Women may be stereotyped as “catty” but the truth of the matter is, generally, we sometimes are most judgmental of one another and often, we do, in fact, prey on each other’s insecurities. We then use them to impose and dictate our standards onto other women and shame them when they don’t measure up.
I’m guilty of this for sure.
Moms do this too.
Heck, the Mommy Wars is all about Judgy Judy McJudsons, and in fact, a recent survey of millennial moms reveal that 80 percent of them have been shamed by other moms. le sigh
Getting bullied and made to feel inadequate by the popular girls and cliques was supposed to end at high school graduation, right?
But it doesn’t.
In a new piece by Anne Roderique Jones in MarieClaire published today, Jones describes the “Bully Moms” (also the title of the article”) who are fueled by social media and pop culture.
I love how Jones starts:
You can’t identify a mean mom by her Birkin bag or her lycra Lululemons. She comes in all sizes and socio-economic classes and lives in no specific zip code, rearing her head in the heartland, crunchy California, the Deep South, New York City. But you know a mean mom when you meet one: She criticizes your parenting style, calls you out on Facebook, or slathers you in snark. These are the mean girls, all grown up and blossomed into adult bullies with kids of their own. You’ve probably encountered a few at your local playground. Hell, maybe you are one.
The author then goes on to perfectly explain the evolution of “Keeping up With the Jones” from the perfect TV families to Reality TV wives and beyond:
I hesitate to blame pop culture for the mom-on-mom hate, but life does imitates art. Our parents’ generation grew up watching scripted sitcoms with impeccably behaved children (The Brady Bunch, Happy Days) and modeled their own actions accordingly. But as our entertainment appetites evolved, so did the way we treat each other … Girls who watched ‘The Simple Life’ as teens in the mid-aughts are now moms hooked on ‘The Real Housewives.’
In a world dominated by Pinterest and Instagram, is being a mother (which women have been doing since the beginning of time, mind you) starting to become an endless race towards perfection, lest you get called out for being anything less? Do we all have to keep up with the clever birth announcements, the gender reveal parties, the elaborate maternity shoots, the professional post-birth shots in the hospital ward? I recently came across a post in my feed of a beautiful blonde woman wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt with #MomLife scrolled in gold letters across the front. It’s all a perfectly curated existence, this motherhood thing.
Maybe moms today—with the pressure to be selfie-level beautiful, to cook Instagram-worthy (organic) meals, to plan lavish playdates, and to maintain a career so they can, in many cases, not just contribute to their household but be the breadwinner or even the sole source of income—are just too damn exhausted.
Fascinating and sadly accurate!
Head on over to MarieClaire.com and digest the rest.