Latest / The Catholic Current / Distress Made Visible? (Natalya Murakhver) 10/29/26

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Distress Made Visible? (Natalya Murakhver) 10/29/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
0:04
McTague. She's like, I'm a Christian, but I'm not a nut
0:08
like Matt. You wouldn't know it from the way I act.
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And I was just like, oh, that is
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the worst thing. And I was actually worried about her, like, don't,
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don't even say that, because I, I just feared that'll play on, on the movie
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screen of your life. Yeah, when the judgment
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comes, that— yeah, wow.
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I'm a vegetarian, but you wouldn't know it by what I eat,
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you know. Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTaggart
0:37
of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current. We bring Christ
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to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station
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of the Cross Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
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We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always,
0:51
let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth
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your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of sermon, that they might hear your voice
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and obey your command. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Amen. Well, friends, my father was a member of the Greatest Generation.
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He missed his high school graduation and lied about his age to join the Navy
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and fight in World War II. And when he was in the Navy, he got
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an anchor tattoo on his forearm. Many years later, he was
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visiting with some friends of mine and someone said to them, Mr. McTague,
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what does that anchor on your forearm mean? And he said, it means I was
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once 18 and stupid. There was a time where
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getting a tattoo was considered exceptional or something you did if you joined the Navy
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or, or a gang. And it has become more common.
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And the question is why? And I said
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I wanted to find someone who can talk about the cultural phenomenon, who's thought about
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it, who's done the research. And I have found someone. She is
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the co-founder of Restore Childhood, a national
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nonprofit empowering parents to direct their children's upbringing.
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Uh, Natalia Morokhver, welcome to The Catholic Current.
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Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
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Natalia, you had an article published recently in
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Restore Childhood blog, and it was called Under the
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Skin: Why Are So Many Young Women Getting Tattoos? And the subtitle
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was, was really eye-catching for me: Distress Made
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Visible. Now, the story that I've heard very
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often is more and more people, not just young people,
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but more and more people are getting tattoos multibat
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tattoos, extravagant tattoos. It almost
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seems to be exceptional to see somebody in shorts and a t-shirt who doesn't have
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ink. What's going on here? Why has it
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become trendy to the point of common? I think that's a great
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question that I keep asking myself. You know, I'm driving my daughters
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crazy because here I am walking through New York City with my phone
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snapping pictures going, did you see that? Did you see that?
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And they're like, stop it. And then I have a friend who's a filmmaker out
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in LA. He's like, I don't want to hear that you're in the hospital because
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somebody punched you in the face because you're snapping shots everywhere.
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And I'm like, look, Eli, nobody's going
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to punch me in the face. I think that they're doing it to get attention.
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There is nothing more exciting, I would
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think, to them than to get somebody actually looking at them. I think
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that many of these women feel invisible without some
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kind of marking. I mean, I think there are many different dimensions
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to this, and I've talked to a few people about it. I have yet to
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go into a tattoo parlor and sit down with a tattoo artist and find
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out, you know, what their take on this is. I also imagine that they're
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doing very, very well financially. So I guess that's
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a win-win for them. But I think there's a
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lot to unpack here, and I'm really just kind of wading through
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this and taking pictures. I have a lot of pictures.
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I've started a little Google Photos file
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called Tattoo Mania and trying to add as much as I can. Although now
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that it's gotten a little colder in New York City, there are fewer
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opportunities to take pictures. And that is something that I
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had— I did remark about to my daughter the other day.
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I mean, I had students years ago ask me if I ever considered
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getting a tattoo. And I said, I won't get a tattoo because I don't
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want to die on the Chinese-Mongolian border. And they all looked
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at me like I was crazy. And I said, here's what happen if I got
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a tattoo, I would get some sort of Jesuit logo, and as soon as
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the ink dried, I would get a call from Rome that my new mission was
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to smuggle Bibles into China by way of Mongolia,
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and I'd be stopped at the border and they would find the Jesuit
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tattoo on me somewhere and I'd get shot in the head. So that, that's my
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Irish melancholy and my apocalyptic imagination showing up. But what struck me
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about what you said is kind of that cry for attention and to
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be noticed, and it seems counterintuitive to me because
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people are are, are on social media all the
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time. Everybody is curating their lives
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on Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest.
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You know, uh, what you're eating, what you're looking at, what you're chewing,
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what you're feeling. Are you crying? Are you laughing? People seem
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to be uploading their lives constantly,
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and yet they still don't feel seen. Or do you
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see the paradox as well? Oh yeah. I mean, look, you and I discussed
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my documentary, 15 Days, about the pandemic school closures,
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which we released just about a year ago. The reason I made
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this documentary, I don't have a background in documentary
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film or journalism. I'm just somebody who notices things and
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is, I think, a pretty sentient being. And I
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realized that when we closed down the schools and started
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pushing social isolation, that we would have problems
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like this. No, I could not have addicted tattoos. But I
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knew that having my children, who at the time were 6 and
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9, looking straight into a screen for hours
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at a time would feel extremely alienating, lonely,
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and you feel invisible. Like you're just a box in a
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Zoom paradigm. It's nothing.
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You can't touch it, you can't smell it, you can't punch it,
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you can't pinch it. And I think that's part
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of it. Exactly what you said. People cosplaying
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life, like pretending that this is their lives. I'll give you one other
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example that you actually brought to mind. I have a good friend named Allison.
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She left New York probably about a decade ago with her 2 young
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children after she'd gotten a divorce. She wasn't
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very well off, struggling financially, but had a really great
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attitude and remains a very positive person. She fights
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against the grain and just keeps going. And I remember she said
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something to me which really struck me. And since then, I've really gone out of
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my way to post as little possible on social media. She said, you know,
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she said, as I'm getting this divorce and moving cross-country and,
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you know, slogging through my life, I doom scroll through
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Facebook and I see all these people on luxurious vacations and
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with perfect husbands and perfect children doing all these perfect things.
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And it makes me feel less than. It makes me feel so depressed I
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can't. And I was just like, you know what? She's right.
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Like, as you said, a curated life. It, it, it's not
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the truth. I mean, those pictures— I have pictures that look super happy
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of me and my daughters and my husband that were taken like
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a minute after, you know, somebody scratched someone or they were screaming or
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something was thrown across the room. And I find myself sometimes looking at
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these pictures going, wow, we look so happy there, right? Yeah.
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I, I, you know, my, my sister
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had, had told me, uh, recently because she's got 2 teenage girls,
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and she said, you know, when you and I were in high school, you know,
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back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, if you did something stupid,
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it didn't go around the world. Yeah, it may have felt like that in the
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moment, but, you know, but basically it didn't go beyond, say, the high school cafeteria.
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But nowadays, if you do something foolish, it literally can go
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around the world in an instant. Like that poor woman in France who's having
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her family shop vandalized, and that look on her face is already
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the subject of memes. So we have the memes to
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get ourselves noticed in the worst way possible.
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And apparently everybody's competing for shelf space.
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So is it kind of an arms race, so to speak,
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pun unintended, that, you know, we just need to do more
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and more to attract attention because everybody's trying to attract attention
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these days? Is that where we are now? I think that's part of it.
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I really think this is a very multidimensional problem that
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I'm seeing, you know, across political lines,
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I think that there's some subversion going on. I don't
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know how much advertising you look at, but just walking around
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New York City, we have all of these screens
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everywhere. It drives me crazy. I hate this. But you're waiting at a bus stop
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and you're being advertised at. And in the past, it was like a poster,
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right? It was a poster that you turned away from. Now it's something that's
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flashing at you and demanding your attention. And if you look at
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the influencers that they're putting in those videos, whether they're
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films or they're, you know, commercials or whatever,
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many of them are profoundly tattooed. Now,
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this wasn't even a case a few years ago. The other night, my daughter
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and I watched, um, I don't know if you've ever seen this, uh,
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Wayans Brothers comedy, uh, White Chicks.
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It's actually very funny. I'd never seen it. It's the Wayans Brothers.
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They're hilarious. It's like the whole family's in the film. I'm gonna interrupt you
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just for a second because we're coming up on a heartbreak. We can take up
10:14
the thread of the conversation in the next segment. One of the benefits of having
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a vow of poverty is you have no reason to look at
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advertisements because you can't buy it anyway,
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you know, and why look at things that you can't afford?
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But I am aware that advertisement forms conscience. I was
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thinking just today before Mass, the late Jesuit Father John Cavanaugh was very
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kind to me when I was a young Jesuit back in the day, and he
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wrote a book called Advertisement and the Formation of Conscience, and he said
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this stuff gets into your soul and it
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makes a difference. And I think we are underestimating
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the power of influencers in provoking
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behavior. I'll use that term. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our
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conversation with Natalia Murakhver,
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and we are talking about distress signals on the
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human bodies, the culture of tattoos, What does
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it all mean? Remember, our rallying cry here at the Catholic Current is Christus Mundo,
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By subscribing to iCatholic Mobile, you help fund programs that defend
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our Catholic faith. We're talking today with Natalia Marakova,
12:59
who is co-founder of Restore Childhood. We're talking about distress
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made visible. Why are people modifying their
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bodies in such public and dramatic ways? You were telling
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a story about a comedy show you saw on television
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with your daughters. Fill us in on that, please. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah. So my daughter, my younger daughter is 12,
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and she often watches, you know, pretty conservative TV with me,
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like Frasier. We laugh about it. I mean, it's great.
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And occasionally I can talk her into watching a film with me. And the other
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day we watched a film called White Chicks, which is a comedy
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from about 20 years ago. With the Wayan brothers
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and the Wayan sisters. It's great. It's hilarious. It's totally bad humor
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or whatever, but it's totally fun. And we watched the entire
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thing and she knows my obsession with tattoos because I see them everywhere.
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And I look at her and I go, hey, I said, did you— this
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whole 2-hour movie and there were so many bodies that were kind of uncovered,
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right? It was these girls in a bar and they were pretty scantily
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clad and some really bad jokes and stuff. I said,
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did you see single tattoo in that film? And she was like,
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come to think of it, no. And I was like, that film is 20 years
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old. It's not that old. Look at how far we've come since then.
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Look at how much things have changed. There's hardly anyone that I see on
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the street, any young woman, whether they're a Columbia University
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student or a tourist from the Midwest,
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that hasn't gotten some sort of tattoo. And I'm not talking
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about tattoos on their bottoms or behind
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their bras where people can't see it. I have a friend who I talk to
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about this frequently, she's like, you know, I have a tattoo,
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like, you know, in a private, you know, in a private area that people don't
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see. And I said, but that's different. Like, that's always existed. Like, that is really
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none of my business. There's no reason I would know about that. But when I
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start seeing people with face tattoos, neck tattoos,
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hand tattoos, clothes cannot cover these things.
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And now we're talking about a completely different issue.
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Right. So there has been a change, uh,
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in recent years. And your hypothesis
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is that You know, you identified that kind of, that cry for attention,
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which is ironic given that we live public lives in media
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all the time, so very many of us. It seems to me
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counterintuitive to say, I'm going to get a fashion statement that I can't remove unless
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it's very expensive and painful. It's not like, you know,
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putting highlights in your hair or, you know, trimming your beard a
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new way. And apparently, the trend is being led by women. What do
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you make of that? Well, I think, I think women are leading a lot of
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bad ideas, you know. I mean, the whole Lindsay Clancy,
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you know, movement of, you know,
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supporting someone who did that to her children and just,
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you know, very, very— I don't know
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if this movement really is being led by women. I think it's certainly we're seeing
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a greater deal, many more women getting tattoos. I was
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just looking at some of the research and it says that today 38%
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of women have at least one tattoo compared to 28%,
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27% of men. And this is 56%
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of women ages 18 to 29,
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56%. And I think this data is probably already outdated.
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56% of women ages 18 to 29 and 53%
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of women ages 30 to 49. Now, I don't think it's
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just a cry for attention. I think that's one thing for sure.
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I think it's tribalism. You know, this is, this is a Catholic podcast.
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I am a Jew. Um, I, I do believe that there
16:46
is an absolute need for some sort of belief in a higher
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power. I, I grew up fairly agnostic,
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although with, uh, biblical teachings. I went to a
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Jewish school, so I was exposed to a lot of,
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uh, the Torah and, and, um, and, you know, the teachings,
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and, and also, you know, really admonished to follow the Ten Commandments.
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So I think I do have God in my life in one way
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or another, but I think that this generation has lost, many of
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them have lost their relationship to a higher power and they're looking for
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a tribe and belonging. And you see an influencer who's got
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profound tattoos all over and you think, okay, well, as a
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young person, you do a lot of hero worship. I want to be like
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Cardi B. Cardi B has her son's name tattooed across
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her jaw. A top rapper had ice cream tattooed
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on his cheek. You see all these singers. I heard
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that Matt Damon, who in The Odyssey, a really wonderful film that
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we saw over the summer, that one of the greatest challenges
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to making that film, believe it or not, because he's dressed pretty scantily
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for the times, is that he has tattoos all over his body
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and they had to figure out how to cover them up.
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That's insane.
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Yeah, that is becoming more and more common.
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The idea of, I'm going to let somebody else turn me into their sketch had
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just strikes me as odd. Uh, I saw— I want to talk
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about that sense of belonging, of tribalism. I know
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there are some people who have already seen it to be a rite of passage,
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and I said it used to be, you know, getting a driver's license,
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for example, was part of a rite of passage. Nowadays, getting a credit card is
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considered a rite of passage. God help us. Or, you know, taking your dad
18:35
out to, to buy a beer when you come of age. But it seems
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now that as connected as we
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are— and I don't— I'm going to make an alternative. We're not really connected to
18:47
each other, or we wouldn't be having these problems. We're on display.
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And so we want to have a sense of fitting in and
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belonging. And I think one of the reasons why we're hungry for that
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is precisely because technology and politics
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isolate us and pit us against each other. What are
19:07
your thoughts on Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're encouraged— we're discouraged
19:12
from having these types of long-form conversations.
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We were told for years, and we continue to be told, that words are violence,
19:21
that violence is not violence, but words are violence, that the
19:25
right and the left are so far apart, there's no way
19:29
you would ever want to be with
19:32
a conservative or progressive, or you're almost taught
19:37
that people are different breeds, that they couldn't even
19:41
speak the same language. Like, could you speak to a hyena? Well,
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you can't speak to a conservative either. He's a Trumper. These crazy
19:50
polarities that are really
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being used to divide people in a very bad way. And I
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mean, I started to see it during COVID Politically,
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I was very much a progressive Democrat,
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and I thought, oh, I can't even have a conversation with that guy. He's a
20:08
conservative. And during During the pandemic,
20:11
I think my eyes were open to how much this
20:16
push to the extremes was
20:19
being made in social media. And it
20:23
was easier to make the case for not speaking
20:26
to someone when you're also pushing isolation, masking,
20:29
and all sorts of restrictions, like the vaccinated and
20:33
the unvaccinated, the right and the left, the Trumpers and the Obamas.
20:38
So I think that it's very, very hard for people to
20:42
figure out where they belong. And, you know, now I don't know if you've seen
20:46
this. I haven't read much about it, but I've seen this, this trend
20:50
being written about that there are all these young people that are going no contact
20:54
with their families. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. Yeah.
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What is that about? Right, right.
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We have prioritized You see, here's— look,
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we've been in a consumerist culture for many years, certainly as long as I've
21:09
been alive, which seems to be a long time now. And, you know,
21:13
we are taught to love things and to use
21:17
people. And because we've really forgotten how to love
21:21
each other and because we've learned how to forgive each other, which I think we
21:25
could do better if we were in right relationship with God, you know, people may
21:29
be opportunities for pleasure, they may be opportunities for resources, or they
21:32
could be impediments or causes of distress.
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And so we have to kind of separate people by
21:39
their brand loyalties. And we've been going from virtue signaling
21:44
now to hate signaling. You know, not only do I have
21:47
the right flag on my social media, you know,
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I've joined the crowd in denouncing this person too.
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Is it fair to say— we got about 3 minutes left in this segment— is
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it fair to say that part of what might be driving the tattoo
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trend is it's just kind of a,
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a me-tooism. It's just kind of a following the wave, and not
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a lot of thought or meaning goes into it. It's just something that you do.
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I think that's part of it. You know, I've walked past tattoo parlors.
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I, I'd never seen this before, and I don't know if you have. They apparently,
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um, charge by the hour or by the
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day. It's not by like tattoo, like I want a rose,
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okay, you know, I'll pay I don't know if our time's up, but I
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had never seen that. So it said get the whole day for $600.
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And I'm like, wow, this is like a smorgasbord of body
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disfigurement in a way because it can't come off. So I just didn't
22:43
know that. So I wonder how much the bargain basement pricing
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and just more and more people doing it has to do— the
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supply has been flooded. It, right? Yeah. And I don't— I,
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I've heard that it's painful. I've heard that removal is, is even more
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painful. I knew a woman who had joined a monastic community,
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and in her college days she had her head shaved and her
23:06
favorite brand of beer tattooed on her skull. And before
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she could take vows, her superior said, you got to get that removed.
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And I said, Sister, wasn't that painful? And she had a long stare
23:18
into the distance, and she turned to me and she said, well, Father, It was
23:21
a mortification. So I said, I guess so.
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So, so there is that as well. But I, I think we're at a point
23:28
where people don't know what to do with themselves.
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And I think our culture has made people
23:36
so superficial in many senses of that
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word that they don't have a basis
23:44
for bonding or belonging anymore. It used to be family
23:48
ties. It used to be religious ties.
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I mean, my father grew up in the Irish neighborhood of
23:55
Newark, New Jersey, and my mother grew up in the Italian neighborhood of
24:00
Newark, New Jersey. And people used to have bowling leagues.
24:04
There were places for contact and shared identity
24:08
and shared meaning. And we've driven
24:11
a lot of that away. I think it was—
24:15
which Roman poet was it? Maybe Horace— I'm gonna ask
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Mr. Engineer to look that up over the break— who,
24:21
who's a comedic poet, Roman comedic poet, who said, you can
24:25
drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she
24:28
always keeps coming back. Aristotle was right. We are
24:33
social animals. We are meant to be in relationship
24:36
with each other because that's how God is too, as a Trinity,
24:40
as a community of persons. And we have allowed
24:43
a lot of different things— politics, economics, technology,
24:47
corrode all of that, dissolve all
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of that. And now we don't know how to connect with
24:56
each other. But at least maybe somehow we could say,
24:59
well, I'm just like everybody else because I have ink
25:02
too. Friends, when we come back, we are going to continue our conversation
25:07
with Natalia Moragver. We're talking about Distress Made Visible,
25:11
uh, public calls help from people who I think are probably
25:15
very unhappy. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
25:19
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26:00
This is the Catholic Current from the Station of the Cross. Catholic Media
26:04
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26:08
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26:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
26:23
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
26:27
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us on the station of the Cross
26:30
Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness
26:34
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26:39
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26:43
Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully, and that
26:47
intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
26:50
Support us please at thestationofthecross.com. My guest
26:54
today is Natalia Murakhver. She's a co-founder of Restore Childhood.
26:58
We're talking about distress made visible The Culture of
27:02
Body Alteration. And I tell you what I found really poignant
27:06
in your, your essay, and one of the reasons why I said, gosh, I think
27:10
I need to talk to her, is because you feature people who say,
27:14
you know, they got a piercing, they got a tattoo, etc., to signal
27:18
their pain, to signal their distress. And you even quoted
27:22
Nancy Mace, who is a congresswoman from South
27:26
Carolina, and while she was in office, she got 9 tattoos.
27:31
She said they gave her the pain I need to feel. And I said
27:35
to myself, that's not how happy, healthy people talk, is it?
27:39
I mean, I think there is a correlation between tattoos
27:43
and prior abuse. So there is some
27:46
of that too. Like there's a taking control of one's body and,
27:50
you know, being the one who directs
27:54
that abuse, if it's okay to call it that. Sure,
27:58
sure. Yeah, that people have lost a sense of autonomy
28:02
for a variety of reasons, some of them really tragic and even grotesque.
28:07
And so this seems to me to be a way of pushing back. You get
28:11
the sense there's a mental health crisis going on here? Do you think that's
28:15
part of what's driving it? Yeah, I mean, people have lost their guardrails,
28:19
right? And they're being— yeah, like,
28:22
we need— you know, I was listening to, uh,
28:26
a podcast with Dennis Prager, uh,
28:29
who was talking about— he was talking to Abigail Shrier on The Free Press.
28:33
It's a wonderful conversation. I highly recommend it. And I about
28:37
it almost daily now. As many of your viewers
28:41
or listeners would probably know, Dennis Prager, who founded PragerU,
28:45
suffered a terrible, terrible accident. I guess he fell
28:49
in the shower. He's an elderly man to begin with, but he fell in the
28:52
shower or something, and now he's a paraplegic, and he's been paraplegic
28:57
for, I guess, a year and a half or 2 years. But thankfully, his brain
29:01
is still extremely active, and he's a brilliant man and
29:05
very articulate. So first of all,
29:09
he talks about pain and suffering.
29:13
And Abigail Shrier had asked him,
29:16
do you ever wonder why this happened
29:20
to you? Do you flagellate? Why me? And he's like, you know,
29:23
Abigail, the thing I've always said to
29:26
myself is, why do we always ask why me? Why don't we ask
29:30
why not me? And I thought that was a really interesting perspective.
29:35
It makes you feel a lot more grateful for what you have
29:40
and realize that you can lose it any minute. But it's not exactly directly
29:44
related to the whole tattoo conversation, but they did talk about
29:48
God. And he said, I don't
29:53
argue for or against the existence
29:57
of God. He said, I argue for the need for
30:01
an existence of God. And I think that is directly
30:05
related to our conversation here because, you know,
30:09
regardless of where one falls on, you know, on the religious
30:13
or agnostic scale, I think people need—
30:17
people need to know that there is something more than just
30:21
the material being that's here, you know, walking this earth,
30:25
like a greater purpose, a greater sense
30:29
of right and wrong, an adult
30:33
in the room, so to speak. And over the past,
30:38
I would say probably, I don't know how long,
30:40
but over my adult years, and I'm 55,
30:44
I've seen an erosion of that and it's pretty dramatic.
30:48
And I think that tattooing and marking one's body
30:53
and having other friends around you doing similar
30:57
things makes you feel like So it's
31:01
transcendent in some way. And I've also heard— I
31:05
did speak to a woman at an Old Navy store a few
31:09
months ago. She was very, very tattooed. She was checking us
31:12
out, very nice woman. And I said, what happened? What are
31:16
all these tattoos? And she's like, oh, you know, once you get one,
31:20
it becomes addictive. And I said, which part of it is addictive? And she
31:24
said, well, she said, the feeling. Actually the feeling of
31:28
actually getting the tattoo, like the pain. There's an addict— it like
31:32
releases endorphins and it has like a neurochemical.
31:36
And she said the smell. She said there's something about the smell of
31:39
it that also, like, if you, if you like it, you could get addicted
31:44
to it too, which is wild. I mean, that's a dimension in which I wasn't
31:47
even thinking about. I did that. Yeah, I was not prepared for that at all,
31:50
for sure. So, uh, yeah, I, I think there are people who,
31:54
who are in a state of distress, and, you know, there's an
31:58
act of resistance, an act of defiance. And, you know,
32:01
in my spiritual tradition as, as a Jesuit, Saint Ignatius Loyola,
32:05
our founder, said, you know, when you're under spiritual attack,
32:08
don't just wait for the storm to pass. Do some small
32:13
act of defiance, even if you say, you know what, I'm not going to take
32:17
sugar in my coffee today. So that's just one thing to do
32:21
to show that you're not powerless. So you,
32:24
you begin to, to, to resist. So I want to connect
32:29
to the Dennis Prager question. I, I— he interviewed me a few times. He was
32:32
always very gracious to me. You know that we're not only— yes,
32:36
we probably are having a mental health crisis in our culture these days,
32:39
but I would say ultimately it's spiritual.
32:43
I, I mean, so much of human history indicates we're
32:47
made for so much more and
32:51
we settle for so little. C.S. Lewis said we're
32:55
far too easily pleased. He also said that much of human history
32:59
is a sad story of people looking for anything other than God to
33:03
make them happy. In light of your research and your observations,
33:07
what do you make of that? Well, look, looking for false gods, right?
33:11
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, I, I don't know.
33:14
I, I, I really haven't spent enough time thinking about this.
33:18
I don't feel like I have, you know, any, any great insight into
33:22
it. But, right, you know, I spent many years as a very progressive
33:26
Democrat who was very, very agnostic,
33:29
and like, the politics was
33:33
my religion in a way. I mean, so I, I, I have something
33:37
a little bit different about me that I I think has prevented me from
33:42
really truly becoming tribally
33:45
political. I was born in the Soviet Union.
33:49
I was 6 when I came to this country in 1977.
33:53
I'm 55 now. And my
33:57
parents have always been super conservative. They were
34:00
Reagan supporters. They were very grateful to this, and they remain
34:04
very grateful to this country for bringing us here. They sent me to
34:08
a public school and then eventually to a Jewish school where
34:12
I learned Hebrew and I got a lot of biblical
34:16
instruction, which was way over my head because at that point I
34:20
barely even knew English. I was learning a second language. I was learning concepts
34:24
in history that was way beyond what I could do. But I think there
34:28
was some insulation from some of this stuff for me
34:32
personally because it kind of makes me realize how
34:35
valuable that education was, even if
34:39
I only took 5% of it and internalized it. And also
34:43
just that whole immigrant experience of the struggle,
34:46
the real struggle, not these struggle sessions that
34:50
these young people are having now. I listened
34:54
to Heather MacDonald talking about the struggle sessions. She's at
34:57
Manhattan Institute and being brilliant, brilliant thinker and like has been
35:02
prevented from speaking at university events because
35:06
they're having struggle sessions. They can't listen to this incredible visionary.
35:10
Like, she is one of my favorite thinkers. Like, I will read anything
35:14
she writes. I've interviewed her several times. I have a lot of— she's a
35:17
very serious scholar. She doesn't suffer fools gladly.
35:21
And I think it's tragic that students say they're so
35:25
delicate, can't, they can't countenance the ideas of a very intelligent woman.
35:29
Yeah. Wow. I don't— missing out. Yeah.
35:33
But you also see why she's a threat, right? I mean, oh sure,
35:37
she's a huge threat. Yes. Words, I guess her
35:40
words are violence. They would, you know, they're not violence
35:45
obviously, but, right, um, being able to— well, they make you think, and once you
35:49
start thinking, you might have second thoughts and And then, you know,
35:52
where would we go from here? I'm sure you've heard
35:56
from a lot of different people now that know of your interest in, you know,
35:59
body alteration and tattooing and piercing and
36:02
so on. People who say, I'm just expressing
36:07
myself. What do you make of that? I actually haven't heard
36:11
from that many people. There were a lot of comments on that article, and some
36:14
of them were extremely defensive
36:18
and accused me of trying to dictate
36:23
to young women, you know, what beauty was and what was
36:26
acceptable. And I struggle
36:30
with this too, because it is kind of a gray area,
36:34
right? Like, who gets to make these decisions? I don't
36:38
believe in having government intervene in making— like,
36:41
I do have a libertarian streak in me. I do believe in having less
36:45
government. Where does all of this, where does the idea
36:51
that this is a right thing or a wrong thing, you should or shouldn't do
36:53
this, come from? And I always come back
36:57
to the home, the family, the support,
37:01
the love, the conversations, I guess the Bible.
37:05
For me personally, I would never ever consider
37:10
a tattoo, and this has been my entire life and I'm 55,
37:13
because I remember learning in my Hebrew school
37:18
that you could not be buried in a Jewish
37:21
cemetery if you had tattooed your body. And that
37:26
was enough for me. I was like, no, I want to be buried in the
37:29
Jewish cemetery. This isn't going to happen. I guess this is something that I can't
37:32
do. And I kind of checked it off the list.
37:36
So it's just really interesting to me.
37:39
I mean, I do think that people should have the freedom to
37:45
do this, I suppose. I don't really want to
37:48
regulate it, you know, into extinction.
37:52
I just want to use soft, soft influence to convince
37:56
them that it's a bad idea. You know, there's a Supreme Court case going on
38:00
now in South Carolina about face
38:04
tattoos because I guess they're banned and there are tattoo influencers
38:08
who want to get them unbanned and have people get face tattoos
38:12
in South Carolina. Face tattoos are terrifying. Now imagine if
38:16
somebody gets a swastika tattooed on their face and then they go teach in
38:20
a school, like, or just get on the subway. Like, it's,
38:24
it's really, it's such a, it's an interesting
38:27
problem and I don't know exactly how we fix it.
38:31
I, I remember, uh, I won't mention the city that I was in,
38:35
but I was, I went to a bookstore and the person behind
38:39
the, the counter had signaled pronoun
38:43
preferences by tattooing on their knuckles on each hand,
38:46
they, them on their knuckles. So it's like,
38:49
I think that was kind of an inclination to say, oh my
38:52
goodness, you know, if you don't get the pronouns right, there's going to be an
38:55
NRL. So, you know, we live in a world of constant
39:00
bombastic advertisement. I went to get gas the other
39:04
day, and I can't even have my own thoughts while pumping gas.
39:09
I try to maintain good situational awareness so I don't get mugged. But there
39:13
was a TV screen with advertising And even there.
39:17
And so I think there is a desperate inclination
39:21
to, number one, stand out, to say, you know, this is me
39:25
and I am unique. And at the same time, I belong.
39:29
I'm with you. Who's with me? And so
39:32
I think lots of other things have
39:36
gone sideways, have failed, have gone
39:40
wrong. And the way that this is being acknowledged
39:43
now is kind of a vivid,
39:46
insistent, please notice me, please see
39:50
that I'm in pain, please see that I don't want to
39:53
be alone. Those are bold statements, and we'll evaluate them in the next
39:57
segment. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Natalia
40:01
Murakhver. We're talking about distress made visible.
40:05
What's the significance of body language? Body alteration.
40:08
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list,
40:12
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40:16
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40:23
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40:31
Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations. We want to
40:34
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41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode? Want to
41:05
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41:13
help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTaggart of the Society of Jesus
41:26
This is your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the
41:27
world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the
41:29
Cross Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile
41:33
app. We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
Well, here we are. We're wrapping up a conversation with Natalia Marakva.
41:40
She is co-founder of Restored Childhood, and we
41:44
are talking about distress made visible,
41:48
cries for help through body language. Modification. Natalia, a lot
41:52
of listeners here, their parents, their grandparents,
41:56
and they might, might be asked to give advice about tattoos,
42:01
piercing, body modifications of different types.
42:05
My observation is if you start by pounding the table, the conversation
42:09
usually doesn't go well. What advice would you give for
42:13
someone who is asked to give advice on these matters? I would ask more questions.
42:16
Questions than give advice. You want to understand
42:19
who you're talking to, if it's your son or your daughter,
42:23
where they are, what they're thinking. Gather as much information
42:27
as you possibly can from the person you're speaking with before
42:31
you offer opinions because they're
42:35
often entry points that you don't expect.
42:38
And you want to be engaging and do some active listening.
42:43
But at the same time, I don't think we should abdicate
42:47
our responsibility as parents. And I think we should express very early
42:51
on, if possible, what our expectations are for our children.
42:55
And for me personally, like, I have, you know,
42:58
shown my kids and pointed out these tattoos over and over and
43:03
over again. And I've said, you know, look at this. Like, do you really want
43:06
to not be able to wear a little skirt because your entire leg
43:10
leg is, you know, covered in, you know, even if it's beautiful artwork,
43:13
because some of it is very beautiful. I have to admit, like, I look at
43:17
it sometimes, some of it looks like a chicken scratch, but some of it's very,
43:20
very beautiful. But still, it looks like something you want to take off
43:24
and you can't take it off. And just try to talk to them and see,
43:27
you know, where they stand on the subject and be very clear about
43:31
what your thinking is and listen to them. Right. I think
43:35
engaging the— you know, no one ever objected when you said to them,
43:38
tell me more about that, because people like to talk about, you know, what it
43:42
is they believe and what they think they know and so on. So to say,
43:45
hey, tell me more about that. Tell me, tell me how you got there.
43:48
Tell me how you got to that conclusion. And then you can find out,
43:52
you know, what's, what's really going on. What's,
43:55
what's taking place here? What's, what's the, what's the story underneath
43:59
the story? And I think that's important, and I think that is,
44:02
is very valuable as well. And I
44:06
think too, we have to begin to have a conversation with
44:10
our young people. So, you know, how much time do you spend
44:14
online? And, you know, and the, the why
44:18
of it and so on. And, and tell me who you want
44:21
to imitate and why. Do you think that that's a, that's a reasonable way to
44:25
start? Is, you know, is this really self-expression or is this,
44:29
or is this imitation in some way? What are your thoughts on that? On that
44:32
for sure. And maybe try to say,
44:36
your grandparents didn't do this, or maybe find a
44:40
story of somebody who did and regretted it and just emphasize the
44:43
permanence of this, right? This is not— why don't you get a henna
44:47
tattoo and see how it feels? Do that for a year. You don't marry
44:51
the first person you date, but yet you want to marry this tattoo that's
44:55
going to be on you forever. That's a good image. I like that.
45:01
And here's the other thing is, you know, I have a nonprofit, Restore Childhood,
45:05
and we, we try to empower parents with tools
45:09
and to really start to consider themselves the experts.
45:12
I think parents have lost the confidence in their own
45:16
voices. They're constantly looking for experts. Well, my son wants to do
45:19
this, I need to go to this kind of expert. My daughter— no, you are
45:23
the expert. Nobody knows your children better than you, and you should your voice,
45:27
and you should share with them that you don't think this is acceptable. I'll tell
45:32
you really quickly a conversation I had with a checkout clerk at
45:36
my grocery store a few months ago. We were talking about his children,
45:40
and I said, how old are your children? He's about my age. He said,
45:43
oh yeah, they're in their mid-20s. And I said, so are you a granddad yet?
45:47
And he said, no. And I said,
45:51
oh, they're not involved And he said, no, one of them's married,
45:54
the other one's dating someone, but they don't know if they want to have children
45:58
and I don't want to pressure them. And I was like, okay,
46:02
let's, let's take a step back. Like, you don't have to pressure them and
46:05
you shouldn't berate them or anything, but I think it's pretty important to
46:09
lay out your expectations for your children. They're not
46:12
going to follow all of it. But I think starting to
46:15
tell them early on, you know, I do expect that at some point in the
46:19
future, I want to be a grandfather and you're going to be very happy being
46:22
a parent and you would never want to miss out on this opportunity because you
46:26
are the best thing that ever happened to me. So, you know, just, just reestablish
46:31
our authority, um, in our children's lives,
46:34
not to abuse them, but to give them inspiration, to give
46:38
them hope, to give them guardrails because they actually need it. And if you don't
46:41
do it, somebody else will. Well, sure. You know, If you're not
46:45
in conversation with your children, with your grandchildren,
46:49
and I know this can be fraught with peril and you have to
46:53
pick your battles and choose your words carefully and really accentuate
46:57
your listening skills, but if you don't engage your children and your
47:01
grandchildren in conversation, somebody else will.
47:05
And I think that has to be acknowledged.
47:11
And some conversation partners really are better than others. Others.
47:14
I think that needs to be acknowledged as well.
47:18
Tell us more about the work of Reclaiming Childhood.
47:23
The name captured my imagination. I know that you guys do
47:26
good work. Tell us more about that, please. Yeah, so I started Restore
47:29
Childhood in 2022. I was a parent of 2 public
47:34
school kids in New York City, and I saw that the schools had closed,
47:36
that eventually when the kids came back, they were masked. Nothing about
47:41
it followed the science, even though that was a very catchy slogan that we heard
47:45
on all of the mainstream news channels. And I started digging deeper. I organized
47:49
a lawsuit to reopen New York City schools. I made a documentary called 15
47:53
Days, which is streaming everywhere and also on
47:56
our website, restorechildhood.com. But Restore Childhood
48:00
exists to help parents feel more in control,
48:04
for parents to have agency agency. We have a toolkit for parents about
48:08
gender and schools. We don't take
48:11
political sides. We're a nonprofit.
48:14
Politics plays no role in this. We really try to empower
48:18
parents with evidence and data and stories. We really—
48:22
one of my biggest concerns is our children are growing up
48:25
without heroes. And in the absence of heroes,
48:29
the antiheroes are taking their places. And so in 15
48:32
days, we have many heroes and they're just average people like you
48:36
and me who stepped up and decided to fight for the kids.
48:40
Some of them became the head of the National Institutes of Health,
48:44
Jay Bhattacharya, he's in our film. But some of them are just parents
48:48
with kids who really needed to do sports and they needed to restore sports for
48:52
their children. And I think these stories of ordinary heroes must be told.
48:56
That's something that we focus on quite a lot. So we
49:00
do tools, we do films, we have an active Substack where people,
49:04
you know, can contribute stories, or, you know, we also write about things that are
49:08
mostly in my imagination or things I'm observing that I think
49:12
we need to discuss. And I think that that is so important too,
49:16
that, you know, people who are real
49:20
people who have ordinary experience of
49:23
marriage and children and family, etc.,
49:27
they have something to say and they have something to
49:31
contribute. And I think there are a lot of conversations that need to be
49:35
had that have been ignored. And I think that is really
49:39
dangerous. And we're going to link to your work in
49:42
the show notes as well. Natalia Murakhfer, thank you very
49:46
much for a fascinating conversation. God bless your good work,
49:49
and I hope our paths cross again. Thank you so much for having me.
49:52
An absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeigue, your host every
49:57
day of The Catholic Current. You want to join us tomorrow? It's Friday on The
50:00
Catholic Current. You know what that means? Let's talk about this, you and me walking
50:03
through a complex issue together. You want to stay with us for the whole hour
50:07
because we end up with Weekend Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week so you'll
50:11
be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. After the broadcast
50:16
today. Go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio podcast. Wherever you can
50:19
find audio, you can find us. Take this to your family and
50:22
friends. Together we'll take it to the whole world. Through the intercession of Our Lady
50:26
of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you and surround you with a legion of
50:29
guardian angels with flaming swords to light your path, to protect
50:33
you from all harm and every evil, to reach the happiness of heaven.
50:37
Mighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do
50:41
pray for me, for I am a sinner.