Imagine you have a friend who’s smart and insightful, but also snarky and silly. Now imagine she gets obsessed, personally and professionally, with social media influencer culture, specifically “momfluencers.” Sara Petersen is that friend. She writes, “Taza was just a person on Instagram, someone who made motherhood look way better and more rewarding than my own experience, and I wanted more. Whether that more was tricks or tips for figuring out how to wear my motherhood so it fit more comfortably and was more flattering, or whether that more was just a citron-yellow maxi dress or suggestions for entertaining children on an airplane, I didn’t know.” Momfluenced unfurls in this way, thinking seriously—without getting too serious—about the history of the Internet and the psychology of parasocial relationships, toxic positivity, socially prescribed perfectionism, social comparisons, and more. Each time Petersen introduces a new expert or commentator it has the flavor of “so I was at the mall and I ran into Katie and Katie said ….”
Is momfluencer culture “voyeuristic, car-crash entertainment”? Yes. Is it often an insidious exaltation of the nuclear family, traditional gender roles, and maternal sacrifice? Yes. Do we seek validation, community, inspiration, and escape, yet end up with “cringe follows” in the deal? For sure. Do momfluencers bow to consumerism and ultimately try to convince “a mom that she can cure her hopelessness by cooking and tidying up … that relief lies not in structural change but in a Nap Dress … or [that] this cleaning spray in a pretty glass bottle will transform the wiping of the kitchen island into something soothing”? A lot of them do, while waving the banner of authenticity. And yet, Petersen still sees value in being the person with wool over her eyes: “I needed to believe in a motherhood … that would fill me up, not leave me empty and searching.” At the end of the day, she says, “We perform motherhood online as a way of accessing meaning when, most days, the work of motherhood doesn’t seem to mean much of anything.”
Petersen doesn’t offer a verdict. She calls out many momfluencer posts’ racist underpinnings, and also how social media can be an intersectional megaphone. She gives momfluencing credit as a way for mothers to get clout in a society that makes parenting “a job where clout is hard to come by.” Women “controlling their own narratives and imagery” in a multibillion-dollar industry seems like a good thing. But if momfluencing can be good, how can it also induce “a perpetual teetering between self-loathing and self-righteousness” where “bursts of feeling good and of feeling bad are nearly imperceptible … but they pile up somewhere inside”?
Well, Katie said…
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