What Not to Watch

I’ve been reading the Baby Shower posts for Liz, Christina, and Tammie, and cracking up over the collections of stupid parenting advice people are posting in honor of the event. This made me think of some of the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard, which I witnessed the other night when I watched an episode of What Not to Wear. In my defense, I was trapped on the couch with a wakeful baby. All 347 other channels in our cable package were airing either sports highlights, infomercials, or infomercials for sports-highlight DVDs. What Not to Wear was, I thought, the only reasonable option for keeping myself awake while getting the baby to sleep.

So I watched this show with the two snarky hip New Yorker hosts sniping their fashion expertise at the supposedly ugly duckling they’d lured into their Room of Humiliation with the promise of a Whole New and Very Fashionable Wardrobe. And at first I thought it might prove mildly informative, because this week’s guest sucker was a thirty-something mom like me. I’m the first to admit I could use a clothing makeover. My wardrobe pretty much amounts to a uniform these days: Eddie Bauer V-neck tee over jeans or capris. Naturalizer Mules coming apart at the seams. Sometimes (forgive me) a cardigan because I run to the chilly.

A fashionista I ain’t.

But this show, it made me want to scream. First we had to listen to twenty minutes of Stacy and Argyle (I cannot for the life of me remember the male host’s first name, but it doesn’t matter because his whole identity is expressed by his sleeveless-sweater-over-short-sleeved-button-down anyway) brutally mock their makeover subject for her bulky sweatshirts, nondescript jeans, and basically for being such a dumb cluck as to have ever allowed children to affect her waistline, her budget, or her daily schedule.

“You’re more than just a mom,” they kept telling her, the condescension dripping like blood off their pointy, bleached, metrosexual teeth.

It was clear Stacy and Argyle have swallowed some Mommy Wars line about all the poor women who’ve “lost their identities” through having children. They were on a mission to do more than de-frump; they quivered with sarcastic zeal to rescue the club-hopping twenty-two-year-old they seemed certain was trapped inside a prison made of minivans, Christmas sweaters, and diaper bags.

And all the time I’m watching this attractive, intelligent, good-humored woman talk animatedly and happily about her life, which involves both raising her children and serving as spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, and it is perfectly obvious she has no identity angst at all; she’s very happy with her life and basically just needed a hot outfit for an AHA event where she was going to make a speech.

“Here’s the real you,” Stacy and Argyle informed her, decking her out in an “everyday” outfit consisting of $200 pair of jeans, a smart blazer, and high-heeled boots that probably cost more than a year’s worth of Huggies.

I saw the “more than just a mom” suppress a smile, which was a charitable response in the face of such idiocy. Stacy, honey, if you think a thousand-dollar outfit is necessary for personal fulfillment, I weep for you. Twenty-five bucks at Target and a baby smeared with cracker crumbs will fill your heart with more mushy happiness than the most fab pair of boots ever ripped off a cow’s back.

Look, I like to look good. In fact, I feel somewhat obliged to make an attempt at looking, if not on the cutting edge of fashion, reasonably well put together and attractive. I like to bust stereotypes, you know? It is possible to have five kids and still be hot. In fact, the fact that I have been impregnated numerous times probably attests to my hotness.

But Stacy, Argyle, DUDES. Guess what. I am more than just a MILF. I am also the owner of this thing called a BRAIN. It is so highly advanced that it can, you know, reason. And do math. Like this equation: $1000 outfit + 2T (where T represents number of toddlers under same roof) = complete waste of money.

It’s about time

A thread over at BlogHer got me thinking about how fortunate I am to be able to be home with my kids, and have them home with me. My sister doesn’t have that luxury. I know a lot of women choose to juggle out-of-the-house jobs and kids, and I know that lifestyle has its challenges, but they are challenges that come about by choice which must make them easier to deal with, right?

My sister, a single mom, has no choice; she has to work, and she therefore doesn’t get to spend much time with her daughter.

This makes me think about that BBC show Berkeley Square that aired on PBS several years ago. It was all about nannies in Edwardian London. I think it was Edwardian. Or was it Victorian? I’m trying to remember if there were any motorcars. Now it’s getting muddled up in my head with Upstairs/Downstairs. It doesn’t matter. The point it, there was one nanny who had a child of her own (secretly, or she would have lost her job). She was an Irish girl who got pregnant by the son of the lord of the manor, oh the scandal, and she left home and went to London with her baby and found lodgings with a nice Russian woman who took care of the baby for her all day. And that just killed me, thinking about this girl having to leave her own baby to go take care of other people’s children.

But that’s been going on forever, and it happens all the time today.

I am so lucky. Well, my religion says you shouldn’t say “lucky,” you should say “blessed.” Except I have a hard time with that, because why should I be more blessed than my sister? God loves us both the same. I guess I do think there is an element of luck at play in our lives—not a superstitious concept of luck but something for which there is no better name than the luck of the draw. I drew a pretty fine hand of cards. Did God stack the deck in my favor? Did I just make better decisions with the hand I was dealt?

Hmm, better than my sister, yes probably. But still.

Okay, yes, I did work hard to put myself in the position of getting to stay home with my children. And I have made sacrifices, choices, that make this work. Small house, frugal living, career on the back burner.

But still, but still.

One of my kids just bounced over and asked me to scratch a terrible awful itch in the middle of her back. I got to stop writing this and scratch her. And I knew it was a luxury, a great blessing, a high card for my royal flush.

Ain’t no bigger gift than time to just be together.