Tuesday, November 11, 2014
MOM WRITES ABOUT OVERUSE OF THE WORD "MOM"
Yesterday on "The View," they discussed my NYT Op Ed on "Mom" Culture. In the segment, they referred to me not by my full name, but as – you guessed it – "A MOM"! The caption? "NY Times prints op-ed from Mom tired of pressure to be Super Mom."
Oh, the delicious irony! Go watch the clip now, and savor this moment of extreme cultural absurdity with me.
4:36 PM
Sunday, November 09, 2014
WAVE GOODBYE TO 'MOMMY'
I wrote about "mom" culture for today's New York Times, and the mansplainers are already out in droves, informing me that I should embrace this precious time because before I know it, blargle bingle bam. This is very helpful, because I bore children without ever considering what it meant! I have spent hours upon hours and thousands and thousands of dollars on these strange small humans who for some reason live in my house with me, and I have this giant scar on my abdomen, and still I'm all, "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? WHERE DID MY MARTINI GO?"
The unwritten bottom line to that piece is that parenting is not a gender-specific job, and work-life balance and parental leave and paid daycare are not women's issues, they're PEOPLE ISSUES. If we want parents to enjoy their lives and feel good about their choices, we need to stop pretending that the pressures of balancing it all are entirely a WOMAN THING. We need to acknowledge this personally, and at a policy level. And thus ends the "Stating The Obvious" portion of my program!
For more clues about my mediocre style of mothering, though, go read this companion piece to the mom culture one: HOW TO WRITE, published by The Awl, see also the best website you might not have heard about yet but will soon bookmark and devour regularly. I also write an advice column called Ask Polly for NY Magazine's The Cut, which is often about finding true love but is also about how to live in the world and be your nasty self and still be happy. I also write funny-ish stuff, like this NYT Magazine piece about Buzzfeed, this other one about CrossFit, or this Shouts & Murmurs about welcoming in all of your social media forever-lovers.
And to all the mothers who came here because they were thinking, "Oh Jesus, it's nice to know that I'm not alone!"? Do a Google search on "mom culture" and see which words come up next to it. You are far from alone, my friends!
11:04 AM
