Quite some time ago I wrote a
Difficult People post about the Yummy Mummy that has stayed with me ever since. The comments on that post made me think about things in a different way.
Yummy Mummy.
Some really lovely, really cool, really sane women appeared to identify with the title 'Yummy Mummy'. They liked it.
And MILF. They liked being called that too.
Didn't see that coming.
I thought these labels were made up by the media and a certain crass movie to belittle women. To make our appearance count for more than what we do and how we do it. To
once again make us feel that as women our main purpose is being decorative or screwable. So I was really taken aback to hear many lovely women comment on my post saying they identified with being a yummy mummy.
The feminist in me (and she's in there somewhere...) just cringes when described as a 'yummy mummy' or (god help me) a 'MILF'*. Erk. Ugh. Yuk.
Sorry. That's how I feel.
My earlier post wasn't about the lucky women who just happen to look fantastic while they're down in the mud with their children. Not at all. Getting stuck into life with your kids is what it's all about and if you can manage to look groomed and on-trend while you do it then that's great for you. But, I'm sorry, try as I might I just can't support labelling women with ridiculous badges that some mindless marketing machine made up. A 'yummy mummy', 'a MILF', a 'slummy mummy', a 'funny mummy', a 'dummy mummy' or any of the rest of the bullshit that we have to put up with. I'm so tired of the labels that I just want to have a little sleep.
And then for so many wonderful women to actually identify with these labels? To use them to describe themselves?
Nope, didn't see that coming at all.
Am I being too harsh?
What do you think about the mummy labels?
Do you identify with one or more of them?
* This has actually never happened.
[Image by Charles Gullung]
