Monthly Archives: September 2011

Post BlogHer I’ve been following up with new folks I met and some who I was happy to reconnect with. I’m having tons of conversations with gobs of people about mom blogging and the micro community known as the Mom Blogosphere.

Conversations are awkward and they always begin with the tenative use of the term Mom Blogger or Mommy Blogger. Then whoever it is I’m talking with shyly asks me if that’s the appropriate term to use. “Yes it is,” I tell them, “That’s the term you use when you’re talking about the Mom Bloggers. When you’re talking to the Mom Bloggers be sure to call them bloggers, publishers or Moms Who Blog. Do not call them Mom Bloggers to their face.” I then go on to explain to them that yes, I am a Mom Blogger, and no, I don’t give a flying fuck what you call me. Please just make sure you call me.

Typically at this point there’s a sigh of relief and start asking what makes a Mom Blogger famous. Lots of stuff I guess… I try to not answer this one because it’s totally unanswerable. Mom Bloggers are NOT famous. I mean Heather Armstrong and Rhee Drummond are famous in a total D List sort of way. But let’s be frank, more people recognize Kathy Griffin and her new face than the most “famous” Mommy Bloggers.

Now I’ve put these folks at ease. Probably twenty minutes into this sort of conversation is where I admit that blogging is silly, that bloggers take themselves too seriously but By Gawd big business would be crazy to ignore the social stream the real questions begin.

“Sometimes people say that Mom Bloggers get famous because of tragedy.” This is typically whispered, because you know, I won’t repeat whispered words, right?

Right now about 55 people are flipping the fuck out thinking that I’m telling their secrets. Stop. Don’t panic, 54 other people whispered the same sentence to me. No one knows it was you. More importantly 372 other people thought about having the conversation, they just weren’t as tacky as you and I.

Yes, sometimes Mom Bloggers get famous because of tragedy. Certainly Dooce is known for getting fired because of her blog and for her struggles with Post Partum Depression. Casey Mullins is known for her battles with depression and later with infertility. Anissa Mayhew has blogged her way through parenting a child with cancer and two strokes of her own.

What folks outside Mom Blogging don’t really understand is that it isn’t victimhood that makes these women famous. It’s their resilience. Dooce (Heather Armstrong) got fired for her blog and then turned it into a career that sustains both herself and her husband. Casey talks about her battles with depression candidly and other women feel a little less alone, a little less frightened. Anissa is sharing her recovery with the world. If I were in a similar situation Anissa is who I would look to for support and understanding.

It’s not just Mom Bloggers who discuss their ailments, tragedies and bumps in the road. Drew Olanoff had the entire twitterverse blaming his cancer. IHadCancer.com is a community that exists to support folks with and recovering from cancer. DiabetesMine.com is a fabulous resource for folks with diabetes.

Mom Bloggers love a heroine. We want to cheer each other on through our victories and celebrate. Maybe because Mom Bloggers are busy talking about our kids and our homes, the rest of the world feels free to mock us a little. I understand that from the outside it’s easy for folks to whisper, “She’s only famous because her baby died.” That’s just not it. She’s famous because she lived to see another day.

Jane is twelve. This autumn she will be thirteen and I’m pretty sure what we’re experiencing here is not unique. The elementary school years were pretty easy, there were no big upheavals, just a bit of mean girl behavior in third grade that got nipped in the bud, but nothing monumental. Sixth grade was pretty much a cake walk too. This summer there’s been a change in the air.

Jane is pissed at me because I have limited her phone access. After 10pm she can only text us and her grandparents, the same goes for phone calls on the cell. Further, her computer time is limited to ninety minutes a day, the computer simply shuts off after ninety minutes. These simple steps save Mr. G and me from policing screen time.

Jane came to me with tears in her eyes. I treat her like a baby and none of the other parents have time restrictions for their kids. In fact some of her friends are scared of me.

Good.

I had to explain to Jane that I hadn’t recently called any of these other parents for advice on how to monitor social networking and child-rearing. I had to explain to her that unrestricted smart phones for 12 year olds means that a parent isn’t doing their job. I then got to remind her that I’m not her friend and her friends are not allowed in the master suite at any point in the day, not even to pee, there are bathrooms downstairs.

Something horrible happened. Instead of tears her eyes turned a steely blue and her lips pursed shut. We were nose to nose and I got a curt, “fine then”. My daughter turned on her heel and walked out of the room, composed but seething.

I told Mr. G about the event and I asked him what he thought. I told him that she’d said that none of the other girls had media restrictions and that I’d told her our position on it. I asked him what he would have said to her if she asked him to lift the nighttime texting and social media bans. His response? “Drop Dead.”

At least I have an ally. I really hate that it’s so clear that we’re going to have prolonged battles.

The four of us are in a taxi cab in San Francisco when the cabbie starts telling us about his smart granddaughter. She is seven and doesn’t like to eat breakfast. When he told her that children in Africa didn’t have any food she said, “So.”

Just like that, she said, “so?” and nothing else. Because starving children in Africa mean nothing to a seven year old girl living multigenerationally in San Francisco.

Last night I posted a quick video where I opened up a new ASUS Lamborghini computer. Within seconds a comment appeared on YouTube:

meanwhile in Africa….

I’m going to take a note from the seven year old. SO?

I’m going to go ahead and blame cause marketing for all this nonsense, this ridiculous middle class guilt that prevents us from enjoying anything nice if it isn’t tied to a charity. Sometimes you just want something wonderful, and sometimes you work your ass off to afford something wonderful and there’s no reason to not enjoy it.

Charity matters. Giving of onesself is something that makes us better people. Biblically and traditionally the most cherished gifts, the ones seen as being the most pious are anonymous. When you donate two cents on every hundred dollars and then take out seventy three ads to tell me that you’re fighting breast cancer I don’t call that giving. I call that taking.

Understand that it’s not just Africa fatigue over here, I’m also sick to death of the pink ribbons that the Komen foundation slaps on everything. Stop fighting breast cancer with known carcinogens and start giving money to cancer prevention. For fuck’s sake am I the only one with a brain around here?

Last week a celebrity put out a press release that in lieu of gifts for his one year old daughter’s birthday guests were asked to make donations to a charity. One year old’s don’t care about gifts, but they LOVE boxes. Parents of one year old’s often need gifts because they’re young families surviving on more love than money. So good for you mister celebrity that doesn’t need an extra pack of diapers, this is the moment when you invite friends and family over and say “no gifts please”. It’s not necessary for folks to give you something every time they walk over your threshold, and it’s tacky as hell to tell folks what they have to do with their money.

But it only gets worse, because at some point one of your neighborhood kids will not show proper gratitude when his parents give him a gift and the parents will have a sixth birthday party with a charity theme. Really. These horrible people will insist that their little giver has everything he needs and that everyone should just show up with a donation to save the planet. This is uncomfortable, everyone knows that the kid wants gifts, but you’ve got to buy the dumb charity card that’s probably going to just support a fun run or some swank offices in DC so that little Johnny’s Volvo driving mommy can show Los Angeles how full of gratitude her son is.

I don’t want to be asked at the grocery checkout if I’d like to donate to anyone. I really resent the big grocery chains asking for my money so that they can say they’ve given a hundred bazillion dollars to charity and given back to the community. If they want to give back to the community they’ll make sure the folks in my neighborhood have health insurance.

I love that bloggers are working with nonprofits to highlight the plight of those less fortunate. I like that they’re not asking us to do anything, just to listen and to be aware. I have some serious cause marketing fatigue.