An Excess of Fabulousness (or: why I don't read Mormon Mommy Blogs)

Confession: I don't read any of the famous Mormon Mommy Blogs. (Like CJane or Nat the Fat or even Rockstar Diaries, which is a great title for a blog.) I did, for awhile. In a way, they're comforting: an oasis of the familiar in a landscape of non-religious writing. But I stopped, and here's why: they depress me.

So when I read this article on Salon.com, by Emily Matchar, about Mormon Mommy Blogs, and how many non-Mormon, non-mothers love to read them, I got a little bit more depressed. Not to mention annoyed. Here—go read the article. I'll wait.

Back? OK, here's what annoys me: these women present to the world the face of what it's like to be a Mormon and a mother. Their "shiny, happy lives" have an appeal to the women out in the real world because they make things like marriage and motherhood seem "completely unproblematic." Which is exactly why I  don't   like reading them. The blogs portray an excess of fabulousness: fabulous dinner parties! fabulous outings! fabulous friends! fabulous marriages! Fabulous crafts and furniture and homes! The lives these bloggers live seem utterly perfect, down to the exact shade of pale blue they painted their living room wall. Not to mention their husbands. And their children.

Possibly this annoyance of mine comes across as simple, brittle jealousy. If I had a fabulous life like theirs, I wouldn't feel annoyed, right? If I just had all the right clothes, and beautiful hair, and an excess of cash to spend however I liked. Or maybe if I had a fabulously large blog readership I, too, would be content with putting my shiny, happy face forward.

But it's more than jealousy. It's also the simple fact that the world sees them as the face of Mormonism. This  is how fabulous your life will be if you are a Mormon! Isn't that just grand? The gospel will bring all of this cool, amazing stuff into your life. You will be fabulous!

And I couldn't agree less. Maybe it's because I am, at heart, a rogue Mormon. Doing my best to live it but still questioning and struggling. The gospel hasn't brought me any of the fabulous things those women have. My house is fairly lame—no one would ever think it is well-decorated. Far from the perfect shade of pale blue, most of my walls are white. White that needs to be re-whitened. My children are perfect to me, of course, but they are not perfect and I would be loathe to put such a burden as perfection upon their shoulders. My husband doesn't look like a cute graphic designer. Our marriage is so far from perfect it isn't even funny. We fight. A lot. My kids say things like "this family is pathetic" and "no one listens to me" and "why is everyone else more important?"

We are not shiny.

But, you know? Even though I really am  envious of those blogs' high readership (do they write better than I do? or is it simply their topics? or better marketing skills? or their ability to pull off the shiny-happy-plastic thing that I just can't?), I don't know if I believe the "my life is perfect" act. I don't think the gospel exists so that I can make crafts with my kids every afternoon. I don't think being a good LDS person has anything to do with the color of your walls or the shape of your husband's eyeglasses. It has to do with me wrestling with myself. It has to do with me learning and growing and trying to prepare my children for their futures. 

The gospel doesn't give you wealth. It doesn't bring you your dream home or the ability to decorate it well. It doesn't give you amazing crafting skills, a deft hand at picking out the perfect vintage dress, or the luck of finding the perfect pet (that you can dress in a raincoat). It doesn't even magically make all of your relationships blissful. What it does give you is far less tangible.

Women like Emily Matchar, "secular, childless women who may have never so much as baked a cupcake," are drawn to the Mormon Mommy Blogs because of the happy ease they present. They read them because they are different from their own experiences and provide a glimpse of an alternate reality. I don't  read them for exactly the same reason: because they are different from my own experiences, even with that LDS familiarity. My life is never going to be shiny-happy. It just isn't. I'm not sure if that is because I'm not doing enough things correctly, or if what they write on their blogs is only the skimmings—just the shiny, happy parts.

Being a Mormon—just like, I'd imagine, being a Jew or a Catholic or an aethist or a dentist—doesn't turn you into a clone. There isn't one perfect way of being. I'm not judging the Mormon Mommy Bloggers. I'm glad that there are people in the world who do have shiny-happy lives. Good for them for making their perfection into a means to support their families. But they are not the only kind of Mormon people. We are painted in extremes: extremely happy or extremely deluded. The world fails to see the majority of us in the middle, trying to live our lives, trying to be good people (whatever that means), trying to be happy despite our lack of perfection.

Comments

[Sally]

Wow! this was brave writing. I vote for imperfection.

[Susan]

I love your honesty! You made me laugh - - -are their lives really that "fabulous" or are they just trying to convince us - or them that they are!

[Apryl]

Wow, 22 comments Amy! Do you feel so loved? I hope so. You deserve it. I also don't read any Mommy Blogs at all, except for my friends. It's not what I'm looking for. Good for them for their success (really!), but I got to much crap to do to read about it. ;) (But still time for you & Becky & Britt & J, of course... I need to add the other J too!)