#momfluencers

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alaina Demopoulos at The Guardian:

For Mikyla Page, keeping a three year-old daughter healthy is serious business. Before eating anything, the stay-at-home mom reads an ingredients list, staying away from artificial colors, flavors, dyes, and excess sugar. She doesn’t support vaccination, instead believing that “bathing in sunlight” will keep her family healthy, making sure her family gets outside every day to soak up vitamin D. At first, Page felt alone in her choices. “You’re called crazy for even questioning the medical field,” she said. “My intuition was telling me one thing, but the world was telling me something else. My husband was like, ‘Are you sure this is where you want to go?’ I just went with my gut.”

Now, with Robert F Kennedy Jr tapped by Donald Trump to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services, Page, who is 26 and lives in Utah, feels vindicated. Kennedy is well known for his history of pushing baseless health claims that sometimes veer into tinfoil hat territory – he’s said that chemicals in the water supply affect a child’s gender identity, and that Covid was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people. He has also long advocated against vaccines, repeating the debunked claim made by the discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield that the vaccines cause autism.

Kennedy’s supporters include an army of self-identified “crunchy moms” like Page, who are especially drawn to one proposal in particular: improving Americans’ diets and reeling in the processed food industry. In November, he accused major manufacturers of “poison[ing]” kids. Moms on social media adopted the hashtag #MAHA, which has been used in over 224,000 TikTok videos (Kennedy has promised to “make America healthy again” – a play on Donald Trump’s trademark slogan that’s often shortened to Maha). Anyone can consider themselves Maha, but mothers in particular have become its fiercest evangelists online, where they post videos explaining their politics while cooking dinner or resting a swaddled baby in their arms. Maha can be seen as the alliance of multiple health-focused subcultures. Along with crunchy moms, there are influencers and entrepreneurs who use the movement to peddle supposedly non-toxic brands of baby wipes or moisturizers. There are the chronically ill, who feel failed by the medical establishment. There are the yogis and wellness bros who believe that it’s possible to optimize your way to a better life, to heal oneself without the help of mainstream medicine. And then there is Trump – famously a McDonald’s lover, and not exactly the picture of health – and his supporters, who politicize Maha as a rallying cry against science-based elites.

But moms have a special place within the movement. They are the kinds of voters that the Democrats thought they had locked up when Kamala Harris ran on a history of prosecuting sex offenders and a platform of abortion rights. But, Page says, it was Kennedy who mad her feel legitimized for the first time. “It’s nice to have somebody backing you up, especially a male [such as Kennedy], because I feel like sometimes men take longer to catch on to these things since they don’t have a maternal instinct,” Page said. “It’s nice to have someone like Robert Kennedy and Trump to see these issues.” Page says she’s most excited for Kennedy to “crack down on dyes in food and helping the [Food and Drug Administration] regulate that”. One specific dye, the petroleum-based red 3 that’s ubiquitous in American junk food, may be banned by the FDA soon for use in food – it’s been banned in cosmetics since 1990 – since it has been found to be carcinogenic in animals. A number of Democrats, including the New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone, have sought to have the dye banned. The FDA’s current review is not related to Kennedy, though he is in favor of a ban.

[...] The past decade-plus has seen the rise of the momfluencer, women who project an impossible image of soft, mess-free, domestic bliss. They sell new mothers a fantasy – as well as promoting the products they say are required to attain it. These brands are always “non-toxic” or “organic”. Kennedy also uses this language, and his audience is primed to respond to it. Kennedy has also declared war on the “chronic illness epidemic”. Women are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses such as depression, endometriosis, and Alzheimer’s, but doctors are less likely to listen to them. Kennedy’s promise to overhaul systems like the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes on a common enemy: the idea of a traditional doctor in a white lab coat. Maha women might have felt dismissed or gaslighted by this figure, so they root against the status quo and look for alternatives – no matter how untested, or potentially dangerous.

The Guardian has an informative story on how crunchy mom influencers are embracing the MAHA vision for America, but they aren't the only health-related subculture that has joined the RFK-MAHA ride.

[mod2amaryllis]

having a vulnerable parent event has accelerated my werewolf transformation but instead of turning into a sexy big dick monster I'm becoming a weepy blob of farts wailing and begging for people to just be nice to their kids, be nice to your partner, be nice to your pets, just be nice, just be nice!!!!!

[spurgie-cousin]

that guy's video made me think, like has anyone really committed to a campaign of convincing evangelicals Trump is the antichrist? bc tbh it seems very easy

so many don't even know the Bible very well, (especially revelations of they read KJV bc that shit is confusing) and between the head injury thing and the fact that the antichrist is supposed to come from politics, i mean....it's a better fit than anyone they've tried to stick it to

i still have my Secret Lives of Mormon Wives costume idk y'all. i'm just brain storming..

[heedra]

the overlap between neopets naming and mormon baby naming is shockingly large

[baddingtonbitch]

man with 1000 kids waiting until the last episode to be like can you believe that he's also....a nazi???

yes. of course i can. i've been waiting for that shoe to drop since minute one like no shit who else would do that

[windslar]

[deanmarywinchester]

ive spent the last 24 hours in a haze of reading momfluenced and scrolling through the instagrams of all the momfluencers the book mentions and ohhhh my god I have to delete instagram and fling my phone in the river when I’m a parent. you know how being a communist with a weird gender lets you see through the matrix of social constructs sometimes? these ladies are patching the matrix back up with cute gingham as fast as I can tear it down

[annalisearabella]

The kiddo wants a Minecraft themed party which is totally fine but what's not fine are these fucking mom influencers trying to charge actual money for what amounts to 20 minutes of layering in Photoshop or whatever and a typo on top of that.

[hdmiports]

“‘vi 💜’ shared a new post: ‘my boys 💞’”

[fair-lead]

this is a really interesting article on waco texas, specifically about the history of the town & the ramifications of the magnolia brand's sudden boom

[marxistswiftieism]

who put Taylor in that 2005 Lindsay Lohan looking outfit and why did they not stop her

[odysseyofemily]

Finished Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influence Culture by Sara Petersen last night. To be honest, this book was VERY boring. It's exactly what you'd expect it would be – about how the momfluencers you see on Instagram are selling a fake story. They may seem perfect on the outside with their long billowy dress, perfectly-curled hair, clean countertops, and happy smiley children in all of their posts, but really all the majority of momfluencers are doing are perpetuating the unrealistic notion that mothers be perfect (and always happy and beautiful!) homemakers that work inside the home and that nothing is ever complicated or messy or hard. This book did point out an interesting idea that most of momfluencer culture just highlights those of privilege – white, straight, wealthy women. It doesn't take into account mom life in those with disabilities, those who aren't straight, those who are women of color, those who have to work multiple jobs and live in crappy housing, yada yada. And yet, even realizing this, it's still so easy to get sucked in to momfluencer culture and follow what they sell – not just the products that some are promoting, but the actual image and life they are seemingly living. It's so perfect, and sometimes it's just nice to escape the difficulties and nuances of one's own motherhood to embrace something that looks beautiful and easy, which the book discusses. So, there were certainly some relatable points made in this book, but honestly most of it was to be expected and there wasn't much insight beyond what most of us already probably know. All in all, it was pretty boring and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. But if ya'll want an easy book, then here you go.

[sacrifical-lamb-core]

Rip tayrn u would have loved aesthetic tiktok

[grunge-mermaid]

I tried checking out the socials of that store I went to this afternoon and didn't make it through any tiktok or reel in its entirety because the Fundie Baby Voice was too much

[hungryhungryhypocritttte]

Unkind rant:

Social media is so weird these days. Watching all these 30+ moms lip sync and dance around and show off their outfits is fucking cringy.

We get it, you want attention. Very few people care about your outfit or your favorite song.

I’m not even talking about momfluencers, really. It’s people I know irl who are larping as influencers and have like 200 followers. Who are they kidding?

Don’t use your kids for attention, don’t pretend to be a teenager, don’t act like everyone wants to be you. We don’t.

Jfc scrolling through TikTok and insta on mute really highlights how stupid these people look.

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]