The Good White Mother

Reflections on motherhood and influencer culture…

I am currently laying in bed indulging in my nightly Instagram story binge. Although most of the content I consume is outside the realm of professionally created, carefully curated, Influencer centric rubbish….it is still somehow hopelessly aspirational. A woman has just given birth and is nursing her newborn in a white, raw silk gown. Julie O’Rourke (the infamous Rudy Jude) is creating a home birth nest in the woods. There is cream linen. Silver candelabras. Bowls overflowing with fruit. Her boys are collecting wildflowers. Leah Spicer gave birth in her family farmhouse. She saw 4 shooting stars during her 4 hour labor. It was "the perfect birth".

Unlike these women, I gave birth to my 5th child one year ago. She was unplanned. Her father and I split a couple months into my pregnancy. I was a single parent, cohabitating with my ex husband because I couldn’t afford my $1,500 a month rent. My labor was traumatic. I slipped in and out of consciousness as my blood pressure bottomed. My epidural was botched. I left the hospital with 8 punctures in my spine, leaking brain fluid, 50/50 possibility that my labor injuries would leave me with life long chronic pain. I went home to the responsibility of four children. No help other than the women who nurtured me from afar...sending groceries, bone broth, and herbal remedies that sustained us through the first week. I still cry when I think about the tenderness of the mothers who formed community around me during that time.

Not perfect. No cream linen. No fruit. No shooting stars.

I detest influencer culture...
And not in the way that most people do (everyone loathes influencers/everyone wants to be them). I hate influencer culture in the way that only an ex-influencer could....because only an ex-influencer truly understands the toxic psychology that is required to attain success...especially for those engaged in the grotesque domestic theater known as "momfluencing".

Books have been written about momfluencing. Podcasts have been dedicated to examining the industry. Curiously they always reflect the experience of the content consumer (the non-inflencer) and tend to be an unappealing mix of disgust and envy. So many critiques of momfluencer culture are actually wrapped up in the desire to attain a similar lifestyle....what I desire is to see critiques that are an absolute rejection of the influencer lie and motherhood as told through a white, privileged lens.

I spent my first three years on Instagram desperately *trying* to become a momfluencer….subsequently, I have spent the same number of years unlearning all of the bullshit I bought into during that period of time. There is a specific set of criteria that is required to achieve any measure of success within this particular corner of influencing…what results is a monolithic, bastardized, white washed version of motherhood set to a Bon Iver soundtrack….heavy on Christianity and toxic positivity.

REQUIREMENTS FOR MOMFLUENCER SUCCESS (TM):
• you must be white, white-adjacent, or adhere to behavior and appearance that is coded as "white".
• your home must be aspirational. Clean. Also white.
• your body must be aspirational. If your body is not aspirational, you must adopt a persona that masks your insecurities with a particular brand of body presentation (BODY POSITIVITY!!)
• your aesthetic must be cohesive. YOU ARE A BRAND.
• your children must be conventionally attractive. For women of color this means something very specific and problematic...your kids must be lightskinned with "good hair" (biracial children sell especially well…and mothers know it).

In the world of mommy influencers there are no queer people. There certainly are no Trans people. There are people of color...but only in small doses....and only if they are a certain TYPE of Black or brown person.

Black motherhood in particular has never been idealized the way white motherhood has...white motherhood is the standard...therefore most of the depictions of motherhood performed on social media reflects that standard. What this means for women of color is that we must flatten ourselves into a two dimensional caricature (whether subconsciously or intentionally). For many of us, this means adhering as closely as possible to the pillars of white womanhood: heteronormativity, traditional gender roles, obsession with an outer appearance that is appealing to the male gaze, worship of patriarchy. Without question, the world of momfluencing is racist, classist, ableist, homophobic, conservative, fat phobic, and wildly, wildly fake.

Unlike white momfluencers who gain a following by simply performing white mediocrity, Black and brown mothers are expected to provide an additional layer of value in order to earn a follow. Most often this means providing content that is educational in some way...very often that looks like doing the emotional labor of teaching white women to value an experience that is not their own (which is a truly Sisyphean task).

All of that said, BIPOC mothers who occupy space on social media are certainly not a monolith. The murder of George Floyd and subsequent “racial uprising” significantly changed the landscape of social media in many respects. Black influencers were in high demand as white "allies" scrambled to "diversify" their feeds. Suddenly being visibly Black became (temporarily) acceptable to the white masses. All of the "black square" hysteria provided non-white content creators with the permission structure to show up in more authentic ways. We were discussing race in the open and calling out the obvious power imbalance between white influencers and influencers with marginalized identities. We began to see Black and brown motherhood in all of its fullness.

For me personally, this was a time of intense introspection. As I began to question (and later to dismantle) my relationship to whiteness, I also began to distance myself from the cult of momfluencing….but not before being met with an onslaught of violent white fragility as I publicly pulled back the curtain on an industry that is rife with fraud, bullying, abuse, and discriminatory business practices. I could not in good conscience continue to participate in a system that devalues marginalized identities and preys upon the perceived insecurities of it’s audience in order to drive consumption (and sales).

So why does any of this matter?

It matters because mothers have a particular kind of influence, both on social media and IRL. The hand that rocks the cradle truly does rule the world…so what happens when influencer culture is dominated by women who engage in conspiracy theories, disinformation, covert white supremacy, gay panic, fabricated tales of child trafficking, Trumpism, Nationalism…..

Momfluencers are not inocuous. They are replecating the toxicity of a politic driven by hate…and they are quietly indoctrinating a new generation….one HomeGoods haul at a time.

Even in its most harmless form, the image of motherhood performed for an audience like a choreographed ballet sets an impossible standard for a job that was never meant to be clean or aesthetically pleasing. And there is also the question I keep coming back to….what happens when all of the motherhood content we are consuming is in fact a reflection of white motherhood? What impact does that have on non-white mothers? How does that subconsciously shape the ways in which we choose to present ourselves to the world? What cultural traditions are we sacrificing?
What parts of our identities are we leaving behind in pursuit of white perfection? (All of this could also be discussed in the context of motherhood that is not the cishet standard…where are the reflections of queer parenting? Why is queer motherhood not considered aspirational content?)

I'm still grappling with all of these questions. I have intentionally chosen to stop consuming content that I understand to be a less than honest reflection of motherhood. I follow artists. Writers. Community organizers. Birthworkers. I have found parents that, much like myself, are not so much creating content…rather they are documenting their daily lives. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes not.
These women and queer people are not selling me a product or a lifestyle. Their spaces are not an exercise in predatory capitalism. YES. THEY HAVE INFLUENCE. And they are using it for a purpose greater than “self”. Or maybe they are just existing…but AUTHENTICALLY.

As consumers of influencer content, we have an opportunity to reshape the narrative. We have agency. We can choose to follow women and queer people who are disrupting the influence of space. We can choose to follow people who reject the ideology of white dominant culture and expectations of motherhood rooted in patriarchy, WHITE SUPREMACY and exploitation. Our follow is a vote. Use it well.

A few favorites listed below:

@jenthezen

@Queenofqi

@_wholebodypregnancy

@raisingreaders

@smallthingsgrowhomebirth

@blackandolive

@indigenousmotherhood

@thearielseries

@Destini.Ann

@carolinelungaho

@sapphjameliaaa_

@thekindofhomesteader

(Have a favorite? Please send them my way on the gram…always looking for new inspiration!)