People LIke Her(2)
The career change from fashion maven to flustered mama was just a happy accident, to be totally honest with you. The world started to lose interest in shiny magazines full of beautiful people, so, thanks to shrinking budgets and declining readership, just as I was scaling the career ladder, it was kicked out from under me—and then on top of everything else, I found out I was pregnant.
Damn you, the internet, I thought. You owe me a new career—and it is going to need to be one I can build around having a baby.
And so I started blogging and vlogging—I called myself Barefoot, because my stilettos came with a side order of soul-baring. And you know what? Although it took me a while to find my stride, I got a real buzz out of connecting with like-minded ladies in real time.
Fast-forward to those first few months after giving birth, and in the 937 hours I spent with my bum welded to the couch, my darling Coco attached to my milky boobs and the iPhone in my hand my only connection to the outside world, the community of women I met on the internet became a literal lifeline. And while blogging and vlogging were my first online loves, it was Instagram that stopped me from slipping too far into the postnatal fog. It felt like a little life-affirming arm squeeze every time I logged on and saw a comment from another mother going through the same things I was. I had found my people.
So, slowly, it was out with the Louboutins and in with the little human. Barefoot morphed into Mamabare, because I’m a mama who is willing to grin and bare it, warts and all. And take it from me, this journey has got even crazier since my second little bundle of burps, Bear, came along five weeks ago. Whether it’s a breast pad fashioned from rogue Happy Meal wrappers or a sneaky gin in a tin by the swings, you’ll always get the unvarnished truth from me—although it may come lightly dappled with Cheeto dust.
The haters like to say that Instagram is all about the perfect life, polished, filtered, and posted in these little squares—but who has time for all that nonsense when they’ve got a ketchup-covered curtain climber in tow? And when things get hard, both online and off, when wires get crossed, when food gets tossed, when I just feel a little lost, I remember that it’s my family I’m doing all of this for. And, of course, the incredible crew of other social media mamas who’ve always got my back, no matter how many days in a row I’ve been wearing the same nursing bra.
You are the reason I started #greydays, a campaign sharing our real stories and organizing meetups IRL for us to talk about our battles with the blue-hued moments of motherhood. Not to mention that a portion of the profits from all #greydays merchandise we sell goes toward helping open up the conversation around maternal mental health.
If I were to describe what I do now, would you hate me if I said “multi-hyphen mama”? It’s definitely a job title that confuses poor old Joyce from next door. She understands what Papabare does—he writes novels. But me? Influencer is such an awful word, isn’t it? Cheerleader? Encourager? Impacter? Who knows? And really, who cares? I just go about my business, sharing my unfiltered family life and hopefully starting a more authentic discussion about parenting.
I built this brand on honesty, and I’ll always tell it like it is.
Dan
Bullshit.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
Because I have heard Emmy give this same little talk so many times now, I usually don’t even notice anymore what a weird farrago of inventions and elisions and fabrications and half-truths it is. What a seamless mixture of things that could have happened (but didn’t) and things that did happen (but not like that) and events that she and I remember very differently (to say the least). For some reason, tonight is different. For some reason, tonight, as she is talking, as she is telling the room her story, a story that is also to a considerable extent our story, I find myself trying to keep count of how many of the things Emmy is saying are exaggerated or distorted or completely blown out of proportion.
I give up about three minutes in.
I should probably make one thing clear. I am not calling my wife a liar.
The American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt famously differentiates between lies and bullshit. Lies, he claims, are untruths deliberately intended to deceive. Bullshit, on the other hand, comes about when someone has no real interest in whether or not something they are saying is true or false at all. Example: My wife has never fashioned a breast pad from a Happy Meal wrapper. I doubt she has ever been anywhere near a Happy Meal. We don’t live next door to a Joyce. Emmy was, if the photographs at her mum’s house are to be believed, a slim, strikingly attractive teenager.
Perhaps there comes a time in every marriage when you start fact-checking each other’s anecdotes in public.
Perhaps I am just in a funny mood tonight.
There is certainly no denying that my wife is good at what she does. Amazing, actually. Even after all the times I have seen her get up and do her thing—at events like this all over the country, in village halls, in bookshops, in coffee shops and coworking spaces from Wakefield to Westfield—even knowing what I know about the relationship of most of what she is saying to anything that ever actually happened, there is no denying her ability to connect with people. To raise a laugh of recognition. When she gets to the part about the gin in the tin, there is a woman in the back row howling. She is a very relatable individual, my wife. People like her.
Her agent will be glad she got the bit about grey days in. Excuse me. Hashtag grey days. I noticed at least three people wearing the sweatshirt as we were coming in earlier, the blue one with #greydays and a Mamabare logo on the back and the slogan GRIN AND BARE IT on the front. The Mamabare logo, by the way, is a drawing of two breasts with a baby’s head in between them. Personally I would have gone for the other logo, the one of the maternal teddy bear and cub. I was overruled. This is one of the reasons why I have always resisted Emmy’s suggestions that I should wear one of those things myself when I come along to this kind of event, why mine always turns out to have been accidentally left back at the house—in another bag, say, or in the dryer, or on the stairs, where I had put it out so I would definitely not forget it this time. You have to draw the line somewhere. Some fan, some follower, would inevitably ask for a photo with both of us and post it immediately on their Instagram feed, and I have no interest in being captured online forever in a sweatshirt with breasts on it.