8221; <em>YouTube<\/em>, uploaded by The Rolling Stones, Google, 10 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OusADDs_3ps&amp;ab_channel=TheRollingStones-Topic. Accessed 17 Nov. 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Metzl, Jonathan. &#8220;&#8216;Mother&#8217;s Little Helper:&#8217; The Crisis of Psychoanalysis and the Miltown Resolution.&#8221; <em>Gender and History<\/em>, vol. 15, no. 2, Aug. 2003, pp. 240-67.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMother needs something today to calm her down And though she&#8217;s not really ill, there&#8217;s a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter of her mother&#8217;s little helper.\u201d \u201cMother\u2019s Little Helper\u201d by the British rock band, The Rolling &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/brodie-leo\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"sidebar-page.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1626","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1626\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}