Dump the frump: Casualties of the mommy wars.

First of all, I don't condone the phrase "the mommy wars". It's stupid, uncreative, and perpetuates the problem I'm about to attack.

The problem I'd like to talk about today is pandemic frump. The wide, high waist-banding of American women. American women are voluntarily re-juvenilizing themselves after having children, despite the location and compensation of their major toil. American women with children, by and large, after that first head through the vagina, seem to begin a process by which the number of seams in their clothes decreases, leading to the sack-effect, and the number of stretch fibers increases, leading to the perpetual gym class effect. Most American women, by the time they've completed childbearing, have plunged so deep into the creeping frump that they own several varieties of matching sweatsuits; including 'nice ones', which are for going out, not working out.

A woman I work with has regained about 85-95% of her swerve after having her third child. It's not just about losing weight, which she has (and she looks like the smoking hotness- I say this because her husband occasionally reads this blog), but about dying her hair. Reading grownup books. Successfully coming to work with a swipe of well-selected berry lipstick. Saying "fuck" and "shit" occasionally. Reading books clearly meant for an adult audience, that have nothing to do with raising her child's IQ score by 3 1/2 points, or the benefits to the family bed. She is a mother, and yet retains her identity as a thinking, complex, sexual, adult. And I salute the hell out of her.

Yet she is rare.

Most of the women in her closest demographic seem to dive with great speed into the fanny pack and factory second sweatpant rack and never come up for air. They wear disney characters. Warner brothers. Pink and blue and baby yellow sweatpants with frayed bottoms and sagging asses.

This is a larger problem than it seems to be. Why shouldn't busy women wear whatever they want? Why should a woman with other things on her mind try to put on a certain aesthetic front? Why shouldn't a woman who runs after kids, does endless errands and chores that would disgust and bore a sensible person like me- get to wear whatever she feels like?

Because it's not really what she wants. It's what she feels is her default setting. Her uniform. What she is expected to wear. Wearing a matching sweatsuit, unflattering high-waisted jeans, or a t-shirt with a cartoon character on it isn't anymore comfortable or practical than wearing clothing that is considered acceptable for the nulliparous american female; it's just become expected.

It has become expected that a woman, having begun or completed childbearing, should begin to divorce herself from her former life, and throw herself entirely into the mommy world. Thus: Mommy wars. It's not a war about women's lifestyles, women's choices, women's guilt, or women's achievement- it's a war about what is and is not appropriate for a mommy. A woman is increasingly judged on how much of a mommy she becomes. Can a mommy be a mommy when she's still working? Can a mommy be a mommy while she tries to maintain a romantic relationship with her husband? Can a mommy be a mommy while she pursues her own interests?

Fuck that shit.

A woman is a mother to her children; she will remain a mother to her children until they die or are given or sold away. Mommy is how her children see her, regardless of how she is seen by others. Children are little narcissists. They see their mother as mommy, and mommy only, no matter if she continues to work, or fuck, or wear adult clothing. Because that is what children do.

So why mommify women with children? Who benefits from the rampant mommification of women? Who has an interest in guilting women into becoming, not just mothers, but full time mommies?

It's a post-feminist backlash. I normally get a kick out of post-feminist backlashes. Because, in general, post-feminist backlashes happen when the protections of feminism get out of hand, and begin to confuse adult women with adolescent girls. When protectionism threatens agency, sometimes a backlash is needed. However, this is not the case with mommyism. Mommyism is a post-feminist backlash that juvenilizes. It simplifies the complicated lives of women into one issue. It nullifies the complex internal lives of women into cookies and cartoons.

I think the root is from the children of feminists. Something jarring happens, when growing up, when we realize that our mothers (formerly mommies) are people. With all the strengths, weaknesses, foibles, hopes and yearnings, failures and vices, that we recognize in ourselves and our contemporaries. This happens sometime between 16 and 24. It's a good thing. But it can be uncomfortable and upsetting. Suddenly, mommy is gone. And someone new, a human being, is in her place. My mom and I have a great relationship, post mommy. We drink red wine and laugh. But it was hard, and weird, to learn that she was more than I had ever thought she was.

So this is natural. It happens. It will always happen. But maybe it happened a little too early for this past generation, women just older than I am. Maybe their mommies got divorces and boyfriends, and it was hard. Or maybe they felt betrayed and upset when learning that their mommies were people, and never really got over it. And maybe they blamed this transient dissonance on feminism, and swore never to put their kids through it.

And so.

Women became mommies. Housewives became stay at home moms. No longer head of household operations, in charge of serious adult business that included amounts of caretaking and nurturing, everything became in service of mommyhood. Forget cooking and cleaning and housework; household tasks are not what mommy is here for. After all, cleaning and cooking are for the adults in the house. Mommy is here for her babies. And her babies only.

The mommy uniform, the defiantly frumpy, the elastic waisted, the ugly and pastel and indistinguishable from outsize toddlers clothes identify the mommy's priorities. Children first. It's as if they dressed her, even. Then sundry other developmental and educational priorities for the children. Then, midway down the list, her own interests are. The less she exists, the better mommy she is. The less time and energy it looks like she has spent on herself, the better mommy she is.

This is bullshit.

Yes, putting children's interests first is important. Children should be clothed, and fed, and nurtured. But children's whims should not come before adult needs. When that happens, a dangerous imbalance occurs. Adults vanish. I've been reading debates on whether people with children should have alcohol in the home, whether they should smoke, even far away from their children, whether they should own pornography or sex toys or R rated movies and books with naughty passages. Should adults have parties children aren't welcome at? Should adults go to restaurants their children wouldn't enjoy? Should adults go away for a weekend? Lock their bedroom door? Have sex? The answers, by the significantly mommified, to all of those questions, is no.

Apparently, the best thing a mommy can do for her children is become one of them. Forgo the privileges of adulthood entirely. Become a creature whose motivations and cognitions are entirely comprehensible to a three year old. Mommy's here. Mommy loves you! Anything that would appear, even momentarily, confusing or (horror!) rejecting to a preschooler is out.

"Why would mommy and daddy want to go away without me?"

"Why do mommy and daddy lock their door?"

Mommy would never lock her door. Mommy would never go out without her babies. Mommy would never even own anything innapropriate for her babies to see or chew or know about, because mommy's babies are her only thought, ever! And this continues.

And this is not sustainable. Certainly not. Because, like it or not, Mothers are adult women. Adult women want what other adults want. Some amount of sacrifice of instant gratification is necessary in parenting. Some amount of economic, or aesthetic, or even physical sacrifice is inherent to parenting. But the complete sacrifice of adult identity, evident by creeping frump, is uneccessary and uncalledfor.

Please. Ladies. Dump the frump. For your own good. Buy some pants with belt loops. Get a babysitter. Go watch an R rated movie. Have a little sex. Drink a little wine. And please, for the love of god, throw away that goddamned kitten sweatshirt.