Good Mothers versus Badass Mothers

I swear, if I read one more article by a wannabe badass mother I am going to self combust. Here's the latest, telling us what good mothers do and proudly exclaiming her badass-ness because she doesn't do them. (It seems to be a made-up or arbitrary list of "good" parenting habits by the way.) Interestingly, "reading to your child" isn't on the list of good parenting points. Not sure what that says but I'd do that before I forced them to eat vegetables.

"Bad" seems to be the new "best" way to parent these days. I'm such a slovenly mother that I'm not going to wash my kids for two days. Ooooh. (You'll notice in the article that she's so Un-badass she has to give us a reason. Real badasses don't feel the need to justify.) I hate to pick on this mother in particular because goodness me, there's a post like this almost every week now.

And apparently "bad-mothering" is now a movement, to counter the saintly "good mothers" we used to read about, although personally, I knew very few like that. There's even a bad-mom blogging genre, for heaven's sake. But as this piece in Salon illustrates, the slacker moms (another badass term) are every bit as judgmental as any other preachy mothers. I quote - "The issue with all this bad mothering, besides the culture of reverse bullying it has created, is that it doesn’t do much to undo the good mother myth that it was set up to squash in the first place."

Exactly. 

How insecure do these badass mothers have to be that they write books about how bad they are? And let's recognize the massive elephant in this particular room - no real, honest-to-god badass mother is going to sit down and write a book - especially about her parenting style. Get real. She doesn't preach, she just does her own thing. And the kids of pretend badass mothers are probably perfectly "normal" too. It's a bit like confessing that you never take your make-up off at night, when you have flawless skin. You're not going to proudly confess that one if your entire face is covered in zits now are you? Any more than you're going to fess up to being a slacker mom when your first born is in a juvenile detention facility. 

So once again, I say unto thee - Just do what works for you and stop looking around to see what everyone else is doing. My guess is, we're all doing the best we can. 

Incidentally, here's a real badass mother. 

Bullying - Bringing out the Best in People?

As I mentioned in my last few posts, there's quite a lot of bullying on t'Internet isn't there? For reasons we have yet to figure out, people seem to think that if they're not physically next to someone, they can say or do whatever the heck they like.

Sometimes though, it brings out the best in people. Other people, that is. People who could really just walk away, ignore the troll or sink to that same vile level, choose to be the better person.

Last week, we had the truly spiteful (and probably very damaged) Katie Hopkins, trying to lambast the very talented Kelly Clarkson for her post pregnancy weight. Thing is though, it only served to show us what a lovely, confident and yes, generous person Clarkson is.

Another unbelievable example of fat-shaming and bullying happened when two utter A-holes took photos of a heavy set gentleman having fun and dancing in a pub. Apparently they were laughing so hard at him, he stopped. Just look at the shame and sadness on his face in the second photo. Breaks my heart. The post said "Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week. He stopped when he saw us laughing." Way to go there folks. Your parents much be so proud.

But this is where it all gets good. Rightful outrage led to a Twiiter hashtag #FindDancingMan and...well, here's the story.  He's being flown to LA for a huge dance party, with famous DJs and musicians now offering to help. Brava to the young lady who started the campaign to let him dance.

And then of course, there's Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban as punishment for her outspoken views on the regime and for her call for education for young women. Her assassination attempt caused international outrage and more than 2 million signatures on the Right to Education Campaign. This in turn, led to the ratification of Pakistan's first right to education bill. Malala is now a global advocate for the right of young women to be educated and she is c-founder of The Malala Fund. In 2014 she was co-recipeint of the Nobel Peace Prize and has gained international admiration for her work.

So I guess what I'm saying is that, bullying may be all around us, but it's usually met with an even greater force!

As Cassandra Fairbanks (who found Dancing Man) said - "I hope people realize how easy it is to do something good. I didn't even leave my couch and look at what happened."