Mom, the Adjective

When you are a without-child woman, your daily grooming worries are pretty simple: Does this make me look fat? Can I get away without blowing out my hair this morning? Is this red lipstick sexy or slutty?

But after you have a child, all grooming decisions must be subjected to one additional layer of scrutiny: Does this look too "mom"? Permed hair, high-waisted jeans (to disguise the belly!), no-iron blouses, short nails, sensible shoes, even all-black Eileen Fisher ensembles -- in short, if it is comfortable and practical, and you have a child, it suddenly just looks "mom."

Now deep in my feminist heart, I know this is an absurd question. Being a mother is honorable, dignified and special. I work hard at it, and I'm proud. I should reject any social pressure that deems motherhood something of which to be ashamed. Why shouldn't we rewrite our definitions, and proclaim pear-shaped bodies and low-maintenance hair to be sexy? Other societies find fully developed women to be the ideal, why shouldn't we?

Who knows? For now, I constantly find myself right back at, "Does this look too 'mom' ?"

This was on my mind when I got my hair cut last week. My long, wavy hair was getting more and more unruly, what with no time to condition and comb it properly. Not too mention that all that heavy hair was somehow drawing down my tired, dark-eye-circled face. I sort of had this concept of an elegant Sigourney Weaver bob, but when I mentioned it to my in-the-know hairdresser he said, "Mmmm..." and studiously kept combing out the rats, avoiding my eyes in the mirror. "Do you think it'd be too 'mom'?" I asked. "Well, maybe we should think about something else," was all he'd say.

I briefly considered chopping it all way, way off, hoping this would turn me a cool urban mom, which is one desirable mom look to have, especially in Brooklyn. This look, however, would require searching out some cool orange cargo pants from somewhere on the Lower East Side, building a collection of Adidas and Puma trainers and trading in my Kate Spade handbag for a messenger sack -- all things I never had the time or desire to do before I had a baby.

Finally, we decided we just needed to soften up things and compromised on cutting off about two inches and adding really long bangs, so long my husband says they don't even qualify as bangs, in fact. It's not too mom, but it's not non-mom either. Which actually feels very sexy.

Comments

[Ted]

Hm. Why even worry about whether you look "mom" or "unmom"? Why not simply look like you want to look and define the look for yourself? Seems to me you're giving people in general too much power to define what you want to look like ...