"When I became a mother, I became very interested in how my body was seen by society."
Author and journalist Alev Scott has written the book many women didn't know we needed. Cash Cow is a bold, meticulously-researched investigation into the global commodification of motherhood. I promise: it's impossible to put down.
It started with an oversupply of breast milk. When Alev Scott had her first child she wanted to donate her excess milk to a hospital milk bank, a generous, straightforward impulse. But while researching how to do it, she stumbled onto something she hadn't expected: a thriving commercial online market for breast milk, with strangers — many of them men! — willing to pay for it. Shocked and fascinated in equal measure, she did what any good journalist would do. She went undercover.
That moment of personal curiosity became the seed of Cash Cow. It's a book that spans continents and asks uncomfortable questions: Who profits when women sell their eggs? What does it mean to carry a child for someone else — in the US, where surrogacy is a regulated market, or in countries where it is anything but? And how did we arrive at a world where the most intimate aspects of womanhood carry a market price?
"When I became a mother, I became very interested in how my body was seen by society." — Alev Scott
In this Month's Make Your Mark conversation with Alev, she speaks with the characteristic clarity and warmth about what drove her to write the book. A writer previously known for her work on Turkish politics, she described Cash Cow as a deeply personal departure: a reckoning with how society views the maternal body, prompted by her own.
The conversation also ventures into the wider political landscape. We discuss the assault on women's legal protections, the exploitation of women in conflict-affected regions, and the global supply chains — eggs, wombs, milk — that quietly depend on women in vulnerable positions. It's a conversation that feels, as Alev herself puts it, incredibly timely.
It's this combination of rigorous investigation and warmth that makes both the book and the interview so compelling.
The full conversation with Alev Scott is available now on the Paradisefold video blog. Whether you're a mother, thinking about becoming one, or simply someone who believes women's bodies belong to women — this one is for you.
FIND ALEV ON X AT @ALEVSCOTT, AND GET THE BOOK HERE:
UK ladies - here's a Waterstone's Link.
US ladies - The US edition publishing 13th October. But if you can't wait, get the e-book (or Amazon version - boo!) here.
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