I was flipping through a magazine just now.
The glossy pages gleam with beautiful pictures of gorgeous homes. In between the pretty photos are pages of tips about how your house can look the same way. In the back of the magazine are more photos. Pictures of tantalizing dishes made from complicated recipes that call for 35 different ingredients that aren’t in my cupboard, and probably can’t even be purchased at any of the stores in my little town.
It’s all spectacular, but who’s actually going to spend two hours in the kitchen making goat cheese quesadillas that their kids won’t eat? Who’s actually going to scour flea markets every weekend in search of the perfect accent vase? Who’s going to spend $1000 on a chandelier for their little girl’s bedroom?”
We read these magazines because they’re an escape to a fantasy world where Legos and Hot Wheels cars don’t litter the floor from one end of the house to the other, where dinner is always served delicious and hot promptly at six every night by a smiling woman in lipstick and designer high heels.
These magazines are an ideal of what we could be, what we want to be, what we dream about.
It isn’t real.
I can only take so much of that before my thoughts turn from gauzy fantasy to anxiety about, “Why isn’t my life like that?”
Then I open my laptop. There’s a link to a Mom Blog. I click and this mom is talking about dirty dishes, the kids who she loves more than anything but that also drive her crazier than anything, and how dinner last night was macaroni and potato chips. This bit of reality is a cool breeze fluttering away the unattainable.
I come across articles like this all the time:
How to have a Popular Blog
1. Don’t write about your kids.
How to Ruin you Blog
1. Write about your kids.
Then there are the snarky pieces that make fun of the Mom Blog genre, de-cry the PR and Marking companies that flock to get products featured on Mom Blogs, and whine about why do Mom Blogs get so much attention because they don’t deserve it?
Those critics miss this one important point. The characteristics that they believe make motherhood so trivial — it’s not glamorous, it’s often menial, it’s not a unique circumstance — are the things that make Mom Blogs so popular.
Motherhood is universal. When a woman writes in a way that is honest about both the good and the bad it tells me it’s OK that my life isn’t like a magazine, because hers isn’t either.
That’s all any of us really wants to know. That we’re OK. We seek validation all the time through relationships. It comes in one of two ways:
1. They like me. They think I’m OK. They’re my friend. If they like me then I like myself too.
2. They’re just like me. If I think they’re OK, and other people think they’re OK then I’m OK too.
We look for that second kind of validation outside of relationships too. We seek it in magazines, television and movies. Most of the time those avenues, Reality TV excepted (which is why it’s so popular), present the unattainable ideal of who we aren’t but should be.
The frazzled mom who blogs about the nitty-gritty of everyday life? That’s real. That’s me. That’s you.
That’s why Mom Blogs are so popular despite being so maligned by critics. That’s why Mom Blogs aren’t going away. They help us feel OK.
Great post. There’s so much truth in it. And my kids had macaroni and cheese and cupcakes for dinner last night. 😉
Great post! So true and so relatable. I had to give up my InStyle subscription because it was just too depressing to look at all of the clothes I’d never buy and have scaled back my HGTV viewing so that I don’t always look around the house and notice how my decorating (and me) are coming up short.
Oh, to be a Mom Blogger. I’m still trying to attain motherhood. And, it’s the mommy bloggers I envy. To me, motherhood is unique. It isn’t normal. Not every woman is a mother. Not every woman who wants to be a mother can be a mother. I’m still looking for a blog I can relate to…the one that isn’t written by a newly wed or a new mom. Where do I fit in? Mommy bloggers, you are what many women want to be.
I totally agree. Mom blogs are all about the emotional connections, and seeing that you are not alone, that is a precious thing.
This is so true! I started my blog because I was a newbie mom who needed to connect with other moms. I don’t have many mom friends. Most of my friends are single and don’t have kids, so mom blogs are my connection to others like me who are sleep deprived and walk around with spit up on their clothes!!! GREAT post!