influenced mom it is a generous book. As Petersen assesses how these women operate, she treads carefully. She’s toughest on white, wealthy, cisgender internet moms, some of whom she views as “embarrassing followers” (they’re unbearably cheesy and/or have bad politics) and others who sell an unattainable lifestyle, with robust figs of violin leaf growing in plastic-free toy libraries tastefully decorated in ecru and ocher tones. But for the most part, she’s less concerned with criticizing women who sell an idealized view of motherhood than with trying to understand why she wants to buy what they’re selling.
Although it includes “maddening” in its subtitle, influenced mom He strongly sympathizes with the influencers he studies. Towards the end of the book, just to remove any ambiguity, Petersen makes it explicit that she does not “disagree” with the profession of maternal influence.
“Maybe you should!?!?” I wrote in the margins.
There is nothing worse than to feel like Helen Lovejoy in The Simpsons, a whiny scold squealing “no one will think of the children!” Moms are already judged so harshly, held to ridiculous expectations, and often punished for deviating even slightly from cultural norms. In general, the cultural attitude towards mothers should be more generous, not less.
However, I must interject, in a non-hysterical, non-caricature, preacher’s wife way, in a totally normal, cold voice… when it comes to moms on the internet, well, should not do we consider children? After all, you can’t be an influencer mom without them.
In influenced mom, Petersen discusses how an influencer named Katy Rose Pritchard “has been forced to reevaluate her own Instagram platform and its use thanks to a stranger stealing photos of her and her children to use for ‘role-playing’.” take into account the ethics of marketing her children. Petersen writes that Pritchard spent weeks “painfully removing all photos of her children from her own Instagram feed, as well as from posts in which she had been tagged.”
Sounds good right? A prudent response to a horrifying incident, one that underscores how vulnerable we make our children by pushing their images out into the world. Only, if you visit Pritchard’s social accounts or website right now, it looks like she didn’t end up deleting photos of her children. Images of her continue to be featured in her content, even in very recent posts.
In another story touching on the ethics of posting images of children, Petersen speaks with Erica Nolan, a trans mother in Portland, Oregon. “While Erica doesn’t make her daughter the center of attention on her account, she makes sure to post photos of herself from time to time, with a sticker over her daughter’s face, just to normalize her own identity. of her as a trans mother,” Petersen writes. .
Again: Sounds good. But when I went to Nolan’s Instagram page to see how he’d worded his daughter, I noticed that his account didn’t really look like an influencer. The last 27 posts of him are selfies. About 40 posts deep, there’s a picture of his son with his face blurred. Then he returns to his face. None of the posts are sponsored. It seems like a stretch to call Nolan an influencer mom when his account is clearly dedicated to self-portraits. So her approach to showing her son online isn’t really talking about the behavior of women who do focus on mom content and monetize their home lives.
—————————————————-
Source link