Okay ladies, we all know who we are talking about here. We see them in the pick up lines at school, at PTO meetings and sitting on the bleachers at the local softball games – those mothers that no matter what the occasion – seem to blow us all away in terms of looks. These yummy mommies cause our own husbands eyes to stray and allow us to feel a potent mixture of hate and envy all at the same time. How in the world do they do it? The regular moms like us can spend all day tending to children and barely get five minutes to fix our hair before we are out the door rushing to the next must go to childhood event! Not only do we not care how we look, we barely notice. At least until they show up.
While we are lucky if our clothes not only match but are clean as well, these mom’s seem to look like they just stepped out of a magazine ad. No mater where they go they are perfectly put together, evenly tanned and their hair obviously colored – never seems to show its roots. They can somehow fit into outfits that most of us long outgrew the desire for and can even show up at the spur of the moment right from the gym smelling like a rose and looking gracefully fit and slim. As soon as they come around, the rest of us start tugging at our own clothes and noticing the fact that we only got mascara on one eye. Even worse, some of them – if you actually get the courage to talk to them- are nice too! Must be a persona? What the hell? In our minds we imagine that they at least have dentures or pimples on their butt and perhaps are married to cheating jerks that treat them poorly -but probably none of that is true.
The yummy mommies seem to also pass it down to their kids. Whether they have girls or boys, their kids are the ones that are overly concerned about how they look and wear clothes from the most expensive designers around. We shop at Wal-Mart while they spend all their time ordering Abercrombie jeans (for kids) out of catalogs. Even worse, they forewent the minivan and got the most expensive convertible BMW they could find just to show off. Of course rather than put the top down and risk ruining their hair, they drive with the top and windows up. What a bunch of dummy’s. If we normal people had a car like that we would drive around bundled up in coats just to get a chance to put the top down. We imagine them to be stuck up and snobby, rich and pretentious and of course stupid. No one can look that good and be smart, right? They seem to strut around when they walk, as if they are just trying to show us other sweat pant wearing, no make-up moms just how sorry we actually are. Well, we got news for them!
Because they are the ones that are sorry. Obviously if they spend that much time working out and shopping for the latest fashions they must not be paying much attention to their kids, right? They must have some major personality flaw that makes them feel so compelled to be all dressed up and shiny for things like going on a field trip to the zoo. How dumb is that? Certainly they probably didn’t graduate high school and have married a man for all the money it looks like they have. Trophy wives! That’s what they are trophy wives who purposely and aggressively are setting out to make the rest of us look and feel bad. After all, with so little going for them (except their looks) they must be miserably jealous of us haggard housewives who do everything in our power to put our kids first. After all, we could all look like that with a makeover, massage, personal trainer, surgery and tons of money. We stand by the fact that it is more important to be real (boobs and all) and pay attention to the growing needs of our kids rather than our own growing waistlines and dwindling levels of self confidence. That’s what being mom is about right, sacrifice?
These yummy mommies have obviously not sacrificed anything. Our jealous and high schoolish behavior refuses to allow us to think for one moment that they are good at anything but looking good. We refuse to look beyond the way they look to see or understand that perhaps they are real mothers, real people- whose feelings are as soft as the rest of us. We look at them from across the room or across parking lots as if they are from a circus freak show. The point is that we are looking at them. Probably much more than they are looking at us and with much more intent.
Motherhood brings out the best and worst in us all! Yummy mom’s or the ones that have seemed to strike the perfect balance between being a mom and being a woman and in a silent way force us to reckon with our selves. What we long to be, what we lack, what we wish we had the time for or what we dream we could look like again. Truth is; we are all yummy mommies in some form or another. The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence and yummy or not, mom’s of all kinds are constantly taking notes and comparing pastures. The camaraderie of female companionship is often defeated by feelings of envy. We may grow up and move away from high school but something inside us keeps us locked in the thinking that what looks better, is! Nothing can be further from the truth. The beautiful thing about mother hood is it offers us a chance to mend our own thinking and become all we want to be and befriend all of those that are different from us. As we do this, we pass on our good qualities, teach and nurture each other into often surprising friendships; and teach our own daughters a new way! That’s what makes us all yummy mommies!
