Instagram Moms Are Killing Me

My best friend tells me to check out Something Navy on Instagram — and I really wish she hadn’t. I flip to this mom’s profile as I eat ice cream on the couch in my Mounties onesie, my hair tied up in a rainbow striped Forever21 headband, relishing my boys having finally fallen asleep. was going to shower; I didn’t. One of the boys had accidentally peed on my feet earlier in the evening, prompting me to look down at my wet toes and wonder if I should perhaps, at some point, put polish back on them. But now I can’t stop scrolling through an onslaught of gorgeous photos of this mother of two who runs a “contemporary lifestyle destination & brand” and is one of the top reasons that I may soon experience Death By Instagram Mom.

Some photos are just of Arielle, looking radiant in her to-die-for outfit of the day. Others are of Arielle and her children in their to-die-for outfits of the day, looking like they always go to sleep at the prescribed bedtime in what I can only imagine are to-die-for pajamas. I can’t see, what with her gorgeous shoes, but I imagine Arielle’s toes are always perfectly polished.  

 “Why would you do this to me?!” I write her. 

“Just wait until Hamptons season,” she says.   

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There goes my night, and the next few months down the wormhole of Instagram moming. Here’s the plain truth: social media mothers are killing meNot the ones who are making their own yogurt and baking superfood filled muffins, though I am doing neither of these things. Those moms I’m able to appreciate with a grain of salt. It is the moms in the perfect jeans and high ruffled heels. It is model moms who are making me hate myself one perfect flouncy dress, graphic tee paired with perfect jeans, and matching mommy and me bathing suits, at a time. I want to be a more fashionable mom, but I can barely keep up with my three-year-old twins in flats. Are these women managing meltdowns at the grocery store in stilettos? Do their kids never tantrum mid-aisle because they are not buying more Bear Paws today and they must carry them under the arm for the rest of the shop? (We have at home, I said! Yes we do! We do! Please get up! GET UP! How about a banana?) 

I’m jealously horrified. And I can’t look away. 

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What is it really about these stunning photos that pains me? Why do I feel such an ugly inadequacy deep in my chest looking at them? I have been trying to decipher the root of my fixation. Is it just vanity? A lamentation for a time when I carried a purse instead of a backpack? Have I somehow equated good mothering with great on-trend kimonos? Certainly, I wouldn’t want my boys to care so much about how others dress. This isn’t a lesson I want to teach them. I want them to care about people’s character, what’s on the inside and, you know, all those other fundamental lessons about humanity and how to be in the world. Except you can be both stunning and have a beautiful heart, right?  

“Why don’t you just unfollow them,” my husband suggests, which is honestly so dumb. Like self-esteem is that simple.  

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I think perhaps I am using my appearance as an indelible reflection that represents this precious time in our lives – the time when my boys run to greet me at the end of the day, when they insist on holding my hand walking down the sidewalk, when their problems can be solved with a hug and a kiss and – and I want that reflection to be a good one. I want my boys to look back at this time, in pictures and videos, and know how much it meant to me; that these years were important, and I dressed up for the occasion so to speak. I don’t want them to see my weariness.    

As we don’t get to see each other as often as we like, my best friend and I often exchange pictures. I send her one of me and one of my boys 

“How thick my neck looks,” I write. I used to have such a thin one! That’s what I notice at first: tired eyes, a chubby chin, a few gray hairs at the roots. It’s a picture of my son and I lying side-by-side on the floor together laughing. Looking at it, I can’t help but giggle again. My faded tee-shirts and my unremarkable jeans don’t matter. I don’t think that’s what my son will see when he looks at it. I think he will see the joy and the love in our eyes. I think he will see a mom who can’t help but look at her son and smile.    

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