Sara Petersen

Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

Momfluenced

On Instagram, the private work of mothering is turned into a public performance, generating billions of dollars. The message is simple: we're all just a couple of clicks away from a better, more beautiful experience of motherhood. Linen-clad momfluencers hawking essential oils, parenting manuals, baby slings, and sponsored content for Away suitcases make us want to forget that the reality of mothering in America is an isolating, exhausting, almost wholly unsupported endeavor. In a culture which denies mothers basic human rights, it feels good to click “purchase now” on whatever a momfluencer might be selling. It feels good to hope. Momfluencers are just like us, except they aren’t. They are mothers, yes. They are also marketing strategists, content creators, lighting experts, advertising executives, and artists. They are businesswomen. The most successful momfluencers offer content that differs very little from what we used to find in glossy women’s magazines like Glamour and Real Simple, only they’re churning it out daily and that content is their lives. We flock to momfluencers to learn about fashion, wellness, parenting, politics, and to find Brooklyn-designed crib sheets printed with radishes. Chances are, if you’re a mother reading this (and maybe even if you’re not!), you are an arm’s length away from something you’ve purchased because a momfluencer made it look good. Drawing on her own fraught relationship to momfluencer culture, Sara Petersen incorporates pop culture analysis and interviews with prominent momfluencers and experts (psychologists, academics, technologists) to explore the glorification of the ideal mama online with both humor and empathy. At home on a bookshelf with Lyz Lenz's Belabored and Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, Momfluenced argues that momfluencers don’t simply sell mothers on the benefits of bamboo diapers, they sell us the dream of motherhood itself, a dream tangled up in whiteness, capitalism, and the heteronormative nuclear family. Momfluenced considers what it means to define motherhood for ourselves when society is determined to define motherhood for us.

It is 1923 and Montana is slipping into a state of decline and depression long before the rest of the country will follow suit. Drought and bootlegging are up and cattle and crops are down. Stowing her grief and insecurities neatly away in her luggage, with a hopeful heart, Jo Swenson boards a train on the Great Northern Railway, headed to a remote cattle ranch along the Northwestern edge of rugged Montana to seek out Leif Hawkins, the man advertising for a new ranch hand. She thinks her journey to the ranch is serendipitous, but after only one week of back-breaking labor, the boss arrives at the ranch and isn't pleased to find a woman inserted under his roof and into his solitude. Jo had traveled a thousand miles from home, and not one person, including her family, had guessed her true motivation for leaving the farm, but after two minutes in the room with her new boss, he starts digging at her vulnerable spot. Her past has left her bitter and cautious, so when she finds herself inexplicably drawn to him—a cold, solitary man who is burying secrets of his own—Jo is at a crossroads. The warning sentry of her heart and the compelling voice in her soul each fight for their path.During the long, hot summer filled with demanding work, riotous laughter, and solemn discovery, will Jo find the courage to become the woman she was always meant to be or will she discover once again that the worst pain is the pain she doesn't see coming—life stolen away without preamble, without preparation for mind or heart?

Sara Petersen

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