Release the Mutha Within
Many of my most angstful moments are about the mother/woman conundrum. Can we both successfully inhabit the same body? Is the mother-bot slowly taking over the easy going pre-parenthood hippie? Is that last scoop of ice cream for me? And I know that many of us are in this same rocky, leaky little boat. Today's mail showed me that we are not just a group of overtired ninnies but a demographic.
I got this through my letterbox:
Now I can imagine a magazine for the woman within the mother. It would be a cross between Ms., Mother Jones, the New Statesman, Cricket and Martha Stewart only without the crazy Yankee woman lurking around hollowing apples for candle holders and trying to do something with juniper berries. It would have articles on how the hell women balance jobs and parenting. It might suggest ten ways to lobby your senator on including women's unpaid labor as part of the GNP. It would talk about how all women, mothers included, must stand together to make life better for all of us. It might talk about gun control or how to discuss sex with your preteen or, I don't know, the beauty of stubbly legs and unpainted nails.
It would not, under any circumstances, be called Cookie (what were they thinking?!) or have articles like this:
The perfect haircut for my child?! Shorter, goddamit. A BIT of pampering? That's how women have been fobbed off for friggin' years. Just a half hour in the bath with this lovely (very expensive) oil will see you right, darling. They don't mention the hour it will take to get the oil scum off the bathtub so that you can safely bathe the children the next night without them sliding around like Gerta, the Mud Wrestling Bikini Clad Goddess from Minsk. And the end of the missing sock is easy -- throw out the other one. Now there's no missing sock.
Cookie will be running articles on diaper bags: choose your favorite designer!
Strollers -- only the best!
This creepy new glossy encapsulates an essential rift in the honorable quest to redefine modern motherhood. It takes the desire for an identity independent from one's role as mother and turns it into a capitalist marketing exercise! Yes, you CAN be sexy and fertile... in this Oscar de la Renta coat! YES! You can be thin post procreation if... you are carrying this Kate Spade diaper bag! Stretch marks? Soothe them with cream? Wrinkles? Fill them with serum! Weird hair? Tame it with products! Ugly baby? Dress it in satin!
The market already promises us many pretty bandaids for our hurts large and small. Now it has found a new hurt: that the woman inside the mother is struggling to find balance. Well, balance doesn't come in a bottle or a mag. And you are not a cool mom just because your kid is wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his fat little toddler stomach. You are not a cool mom because you have a Bugaboo. You are not a cool mom just because you are thin. You are not a cool mom just because you are a MILF or a yummy mummy. You are not a cool mom just because your child can curse or knows all the words to the Doors.
It's just another hurdle. Just another artificial bar to leap over. It wasn't enough that we had to stagger through high school wearing leggings with belted lumberjack shirts and bangs hairsprayed five inches above our heads? Now we also have to designer-outfit our parenthood to be cool? No bloody way.
Hey Cookie? Bite this.
I got this through my letterbox:
Now I can imagine a magazine for the woman within the mother. It would be a cross between Ms., Mother Jones, the New Statesman, Cricket and Martha Stewart only without the crazy Yankee woman lurking around hollowing apples for candle holders and trying to do something with juniper berries. It would have articles on how the hell women balance jobs and parenting. It might suggest ten ways to lobby your senator on including women's unpaid labor as part of the GNP. It would talk about how all women, mothers included, must stand together to make life better for all of us. It might talk about gun control or how to discuss sex with your preteen or, I don't know, the beauty of stubbly legs and unpainted nails.
It would not, under any circumstances, be called Cookie (what were they thinking?!) or have articles like this:
The perfect haircut for my child?! Shorter, goddamit. A BIT of pampering? That's how women have been fobbed off for friggin' years. Just a half hour in the bath with this lovely (very expensive) oil will see you right, darling. They don't mention the hour it will take to get the oil scum off the bathtub so that you can safely bathe the children the next night without them sliding around like Gerta, the Mud Wrestling Bikini Clad Goddess from Minsk. And the end of the missing sock is easy -- throw out the other one. Now there's no missing sock.
Cookie will be running articles on diaper bags: choose your favorite designer!
Strollers -- only the best!
This creepy new glossy encapsulates an essential rift in the honorable quest to redefine modern motherhood. It takes the desire for an identity independent from one's role as mother and turns it into a capitalist marketing exercise! Yes, you CAN be sexy and fertile... in this Oscar de la Renta coat! YES! You can be thin post procreation if... you are carrying this Kate Spade diaper bag! Stretch marks? Soothe them with cream? Wrinkles? Fill them with serum! Weird hair? Tame it with products! Ugly baby? Dress it in satin!The market already promises us many pretty bandaids for our hurts large and small. Now it has found a new hurt: that the woman inside the mother is struggling to find balance. Well, balance doesn't come in a bottle or a mag. And you are not a cool mom just because your kid is wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his fat little toddler stomach. You are not a cool mom because you have a Bugaboo. You are not a cool mom just because you are thin. You are not a cool mom just because you are a MILF or a yummy mummy. You are not a cool mom just because your child can curse or knows all the words to the Doors.
It's just another hurdle. Just another artificial bar to leap over. It wasn't enough that we had to stagger through high school wearing leggings with belted lumberjack shirts and bangs hairsprayed five inches above our heads? Now we also have to designer-outfit our parenthood to be cool? No bloody way.
Hey Cookie? Bite this.
posted by Francesca at 18:45
19 Comments:
Fight the power, SM!
Middle finger straight up to Cookie from me too.
The day I bought a minivan and moved to the burbs was the day I realized that I was so cool I didn't need someone to tell me what cool was.
SM, have I told you lately that I love you? :D
Oh this is a perfect post if I ever read one. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I'm laughing way harder than anyone should this early in the morning.:)
If Cookie needs anything else to bite, I'm in line.
Now, your concept would get a subscription request from me.
Cookie-- not so much. But then, I've never lived up to anyone's expectations of what I should be, thank goodness.
aye yi yi.
right on stuntmother!
scary trends...
so many levels of fear mongering.
Looking at an ad like that (or many of the other "parenting" or "mother oriented" magazines) one would be forgiven for forgetting that Feminism ever happened or realizing that almost half century has passed since Betty Friedan wrote: "Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights - the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. Some women, in their forties and fifties, still remembered painfully giving up those reams, but most of the younger women no longer even thought about them. A thousand expert voices applauded their femininity, their adjustment, their new maturity. All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children."
"Dreamy vacations with your family"? "The difference between a Newbery and Caldicott"? Are we sure this isn't a joke? I know, I know, it's not, but come the fuck on, just how stupid do they think we are?
I'm with Kendra - if you decide to start a career in magazine (or e-zine) publishing, I'll subscribe!
Hi there, just stumbled across your blog from CityMama and Wow! What a way to end my blog reading for the night. That magazine has just gotta go. And, I have to say:
"the beauty of stubbly legs and unpainted nails"
Now that's a beauty contest I just might win!!!
Thanks for that. I needed that. Glad I found you.
P.S. I live in Philly too!
Just found you and I have to say, this is one of the best posts I've read on the mommy/marketing conundrum. I would subscribe to this magazine just so I could then burn it in a public square.
Yes! Go for it stunt mother. I love you. Just keep hitting the nail right on the head. Great.
3 weeks ago I took exactly that path with 7 odd socks. And d'you know what? the next day i find five other halves lurking down the side of the washing machine. do you think if I just pretended to through them away the same thing would've happened?
You are my new heroine.
Marry me!! Well not exactly, since I"m married already and straight, but you get the picture.
My favorite:
The perfect haircut for my child?! Shorter, goddamit. A BIT of pampering? That's how women have been fobbed off for friggin' years.
You will, however, be a cool aunt when you give your only niece a Tiffany & Co. silver rattle. Won't you?
thank you, thank you. I'm with Crankmama, you made my day. Marry me too!
LOVE THIS!!!
(and always awesome to find another Philly mama speaking her mind!)
Gee, and I thought there was a mother within the woman, and not the other way around. What a revolting tagline. What's next, "the new magazine for the person around the vagina?"
Loved your post.
Sounds like you awesome Philly women need to get together. Wish I were there with you to raise a ruckus.
I'm catching up after a month of being too busy to blog and just got to this post of yours. It reminds me of the magazine "Real Simple". A friend got me a subscription, thinking it would be right up my alley. To me, Real Simple sounds like a glossy version of the Tightwad Gazette, but no, it's full of Buy this, buy this buy this and buy this, wrapped in 3 layers of packaging for you to throw away. Ugh. Sounds like they've found a new target.
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