This article originally appeared on VICE Canada
Everyone’s favorite alcoholic smurf, Snooki, is back in the spotlight with a new “music” video about being a sexy, yung mommy. Having rebranded herself post Jersey Shore from an orange trainwreck to a slightly less bronzed lifestyle blogger, Snooki is the latest pop culture icon to capitalize on Motherhood ™.
Videos by VICE
While Snooki does manage to shout out stretch marks and saggy nipples in her video, keeping it somewhat “real,” the song is a rally call to fit, fabulous, young mothers who breastfeed but still wear four inch pumps and leopard print bustiers. I had the same feeling watching this as I did when I saw Fergie’s “M.I.L.F $” last month. Her first video since giving birth a couple of years ago, Ferg’s new song is a very confusing ode to hot moms and features a bevy of supermodel mothers who I think are fucking the milk man. I have no idea what the song is about or what M.I.L.F. money is and why it’s different from normal money.
But confusion about sexual milk aside (please someone tell me what a milkshake is in this context), what bothers me about both of these videos is the sell that all new moms now have to be MILFs.
Since when does giving birth and raising a tiny human also require you to remain in a constant and unerring state of fuckability? I understand the desire to not lose your identity to motherhood, to remain an individual whose desires and needs are separate from the entity you’ve created. But why are we still defining that identity through the horny lens of pubescent Mrs. Robinson fantasies, where you gotta be a mom in the streets but a MILF in the sheets?
The pressure to get back your post-baby body is such a damaging and bizarre cultural phenomenon. To tell someone who has just undergone a complete physical transformation that they now have to get back to bangable seems insane to me.
My mom was a different type of MILF—a Mother I Legitimately Feared. She didn’t worry about being a “cool” or “hot” mom. She wanted to make sure I didn’t die or walk into a stranger’s van or hang out with shitty kids and fuck up my dumb life. It’s not that she wasn’t a fully-fledged individual with interests beyond motherhood, it’s just that she didn’t give a shit about getting her tits out for the milk man. She didn’t feel pressure to be sexy and cool while trying to keep three kids alive.
I’m not mad at Snooki or Fergi for wanting to revel in their yung motherhood—kudos for still having time to get that gym-tan-laundry in while trying not to screw up future adults. But in an effort to hype new moms as fuckable, rather than present the reality of insomnia and weird new lumps and that thing where they cut open your vagina, we’re adding unnecessary pressure to a group of people who probably just want to take a fucking nap, rather than show (?) their milkshakes to strangers. I’m sure if you asked my mom her biggest concern about being a new mom, she wouldn’t have said “getting her ass tight for the grocery guy.”
Follow Amil on Twitter.