I admit to finding this blog parody, Seriously So Blessed quite funny but also rather mean-spirited, because poking fun at mummy blogs? Well, it’s a pretty soft target. Here’s how the joke goes – we’re self-absorbed, shallow, smug, boring, competitive, stupid and gratingly girly.. Okaaaaaay, but we’re also women writing about women’s lives and when has that kind of writing not been made fun of, when has it not been denigrated as trivial? And for the record, you can sound pretty obsessed talking about your job, too.
Here’s another example… a supposedly more equal opportunity joke tumblr called STFU, Parents, with the motto “You used to be fun. Now you have a baby.” Except that most of these people sound so boring and sanctimonious that I doubt they were ever fun.
Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town.
Eep. I am guilty of laughing so so hard at the STFU, Parents blog. But it really isn’t any more equal-opportunity (though I haven’t looked at the first one referenced above) – most of the poking fun happens at mom/mum’s expense. I don’t know if that’s a result of the author’s particular distaste for moms, or just a result of women posting more stuff about their kids on Facebook, since they’re the ones who usually end up doing most of the heavy parenting lifting.
And yeah, you’re right – most of the STFU Parents people? Probably not so awesome in the first place. Having children just distilled and concentrated their pre-existing battiness.
My completely biased anecdotal analysis of Facebook is that mothers do 95% of the posting about kids so that is why there’s more. Not going to rule out the other cause because hey society loves to hate on mothers, but yeah.
:cough: I have to admit it… I love STFU Parents.
Aaaaaand now I’ve looked at Seriously So Blessed and I can say with 100% certainty that I have seen very similar stuff from that first page of entries written with total sincerity in other places. Have also seen the trend of competitive tummy pictures on Facebook…Thin women post belly pics; plump women do not. Which is a real shame
(More than once I’ve looked at someone’s ’4 week bump picture’ and thought, damn girl, my belly would beat yours until the 3 month mark at least – and I’m not a big person.) Anyway, someone wrote an excellent article on this issue which I can’t find, dammit, but here’s something in a similar vein: http://wellroundedmama.blogspot.com/2009/04/plus-size-pregnancy-photo-gallery.html.
The amount of bitching about mothers always updating their facebook statuses about their kids (and the violent anti-child language that regularly crops up in comments) on STFU Parents feels pretty sexist and unfunny to me. I am Jill’s humorless feminist SAHM and stuff.
The mommyjacking posts can be kind of hilariously WTF?! though.
I totally agree about the prejudice against mothers talking about their jobs, compared to other (less critical) jobs. I remember being baffled by my then-boyfriend not wanting to visit our friends with babies because it was all they talked about – they were talking about their lives, and how they felt, and what their hopes and fears were, which seemed to me what our friendship had been built on. I didn’t see how it was LESS interesting than discussing exam pressure, or what house to rent/buy. It’s all just the stuff in our lives at that moment, and we care because we care what impacts out friends, not because their lives are intrinsically fascinating.
I think there is a thread from this post to your previous one- we as a society just want mothers and their kids to be seen but not heard. And maybe not even seen that much. Unless the mom is sexy. Then it is OK. But not too sexy, because that would be weird. I find that as I have grown into my motherhood role, I care less and less what the rest of society wants me to do, and more and more about just doing what I need/want to do.
I do find that I self-edit and try not to talk all that much about motherhood or my kids in real life, because I am well aware of the fact that many (most?) people without kids don’t want to hear it. Of course, no one asks me if I want to hear about football (answer: NO).
However, I know that the topic can actually be painful for people who want kids and can’t have them for one reason or another, and that seems like an OK reason to watch what I say.
But on my own blog? I’ll post about whatever I want. And if people don’t want to read it… they can click away and STFU themselves.
I think Seriously, So Blessed is satirizing the Mormon mommy-blog movement, so possibly it is more about the belief that these blogs are part of a proselytizing effort?
I gotta admit, i giggled mightily at quite a lot of it. I don’t really know much but Mormonism outside of what i learn from ‘Big Love’ (which is to say; nothing. I have no idea what is going on in that show) and it didn’t really represent any mothers I have met so it was more just for the general inanity of it.
I think it’s a bit sexist to target mom blogs because a lot of people are self-absorbed and only talk about 1 thing, whether it’s football or kids, but somehow it’s more OK to point this out about women. Having said that I myself avoid people, usually women, who only talk about their kids and seem to have lost their own identity. Like anything else, it gets boring to talk about one subject 99% of the time.
I might be wrong but I think that blog mocks the likes of ‘taza and husband’, ‘cup of joy’, etc etc, rather than truly interesting and resourceful blogs about motherhood. I have to admit, the above mentioned ones are really cringe inducing so a dash of sarcasm wont go amiss with me!
(also, I have a feeling its not really the author of the blog but the audience that’s being riciduled, but, again, I might be wrong)
I don’t think it’s your blog that’s being satirised. And like Hendo, I have seen a lot of those sort of blog posts, so I do know what they are on about. I don’t know if it is about women or just women who try to be perfect. I stopped reading a blog when the author, who on the surface has many of the same ideals as me, said “I’m not all perfect, I do sometimes eat a pack of biscuits.”