Abstract
In June 2012, Star magazine ran a magazine cover in which celebrity mothers holding their young children were captured, unbeknownst to them, in photographs. The headline running across these photos reads: ‘Star Report Card: Best and Worst Moms!’1 Below this are questions meant to entice the reader to purchase the magazine to find out more about how these celebrity moms measure up to one another: ‘Who chooses booze over storytime? Who lets her kid smoke? Who hasn’t seen her son for months?’
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Notes
Warner, Judith. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. NYC: Riverhead Books, 2005, p. 4.
As is evidenced in this chapter, the terms ‘mom’ and ‘mommy’ are both used by bloggers, and academics decide which term to endorse. While the term ‘mommy blog’ can be seen as further infantilizing women, research indicates that many women are purposely reclaiming the term ‘mommy’ in these instances. See: Rahoi-Gilchrest, Rita L. ‘Momtinis, Not Martyrs: Examining “Anti-Mom” Blogs, Muted Groups, Standpoints, and the Struggle over Motherhood’. Media Depictions of Brides, Wives, and Mothers. Ed. Alena Amato Ruggerio. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012, pp. 181–93.
Morrison, Aimee. ‘“Suffused by Feeling and Affect”: The Intimate Public of Personal Mommy Blogging’. Biography 34.1 (2011), 37–55.
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Buchanan, Andrea J. Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It. NYC: Seal Press, 2003, p. 57.
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© 2016 Melissa Ames and Sarah Burcon
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Ames, M., Burcon, S. (2016). Changing the Playing (or Reading) Field: Reconceptualizing Motherhood Through Humorous Parenting Texts. In: How Pop Culture Shapes the Stages of a Woman’s Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56618-8_8
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