Mayim Bialik is an inherently controversial person.
It’s not always because she’s “wrong”—she just practices a different way of parenting than most people are used to.
However, there have been a few times that she’s done or said things that have not only landed her in hot water, but people found incredibly offensive.
Here’s the worst of it.
1. When she commented on Harvey Weinstein.
In an op-ed, she wrote about how she “protected” herself from assault.
“[…] my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy.”
Others quickly called her out.
Author Ijeoma Oluo summed it up perfectly: what you wear or look like doesn’t determine if you’re assaulted or not.
2. When she said some interesting things about vaccinations.
“My friend’s brother had an adverse reaction to a vaccination and he is never going to develop mentally past the age of 6 because of it.”
That’s a sentence Mayim claims she was too insensitive to write in response to vaccinations conversations.
She said that in response to an article.
Entitled, “Mayim Bialik, You Disappoint Me,” writer Marziah broke down how hard it was to hear a neuroscientist question the use of vaccines.
“She justifies her anti-vaccine stance by saying her pediatrician is ok with her decisions.”
Bialik’s pediatrician is a notorious anti-vaxxer.
3. When she talked about “co-sleeping.”
“I chose to safely co-sleep with my sons, participating in the subset of co-sleeping known as bed-sharing.”
Mayim practices “Attachment Parenting,” which is a holistic approach to parenting.
She and her sons “share a horizontal surface” to sleep.
Her thoughts left a lot to be desired.
Some were concerned that her lack of detail in her book, Beyond the Sling , didn’t explain enough about how to safely co-sleep.
Bialik, a scientist, did not provide statistics or numbers to address any co-sleeping concerns, as this article outlined.
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Yet another good reason to not get all your parenting tips from celebrities.
4. When she had more interesting opinions about medication.
In regards to refusing to give her children antibiotics (except in extreme cases):
“I’ve learned from talking to other moms that almost everything you have right now in your home and your heart is enough to deal with most everything.”
5. When she randomly came for Ariana Grande.
WTF? After seeing a billboard of Ariana’s album cover, she wrote :
“[…] And if she has a talent (is she a singer?), then why does she have to sell herself in lingerie? I mean, I know that society is patriarchal and women are expected to be sexy and sexually available no matter what we do in society, but I guess now I need to explain that to my sons?”
People quickly shut that right down.
Lauren Duca penned an article that hit the nail on the head:
“Consider that when sexy images are used by a woman promoting her own record, for example, people are scandalized by it. When those same images are being created for a male audience, there’s no issue.”
Also, what a great opportunity for Mayim to explain to her boys that women deserve rights, no matter what they wear!
6. When she had some thoughts on breastfeeding.
Bialik notoriously nursed both her sons into their toddler years.
“Whoever decided that ‘when they can ask for it, they should wean’ must not have wanted to keep nursing, and that’s fine for them, but it is working for us, verbalized or signed!”
7. That time she came for “Frozen.”
“The sister’s desire to marry this guy she just met, and the other sister getting mad at her–we still have a plot about the identification of a woman being based on her desire and search to meet a man.” She wrote.
She also worried about the film’s impact…on men. She was concerned about the “male-bashing” the film apparently did.
Rosie O’Donnell was not impressed.
Rosie pointed out some truly valid things on The View , including the fact that “male-bashing” was actually this simple truth:
“Princes sometimes suck!”
She then gave out Frozen DVDs to everyone in the audience.
8. When she wrote about sleep-training.
She wrote: “Any sleep training or sleep modification regimen that involves your baby crying and you not tending to it is going against your natural mammalian wiring.
Similarly, any time you become immune to those cries, you are pushing down a very strong hormonally primed instinct to protect and help your baby and that’s kind of sad to me.”
9. When she revealed her kids didn’t potty train.
She practiced “elimination communication” with her sons, which involved looking for cues that her kids had to use the bathroom.
“EC is a peaceful and loving way to communicate with your child and to meet their most intimate needs.” She wrote.
10. When she involved her son in his brother’s birth.
After her home birth, she said:
“Three pushes later, Frederick slithered out, and Miles was carried out of his highchair to cut the cord. A small spurt of blood startled him, and he promptly asked my husband to finish the job. Miles then sat down on the floor, and minutes later was handed a bundled up wide-eyed baby brother.”
11. When she insulted one of her fans.
A fan of hers was doing a “30 day challenge,” which is an art challenge that involves doing 30 paintings in 30 days, often only for 30 minutes.
Mayim didn’t have overly nice things to say about the painting.
Her Instagram post left a lot of fans confused.
She posted the painting, writing, “I think … a portrait of me needs more than 30 minutes. Still flattering … I think.”
She went on to ask what’s “with my teeth.”
12. When she went even farther with her vaccination comments.
“We are a non-vaccinating family, but I make no claims about people’s individual decisions. We based ours on research and discussions with our pediatrician, and we’ve been happy with that decision, but obviously there’s a lot of controversy about it.”
She said to People magazine.
This enraged scientists.
Hemant Mehta wrote an op-ed about Mayim’s comments, as well as her presence as a speaker at the National Science Teachers Association’s Conference in 2014.
They wrote: “No… actually, there’s no controversy about it, at least when it comes to people who actually know things about vaccines.”
13. The time she missed her flight.
Bialik claimed a United employee closed the door in her face and wouldn’t allow her to take her first-class seat.
“And there were five other people from my flight standing there with me who she let on the plane,” she wrote on Twitter. “Maybe she just doesn’t like The Big Bang Theory . They all had carry-on luggage too.”
Yeah, that’s definitely it.
14. When she brought biology into the parenting conversation.
“Every aspect of being a parent has been essentially programmed and accounted for before humans ever appeared on this planet. The “natural” way to get pregnant, have a baby, feed it, and care for it depends on the hormones that all animals share.” She wrote.
Many mothers had a hard time with that.
In the eyes of many, Bialik’s stance on hormones and 24/7 bonding tend to make them feel ashamed if they don’t follow in her footsteps.
One wrote that parents who didn’t practice attachment parenting “were made to feel like lesser parents because of our inability or unwillingness to devote all of our waking and sleeping hours to our babies”
Others didn’t like the science.
“I can’t help but think that by repeating as fact what might be fuzzy science, Bialik helps to promote a type of maternal fundamentalism that removes otherwise reasonable options of pain management and childcare from a new mothers’ grasp.”
