Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Momfluencers

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Motherhood is hard, lonely, and exhausting... except, apparently, if you're a momfluencer. Since the mid-2000s, a crop of seemingly perfect, all-knowing mommy goddesses in billowy tunics have emerged on social media—and we can't help but feel that their highly monetizable (often misinformation-ridden) internet presences basically exist to make other moms feel less than. This week, with the help of journalist and real-life mother Sara Petersen, author of the forthcoming book MOMFLUENCED, Isa and Amanda spill the (organic, non-toxic, totally baby-safe) tea about how famous internet moms have become their own kind of 21st Century cult leader. To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here! Thank you so much to our sponsor, Modern Fertility! To receive 50% or more off your first month of therapy, go to modernfertility.com/CULT. 

This episode is appropriately sponsored by Modern Fertility at Home Fertility Testing. Right now, Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $20 off the test when you go to modernfertility.com slash cult. That means your test will cost $159, which is a fraction of what it would cost at a fertility clinic. Get $20 off your fertility test when you go to modernfertility.com slash cult, modernfertility.com slash cult. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations.

The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Remember before we started recording, we were asking what's creepier when an adult calls their parent mommy or daddy? Yeah, and both to me are creepy. I know, it's kind of a tie. I was like, well, daddy's creepy, of course, because it feels vaguely sexual, but mommy is creepy because it feels so desperate. Yeah, mommy is out of a horror movie.

But do you know anyone who actually sincerely calls their parent mommy or daddy? I don't know. I do have a feeling I dated a guy who called his mom mommy, and that might have been my gay ex from college. The signs were there. I was thinking about the one person that I know who calls her dad daddy, and she pulls it off because she says it in sort of like a half British way. Yeah, like a posh and rich. Yeah, posh and rich, because wealth ultimately does infantilize you.

Yeah, that's like such a good point because you are taking care of your whole life, and you always will be, I want to be a baby. I'm a baby. I love chicken nuggets. I was just thinking like how nice would it be to be like an infant in the cradle of America? I think that's like the feeling I like will always aspire for for the rest of my life. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the water-daked cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian touring all over the country.

Every week on our show, we discuss a different fanatical group from the cultural zeitgeist, from Swifties to spiritual influencers, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? This is our episode on the Cult of Mom Fluencers. Oh my gosh, which actually goes perfectly because we're talking about being podcast mommies. Yeah, are we mom fluencers? We are literally mom fluencers. Our listeners are our daughters. And even our male listeners are our daughters because like...

Because it's a cult and we need conformity. Maybe that's what we can start calling people. Instead of culties, it's daughters. I love that. Yeah, the daughters of Sounds Like a Cult will figure out how to merchandise that. Great, glad we had this discussion. That's fun, but also like someone take care of us, you know. Yeah, but take care of us. That is classic, toxic, parent-child dynamic.

It's where like, you're my daughter, but actually take care of me. Yes, exactly. But yeah, we are going to be talking about the Cult of Mom Fluencers. If you don't know, mom fluencers are social media figures who grow a following. They are mothers. They give advice on parenting. They share highly curated aspirational versions of their lives, featuring their kids extensively in their content.

They review and give away products. They're also a lot of celebrity mom influencers, like the Kardashians or Busy Phillips. Who's your favorite one, Amanda? Or most notorious? My favorite, okay. Well, my favorite mom fluencer is you. Just kidding.

It's probably our guest, who we'll be talking to a little bit later today, who critiques mom fluencer culture. Her name is Sarah Peterson, so stick around for that. But actually, when I was in my intense YouTube consumption days, back when I was in the Cult of Veganism, I did follow a sort of new-agey, woo-woo hippie vegan mom fluencer who lived in Hawaii, raised all of her children on papaya and pataya. She was exhibiting all the signs of a problematic anti-vaxxer,

but it was 2016, 2015, and I didn't know to be on the lookout for those red flags yet. You showed me her Instagram. It is... Oh, Lord. It is the vision of fake perfection. I know. I know.

It feels very passé now, that sort of overly perfect island-y influencer aesthetic, but she fucking gave birth to all of her children with no medication in a freaking marble bathtub on her front porch in Hawaii and had an orgasm ostensibly every time she gave birth. That makes me think of what Gen Z will be like when they have kids, because millennials were definitely like, oh, life is perfect, add a filter, add a filter.

But Gen Z is gonna do blurry photo dumps of their baby's shits. If they even have children because Gen Z is so hopeless, they're just like, I can't do that to the next generation. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. There is this comedian, Ariel Elias. She just made her late-night debut, and she has a really funny joke.

She's like, millennials say, oh, I don't want to have kids because there's so much suffering in this world. And then she's like, but I believe that children should suffer, which is so funny. So, I mean, influencers are famously problematic, good-looking, aspirational, but what really makes them the perfect cult leader, do you think? Well, I think mom-fluencers have become such a robust, cultish category in our culture right now because of essentially how vulnerable

modern motherhood makes you. It's so lonely. It's so difficult. There are so many reasons to feel bad about your skills as a mother. I mean, just think about the ways that motherhood is talked about from the very start. Like, if you get pregnant after the age of 35, you're termed a geriatric mother.

If your uterus has some sort of issue, it's labeled an inhospitable womb. I mean, these are such emotionally charged, shame-ridden terms. Yeah, and when you have a baby, you're supposed to be so happy, but postpartum depression is so common. Kylie Jenner was saying it like this. She was like, oh, I just have the post-baby blues, and I'm like, girly, you have postpartum depression.

It's like the last animal experience that we have in this technologically-ruled society. Everything is so digitized and automated and optimized except for pregnancy. Think of these kids who grew up on their phones who are like, hmm, yeah, maybe I do want to be a mother. All of a sudden, they're growing a fucking marsupial in their bodies, and they're just like, wait, I'm alive?

I'm not a cyborg? True, it's like one of the last human experiences left that there's no shortcut around if you actually want to birth the child yourself, you know? Totally. That's crazy. That's so true. It is very shocking, and it is still very dangerous.

We're trying to overly cutesify it and gloss over the gruesome reality that is pregnancy and childbirth and motherhood. It has historically been a painful, rewarding, survival-based enterprise that now we're turning into this pristine, sterile, marketing moment. I myself do hope to be a mother one day if I'm able to,

and even though that still feels pretty far away, I feel like I've been preconditioned my whole life to harbor guilt about being an old mom or some kind of imperfect mom and thus a failure as a woman overall, you know? I completely agree. I mean, I have always just assumed I was going to have children, and so now I'm just coming to terms with the fact

that I'm like, I don't know if I want to have kids. I do want to have a relationship like that, but I don't know, you know? Let's talk a little bit about the history of the mom fluencer landscape and how it became so culty. Before the social media influencer craze, there was a really big mommy blogger culture.

Between 2005, 2010 was the first wave of mommy bloggers. They started writing confessional raw accounts of their experiences. It was the time period when Ray Dunn came out, really. It was that time period of when women were allowed to be imperfect, and it was cute and groundbreaking, and the pioneers in the arena included Heather Armstrong and Katherine Connors.

There's a quote from The New York Times that said, Armstrong became renowned for turning the struggles of family life into an intimate form of comedy. So just this idea that like motherhood was a form of entertainment, really? A form of entertainment, but also a form of solace. I mean, this is the beautiful part of it, right? The internet allowed mothers to connect with one another,

to swap war tales, to commiserate, to advise one another, so that they wouldn't feel so alone, because early parenthood is famously isolating. I mean, you're just at home alone with a tiny screaming infant you're basically stranded on a deserted island, and before the internet, I mean, sure, you had books written by authority figures, and maybe you had other mothers in the neighborhood,

but you probably also felt quite competitive with the other mothers in the neighborhood, like who's the sort of super mom in the group? And it makes sense that a lot of the times war stories weren't exchanged, because in order to commiserate, you had to like get ready, get dressed, look nice, leave your house, and meet your friends out at brunch,

portraying this idea of yourselves that was like, perfect, put together, and so you weren't going to say the worst part of your day, but when you're in front of a screen in your pajamas with like a little baby vom on your shirt, you know, you're gonna have your guard down, and you're gonna be able to like tell those darker stories and exchange those truths.

For sure, yeah, that's the sort of wholesome part of the mommy blogger origin story, but then around 2010, with Web 2.0, mom influencer content began to shift to be more aspirational, and that's in part because websites and platforms were able to host pictures and videos in really high quality,

and so your visuals had to be perfect. They had to be gorgeous in order to get people to read your posts. Yeah, that's when the influencer vibe kind of started coming in. A lot of those pictures are similar to the perfect pictures that you see in my child was just born photos.

People literally hire professional photographers for these moments, and there's something so crazy about that because just take the picture of the baby on your iPhone. Like, it's very good quality. Almost too good of quality. Like, don't actually don't take a picture of your freshly born baby on your iPhone.

They should hand out like disposable cameras in like the birthing unit. Take away phones and give disposable cameras so that the pictures are a little blurry, like back in the day, and they're not so high def with the gooey baby. That does remind me of how some people will literally face-tune themselves

and their children in the birthing room right after they squeezed a human being out of the birthing now, and everybody looks perfect, and it's like, this is deranged. But the advent of social media made it possible for anybody to become a small-scale celebrity of sorts.

The problem there is that your babies and your children are endemic to your brand. Yeah, they are your product. Yes, exactly. So that's extremely dehumanizing and really sketchy consent-wise because of the phenomenon of share-inting, which is a portmanteau of share,

and parenting share-share, not C-H-E-R. We'll survive. Anyways, you share photos of your children without them explicitly being able to verbalize whether or not that's okay, and that can put them in an extremely vulnerable situation psychologically where not only are their identifying details

public information, but also they've been branded since birth. I think most babies look the same when they're born to maybe six, seven months. So I think it's really funny when moms put stickers on the faces of their babies and then when their baby becomes a toddler and is actually forming into a real human,

they take the sticker off. I'm like, this is when they're gonna start to be recognizable. Like, maybe have the sticker later when it's a real person and not when it's still baking. Oh, oh, oh my God. So that relates to how Zellis, the mom fluencers' followers can get.

I just heard a story of this TikTok mom fluencer who decided to stop sharing images of her baby's face for whatever reason, and the followers flipped the fuck out because they got so parasocially attached to this stranger's baby that they were like, why did you take my baby away from me? Oh my gosh.

It's also worth noting that this wave of aspirational mom fluencers included a lot of religious mothers too, especially Mormon moms, and we'll talk about that more with our guests. But I do feel like there is a Mormon mom fluencer filter that you spot from a mile away. Do you know what it looks like?

Yeah, no, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's just shiny and white and white. Very blown out, very high exposure. There's also an evangelical mom fluencer filter though, and that one is kind of washed out, almost sepia. Sepia, it definitely is a vibe. I mean, it's a whole vibe. Do I like it?

I don't know. Yeah. So mom fluencers, they can be fun, they can be flirty, but let's talk about the darker aspects of why they're so culty. Well, it can't be denied that over the past few years, mom fluencer culture and multilevel marketing culture and the anti-vax community have really coalesced.

There are so many mom fluencers, obviously, concerned about the health of their children who internalize and then disseminate on mass, really troubling anti-science rhetoric, anti-mask rhetoric, anti-sunscreen rhetoric, and they do it in a way that's ultra palatable. It doesn't look conspiratorial. It's all in beautiful fonts and millennial pink colors,

but they're spreading a Q and A type message saying, you know, we should have freedom over fear and the solution is you. They encourage their followers to teach their bodies to heal themselves, chemical and toxic freedom, balance your vibrations. And it's a red flag that they are starting to be more preoccupied with brand deals

and at the same time, shame and judgment, sending these messages while reeling in money and reeling in new followers. Absolutely. I think one of the most cultish and problematic things about many mom fluencers is their eagerness to establish themselves as authority figures on every subject under the sun from parenting

to nutrition to mental health to physics. And meanwhile, they are flattening these really complex subjects such that they can capitalize them by upselling their followers on a product or a course or an essential oil kit. And that cultishness really exploded during the pandemic. Yeah, and now that you mentioned it, something that scares me a little bit about that

is that we only see what they're posting on like their public Instagram. I cannot imagine how many people are in these mom fluencers DMs and it kind of scares me to think about the kind of advice they're giving behind closed doors. I mean, who knows if they even practice what they preach, right? That's the whole deception of mom fluencer culture

is that they are selling you this image that they are a super aspirational mother who lives on a farm and has six vegan children and no one ever gets sick because they use this perfect tincture that they created in-house. And here you can come to the retreat and learn how to do it yourself. But behind the scenes, who knows?

They could be feeding their kids Taco Bell. And yeah, like whenever one of them actually does get sick, they're definitely whisking them off to the hospital. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of in high school when like everyone tried to play down how much they studied for a test. And I was the idiot who fell for it. I was like, oh, have you guys started studying for this?

And they were like, no, it's such an easy test. Like I'm barely even going to, I'm just going to like look over my notes from class and then the next day I would be like, OK, that's what I'm going to do too. And then we'd come in for the test and they would turn it in in five seconds and pull out all their note cards like super over prepared.

And I was like, wait, I thought we were just going to look at our notes from the homework. OK, I think there's a lot at play there. I think people are overly competitive and there's this idea that like if you get an A on the test, I can't get an A on the test, which is sort of true when you're getting on a curve. But also I think there is a shame in really, really, really trying.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is that like I was the one who fell for the facade in the same way that these mom fluencers are like, oh, being a mom is easy. Like it's not that hard. I barely looked at my notes and I got through it. Meanwhile, they are taking their kids to the doctor, but they're making it look like it was so easy and I could easily be that person who thinks like,

oh, maybe having a kid isn't that hard. I just need to like look over my homework and then have a baby tomorrow, you know. The homework being that mom fluencers account, that mom fluencers MLM downline, that mom fluencers little starter pack that they're selling in the link in their bio. But the damage that mom fluencer culture

is having on society at large has been described by people with actual formal accreditations in mental health. There is a board certified pediatrician named Dr. Mona Amin who told in the know.com that mom fluencer culture is having a negative impact on maternal mental health. She said, when you follow mom fluencers,

you begin to think of this person as your friend, largely because they are allowing you into their life. They share mostly the good stuff and you can be left feeling that your life is so hard or wonder why your child doesn't behave like this friend's child. Yeah, and that makes sense that there's more harmful advice out there because before social media,

parenting advice was limited to parenting books and occasional TV spots. And so there was a lot more of a threshold of like, oh, this needs to be fact checked or this needs to be a more formal experience. And as much as that's good for social media to give rise to voices who have previously been locked out of those industries,

it also leaves space for a lot of fake news to be circulated. Absolutely. This is how I feel about social media in general and the internet in general. Like, it's wonderful to democratize information, but we also have to be more critically thinking than ever because not all of that information is true. And negative information spreads faster even

and especially when it's false and we all just have to be so aware of that. Yeah, at Mark Zuckerberg. Well, I think the funny thing about momfluencers as a cult is that it is the ultimate cult because you literally have to have a child to be a part of it. You know, like it looks aspirational and then you're like, oh, that's so cute.

I want to have one. And then you have one. And then you're stuck with it for literally 18 years. Okay, facts. And that also connects to really, really damaging cults because kids are often currency in really dangerous cults to keep women inside at the rights and religions forum conference that I was at the other week.

I learned that it's often harder but also more desperate in high-control cultish religions like the Amish for women to leave expressly because they are the child bearers and the caretakers and they're oftentimes coerced into having like 10 children which is first of all, so time-consuming and keeps them from even like having time. Famously takes nine months to pick one up.

And to raise them to even longer. 18 years. So they don't have time to even learn about the outside world but also the kids become their whole life. So it psychologically makes it harder for them than the husband to leave. There's nothing more I don't know on a personal level but it looks like from Handmaid's tale

that there's nothing more painful than like a mother being separated from her child. And so like how else would a cult keep someone in by being like we control your child but therefore we control you? I mean think about the fundamentalist church of the Latter-day Saints, fundamentalist Mormons, a cultish community that it couldn't possibly be

more controlling of women and reproduction and domesticity. In a sense, the general limitations that are placed on childbearing and reproduction in the United States combined with capitalism and mom fluencer culture, it's all cultish in the same way just to varying degrees. Yeah. Something else that's also double-culty about it is that not only are you having this kid

to become a part of the group, then that kid is affected by the group for the rest of their life. There's so much exploitation of children in this mom fluencer culture. There are specific examples of mom fluencers exploiting their children for clout and money. Children who are used for social media content

and are leading to profit are technically working children but they aren't classified as such and therefore don't have the legal protections in the way that child actors do. So social media currently functions sort of like Hollywood pre-Kugan law. There was a quote from the Hollywood Reporter that was saying at the moment,

a child influencer's only form of legal recourse is to sue his or her parents at the age of 18. It's so sad these children work so much that then the parents kind of move up in quality of life and then let's say they buy a new house and so then the responsibility is on the kid to maintain that quality of life. So they're really strapped in forever.

We should provide a few worst case scenarios to really demonstrate how destructive the cult of mom fluencers can really be. There was an instance where a YouTube family, family 05, was sentenced to five years of probation for child abuse after they inflicted cruel pranks on their children. Some of the incidents include telling one of their children

to slap the other in the face and they filmed it. They had videos showing them shoving and screaming at their kids and they were just doing it for the likes and the virality. That was inflicting like pain and harm on those children and trauma. The fucking internet, there's just such a breakdown of empathy and you'd think that breakdown of empathy

would only exist between followers and an influencer but now it's existing between parents and their own children. Are you supposed to keep child abuse private? Like a secret? Yeah, that reminds me of when I was on a road trip with my parents as a kid. I think I was like 10 years old and it was like a seven hour drive

and for fun my parents and my sister told me that I was adopted and I cried for like three hours straight. But all there is to show is a picture of me. Like one picture of me bawling my eyes out which is like in hindsight funny at the time. Yeah, making children cry is so funny. That is the definition of humor. So there is one more worst case scenario

that we want to talk about. There was this YouTuber, Micah Stoffer, who adopted an autistic child from China to make content with him for years. And then they placed him in a new family. She had positioned herself as an advocate for international adoption. She even went on national news outlets to talk about it. She produced 27 videos about the adoption journey

and plugged a fundraiser for it. And every person who donated five dollars would unlock a different piece of a 1000 piece puzzle which would at the end be a photo of Huxley, the child that she would reveal to the world. And then returned him diabolical as if it was like a puppy who like she couldn't train or something. Oh my God.

And the cult of dog owners because rehoming is like even more controversial than sending a human child back among dog lovers. It's problematic. Even more controversial. It's problematically even more controversial. I know. Yeah, I mean this was to be frank,

an instance of a mom fluencer literally purchasing a child from all the way across the world exploiting him for content and then tossing him aside once they realized they didn't actually want to take care of these special needs anymore. Yeah, I mean this just goes to show that like having kids, if you didn't know already, having kids is a lifelong commitment. Yeah.

And it's really something that you don't have to just be financially and physically ready for. It should be something that you want to do because I don't know, I guess why do people want to have kids? Well, I was about to say like the reasons to family plan as they say are so personal and so individual and there is so much pressure on women in particular to procreate like you've done life wrong.

You've betrayed your purpose as a woman if you decide not to have children. And then of course like I mean a lot of kids were not quote unquote planned and still grow up happy and deserve to exist. And you know, it's just it's such a fraught loaded subject that our culture at large has really tried to control and police. And mom fluencers are not helping that equation. They're not helping.

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Right now, Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $20 off the test when you go to modernfertility.com slash cult. That means your test will cost $159, which is a fraction of what it would cost at a fertility clinic. Get $20 off your fertility test when you go to modernfertility.com slash cult, modernfertility.com slash cult. So up next, we're going to talk to Sarah Peterson, a real-life mother because we aren't and so we wanted to talk to one.

She's also a reporter on feminism and motherhood and has an amazing newsletter called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops and a book coming out called Mom Fluenced. Here's Sarah. Could you start by introducing yourself to our listeners and tell us how you started critiquing mom fluensers in your work? I'm Sarah Peterson.

I write about feminism and motherhood and I started thinking about mom fluenser culture when I had a toddler and a newborn at home. And I was frankly kind of bored, kind of existential despairing about my life. And I started seeing all these beautiful mothers, their beautiful children and their beautiful lives. And mostly they were looking like they were having a great time as mothers

and they made motherhood as an identity look really aspirational. And so I just started to try to explore the disconnect between what I was feeling engaged in the labor of mothering versus what they were presenting online, just trying to tease out that disconnect. And I have a book about it all coming out in April called Mom Fluenced Inside the Maddening Picture Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture. What are the origins of mom fluenser content

and how was it developed from something potentially helpful into something cultish? So the OG mommy bloggers, their bread and butter was sort of like snark and like real talk about motherhood. So there was a lot of profanity. There was a lot of increased awareness about like postpartum depression. They would talk about their leaking nipples. And it was a really refreshing change of pace. It was very inclusive.

It sort of brought people in to talk about the not so great sides of motherhood. That was like early 2000s. And like right when Ray Dunn started, it's the in perfect vibe of like women are people too. Yes, yes, which was so radical at the time. And the internet was severely imperfect at that time as well. So I'm sure those blogs, if you go onto the way back machine and look at what they were in the early 2000s, I'm sure you would get a chuckle out of that.

Yes. And yeah, it was totally not aesthetically driven the way it is now. That was another huge shift. And then once Instagram sort of became the more monetizable platform for these mommy bloggers, they all kind of moved over. And then the vibe really changed to a more aspirational imagery was everything versus before these women were personal assayists. And then they started partnering with big companies to sell tied laundry detergent, $300 strollers, bamboo diapers, and then the era of spawn con was sort of born.

What does spawn con mean? Sponsored content. Sponsored content. Oh, my gosh. I feel like I should have known that. We have a podcast. It is a totally disgusting term that makes me think of sperm. Yeah.

I think of like. SPAWN. Exactly, spawn con, which is, you know, by no coincidence, pretty appropriate for the topic at hand. And I feel like that's also makes sense that spawn con allowed for there to be a shift because we were having these organic platforms where people were genuinely giving advice and like telling people to use products that they found useful. And now that there is like so much sponsored content,

you don't know what's real versus what's not real. How do you think religion has played a role in shaping the mom fluencer landscape? Yes. So, I mean, Mormonism is huge. Some of the OG mommy bloggers were Mormon. Many of the most financially lucrative mom fluencers are still Mormon. And there's a long history. Why?

So, okay. Yes. Mormons have a long history of recording life's milestones. So they're big on scrapbooking. They're big on diaries. They're big on recording everything. They're scrapbooking for the Lord. Oh, my God.

For women who are raised in Mormon culture, their sphere is the domestic sphere. So, it was only natural that these primarily stay-at-home mothers, you know, stuck at home with their kids all day, with beautiful houses and beautiful clothing, are going to turn to outward-facing expression. They were already journaling. They were already scrapbooking. So, taking it onto blogs or on Instagram was just a way to make it public-facing

and to maybe make money. Yeah. Sometimes I have this fantasy of just letting it all go and, like, moving to Utah and becoming a mom, you know? I don't know. I'm just kind of don't remember. Lisa has this thing where she wishes she could live her 20s an infinite number of times.

Yeah. This is, like, an unpopular viewpoint. I could, I never would. I think it should be more popular. My understanding of mom fluencers' connection to Mormonism is similar to Mormon's connection to the multi-level marketing industry, which is that it's sort of implied in certain Mormon communities that mothers and wives aren't really supposed to work

in the same way that husbands do. And MLMs are sort of this loophole that gives them something to do and allows them to feel somewhat empowered. And mom fluencing is the same thing. It's not the sort of job where you, like, put on your top hat and your coat and go to work. It's something you can do from home without ever having to leave your children.

In fact, your children are a part of it. So it's, like, serving the Lord and the Mormon mission in that way. Totally. Yeah. Because you're making Mormonism look cool in many cases. Yeah. Cool. In scare quotes.

Asht. Well, and you're, yeah, you're making it look aspirational. Again, in some cases, not all. But. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. When I worked in the beauty industry, I remember there was this huge influx of Mormon beauty bloggers.

Most of them did hair. They were amazing braiders. Yes. Amber Filler-Up Clark is, like, a huge, huge mom fluencer. She has, like, a thriving hair extension business and, like, a hair care business. Yeah. Before she had kids, she had braids.

I think about these fluencers is that, like, they're so good at making things look aspirational that even though I don't aspire to do those things, they make you question whether you want to do them. I feel like sororities are really good at doing that. It's, like, the in-group mentality of, like, we're a clique. We're together.

We run this town. And then you're like, do I want to be a part of your crew? Because I just have FOMO. Totally. And it's like, you have to really check yourself in those moments and be like, no, I don't. Yes. I think the insidiousness of mom fluencers, though,

is that they all seem a little bit competitive with each other, if not explicitly, then implicitly. And I think that's so very American, where, like, your kids are supposed to be the quarterback and get into the Ivy League school, and it's the zero-sum game that we discuss on the podcast all the time, where, like, if your kid is the quarterback,

then my kid can't be the quarterback. And if, you know, your mom fluencer Instagram account is super gorgeous, then mine can't be gorgeous. So I need to work so hard to make it look like I have the best life possible. Yeah, it also taps into so many other cults. I mean, there's the cult of prosperity, there's the cult of the nuclear family,

there's the cult of whiteness. We talk about, you know, very GTFO-level cults. They make you do something that is going to stay with you forever, branding or something like that. And, like, what is the ultimate branding, if not a literal child that you have to birth and then, like, take care of for 18 years? It's true, and sometimes you really do wonder,

because, I mean, it's proven that, like, new baby content and pregnancy content raises engagement and, you know, brings in more money. You really do wonder sometimes, like, are some of them having more babies for content purposes or at least partially, yeah. Oh, my God, I also just realized some synchronicity with the two meanings of the word brand, you know?

In nexium, they were literally branded on their skin and on Instagram, you're branding yourself in a different sort of way. It's true. But they're both permanent and insidious. So there seem to be different categories of momfluencers. Could you describe the main ones and what their content looks like?

Totally. So, I mean, there's the McMansion momfluencer with her beachy blonde extensions, her all-white everything, her kids in, like, preppy tailored outfits. She maybe does a lot of, like, charcuterie boards. Maybe her sponsored content is, like, Amazon or, like, the big box stores.

So she's sort of, like, I don't know, I guess a mainstream momfluencer. And then there's, like, the Tradwife momfluencers, which is a subset that I am just eternally fascinated with. But they're the ones, like, roaming in wildflower fields. They're knitting their kids' clothing and shades of, like... Cottagecore.

Yes, exactly. They're moving to Hawaii. Totally. I mean, that's, or you could say that's, like, a tiny different subset. The, like, hippie mom, the hippie mom, the earthy, crunchy mom in Hawaii. There's beach and there's mountains.

Exactly. You have to distinguish. And then there's also, like, a ton of really cool radical moms that use their platforms for social justice and for raising awareness about all sorts of different issues. And often those accounts are not monetized, but they're still really making an impact in different ways.

And you're like, and that's the category of momfluencers I fall into. Totally. Yeah, I feel like there's also, I mean, you might have touched on it a little bit, but there's that category of, like, everything is so unorganized. They're like, oh, I'm running out of the door.

It's the Hot Mess Express mom. Yes. Yes, like talking about poop, talking about body stuff. And yeah, it's like, yeah, I'm feeding my baby on the train with my boob out. Yes. So what? And I'm like, well, I'm like, okay, nobody,

nobody was calling you out for it. Totally. I know. Social media just encourages everyone to be so self-referential. It's like when you take an Instagram break for five days and literally nobody's noticed. And then when you come back, you post and you're like, I'm back. That's me.

That's everyone. That's me too. Sarah, I feel like that's also you. Oh, 100%, 100%. Yeah, everyone's like, did you miss me? And nobody missed us. And also, we didn't miss Instagram. Yeah, I did miss it.

There was no longing in the equation. And, you know, unfortunately, I'm sure there is still so much shaming for public breastfeeding. But the nature of Instagram does encourage all of us to market these vulnerable life moments as viral opportunities. And of course, not everyone is rewarded for sharing those equally. Yeah, like if you have nice tits,

gotta get a lot of likes. Stop bragging about your tits again. I'm not bragging. I'm just, you know, you know, that did sound like a bragging. I'm sorry for that. They are nice. They are nice. So what do you think are the cultiest things about mom

fluensers in both good and bad ways? I mean, the QAnon slash evangelical Christian slash MLM slash like free birthers. That category gets real culty and can become really dangerous and harmful because a lot of times these usually white, usually conventionally attractive mothers, they're not selling these problematic messages in a way that like, you know, a guy yelling on YouTube would they're,

they're making beautiful infographics and they're sort of resting upon their maternal authority to be like, you know, I'm just a concerned mother. Like these are just my thoughts, but they're spreading misinformation in really widespread ways. Some of these people have like hundreds of thousands of followers. So, yeah, I've heard this category of QAnon or described as pastel QAnon.

It's more passive and polite and gender normative for women and palatable such that you would never think, oh, this looks or sounds like a cult, even though the rhetoric they're communicating can send you down a QAnon rabbit hole. It's just nuts to me that having a child, which is something that people can just choose to do. And actually the government is like forcing some people to do.

All of a sudden becomes a credit as if you got a master's degree or something. It's like Jim Jones had a family full of adopted children that he called the rainbow family as if that walking the walk of anti-racism, so to speak, was proof that he could not end up an abusive cult leader. It's really, it's insidious, actually, when you use that anecdotal personal quote unquote evidence as a credit of authority, exactly like you were saying.

I also find the privilege aspect of it so sinister because we were talking about the sort of crunchy granola Hawaii mom, the free birther type who rejects big pharma, which, fair enough, big pharma is problematic, but they will not give birth in a hospital and they will not ascribe to Western medicine. Some of them do have lip filler, though. Meanwhile, like maternal death in childbirth

is still actually such a serious problem in black communities. And so for them to be like, no, don't give birth in a hospital is just so at best ignorant and at worst dangerous. Well, and a lot of times they co-opt these very real issues for marginalized communities. Like, you were talking about the black mortality rate. Like, black women going into childbirth have a very real reason

to fear mainstream medicine and medical racism. And the privileged white lady, like, filming her, like, beautiful birth in the middle of, like, a rose bush or whatever. I can't think of, like, the appropriately absurd image. And then also saying that anyone who has a C-section is doomed to have a weak attachment with her baby. Like, it's just really, I mean, it's icky, it's icky. Yeah, especially when talking about, yeah,

like, these things that a lot of times aren't up to choice, you know? Like, it's just like most of the times a C-section is an emergency C-section and it's a very dangerous operation. And then, like, on top of having that person go through the trauma of going through a C-section, you're also going to tell them that they aren't going to have a connection with their child? Yeah, it's so much about that really grinds my gears. The toxic individualism aspect to this idea

that, like, if something is wrong in your life, it's not systemic. It's your fault and your fault alone. You should have pulled yourself up by your bootstraps or your whatever fucking fancy slippers. Boots don't even have straps anymore. Like, can we stop saying that? Seriously, we need a new metaphor for the footwear of today. But also, the sort of, you know, bastardization of therapy speak

that we've talked about on this podcast. Like, what do they know about attachment therapy? Like, you're not a psychotherapist, and yet you're speaking with authority on everything from childbirth to, you know, to psychiatry, to sunscreen. Vaccine schedules. Yes. Yep.

It's madness. What do you think are the most ridiculous, baseless claims that you've ever seen a mom fluencer make? Oh, my God. I mean, Amanda just mentioned the sunscreen one. There are so many anti-sunscreen mom fluencers. Like, so, so, so many. We know sun damage causes skin cancer, so that's a big one.

And all the anti-max, anti-vax stuff, they will proclaim their anti-vax, anti-mask sentiments, and then run down all the things that will strengthen your immune system and prevent you from getting COVID, and ultimately strengthen your child. You know, the herbal remedies. There's a lot of stuff about mold. Mom fluencers are really big on mold.

Yeah. Oh, my God. And we do talk about extremes a lot on this podcast, and little truths. Like, they're not wrong that, you know, eating vegetables and drinking smoothies are doing things like that will strengthen your immune system, but it's the idea that it will prevent you from getting COVID

that is dangerous to spread. Also, all of that stuff is common knowledge. Like, you don't need a mom fluencer to tell us that vegetables are good for you. Right. And these are not accredited professionals or experts either. That's the other thing. They're just self-made experts, so. It is so troubling to me that a lot of populist leaders,

and I would consider mom fluencers, populist leaders, appeal to a certain slice of the population who feels disillusioned with and intimidated by and sort of radicalized to mistrust scientists and whatever they don't understand is frightening to them. It's the same reason why a lot of people connected with Donald Trump because they mistook his filterlessness and shamelessness and brazenness with honesty and relatability. But if you're, like, perfectly willing to claim authority on every topic,

that's not a sign that people should follow you just because of confidence alone. It's a red flag. The most insidious thing about this to me is that mothers as, like, a demographic are really in need of answers and are really disenfranchised in so many ways. So, like, we have several reasons to distrust Big Pharma. We have several reasons to distrust maternal health care.

We have several reasons to distrust the fucking government and capitalism. So there are really very real issues that mothers are dealing with and mom fluencers are swooping in and declaring themselves sort of saviors in any number of these ways. And it makes total sense that an exhausted mother working three jobs, like, trying to feed her kids well and raise them well, is going to be looking for anybody that makes it easy and incorporates binary thinking, right?

Yeah. And also, like, I'm just thinking about it from a perspective of, like, I'm trying to put myself in their shoes. Let's say one night I'm sick and I'm tired and I don't have anyone to take care of me, so I Google, like, why does my head hurt? And that's how moms feel but about their children. Like, why is my baby crying?

Why won't it stop crying? And they're in this panic moment. ESA calls all babies it. It's this charming little quirk. I love that so much. It's very gender news. Yeah, why is it crying? And it's just, and then you're freaking out as a mom.

And so, of course, you're going to go to, like, a place where you're going to get an immediate answer or you're going to get the answer that you want. Yeah, for free. Right. What do you think specifically about the vulnerabilities of mothers in 2022 make people susceptible to mom fluencers' cultish influence? I mean, it's a nightmare.

It is a nightmare being a mother in 2022. We are still coping with PTSD from school closures and keeping the entire economy afloat on our unpaid labor. And nothing is changing. I shouldn't say nothing. There's so many incredible advocacy groups that are working tirelessly for systemic reform regarding maternal policy. But it's really slow moving.

I mean, Roe v. fucking Wade. Like, it's just blow after blow after blow. And it's really demoralizing and exhausting. And we are consistently burnt out. So, you know, it's, so it's, it makes, I just have all the empathy in the world for a consumer of mom fluencer culture who finds whatever mom fluencer for whatever reason

and just really wants and needs that person to be there be all and all. Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned Roe v. Wade as a mother, because it's like that a lot of people think immediately is it only affecting like young folks who don't want a child yet. But it's so important for people who already are mothers because adding another just because you have a child doesn't mean you can just take care of more children. It's a financial burden.

It's an emotional burden. It's a physical burden. And so the fact that like there are mothers out there who still just like have to have another child because they like got off birth control and they thought they weren't going to get pregnant anymore. That happens so often. Oh, most of the people who have abortions already have kids.

Yeah. And that's so important for like, like building generational wealth or like building like a family that you can raise properly is important to have the right number of kids that you can deal with, you know, deal with. I love the ways that Isa organically talks about. No. Isa is right.

It is a deal with situation. Especially how you mentioned like the PTSD of the pandemic. Postpartum depression is like a version of depression, but I feel like it's like post pandemic depression. Of course you love your child, but if you had to deal with it 24 seven, I can't even fully put myself in your shoes, but a lot of people aren't even talking about that of like

re-loving your child again after you had to deal with it for two years. Oh, it was two years. Yeah. I mean, all of my mom friends and I will still text each other, like our virtual learning schedules, like taped on the fridge or whatever. And like just all the shiver and fear, like death emojis. It was bad.

It was bad. You know, what's occurring to me is that I know that like motherhood has always been traumatic and difficult in many ways. It's better the best now than it has ever been in terms of, you know, surviving childbirth and having, you know, access to resources and things. And yet it is still so hard and still so imperfect. And I would almost argue that the cultish influence of mom

influencers is able to thrive so much because of the sense of optimism that has emerged from, you know, it kind of is possible to like quote unquote have it all. Not for everybody, but like we're getting there. And, you know, to your point, progress is happening really slowly and mom influencers make it seem like it can happen overnight. It can happen to you.

And that aspiration is really, you know, feeding into the larger cult of mom influencers in general. Also, I just feel like we're coming from a long period of birthing being a choice. And so I feel like that was the rise of the early 2000s of like all these moms of being like, oh, I did choose to do this. So I am happy to be here. And now we're in this era of going back to like,

it might not have been a choice even if I do have the resources at hand. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's possible to participate in the cult of mom influencers in a net positive way? Oh, net positive. Um, God, because the cult of Instagram is implicated in participating in

the cult of mom influencers, I cannot say net positive. No. Sorry. I mean, I think if Instagram was less culty and social media was less culty, maybe, but because all of these things are deliberately designed to be addictive and to suck away like our wild and beautiful lives, I don't think it can be a net positive.

I think you could participate thoughtfully and gain positive things from it, but I think you always have to kind of be checking yourself and, you know, having critical conversations with yourself. I long for the days that Instagram will go back to chronological posting. I'm like, that would change our lives. If it didn't go away, but if the algorithm was a little scary,

if the feed was just chronological, anyway, that's what I dream about it. Dream big. Who are some mom influencers you like and who are some people that we should definitely be wary of? Oh man, some that are definitely, watch your back, are Rose Uncharted. Her feet is beautiful.

She has dabbled in Trumpism, in Q and on stuff, in anti-vax, anti-mask, all the things, and also sells like beautiful hand dyed tea towels. So she's one. I must sucker for all this. This whole cottagecore aesthetic, like I eat that shit. I know. Another one who I just have a complicated relationship with, who I talk about a lot in my book, is Ballerina Farm.

Do you guys know her? Oh, but I'm looking at her right now. Ballerina Farm. Oh man. I mean Ballerina, Ballet is a cult of its own Ballerina. Oh yeah. Oh, we're going to do that in the future at Cult of Ballet. Yeah, she, I...

Only 1.7 million followers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's big. She's this like rancher, she's Mormon, she has seven kids, she's married to one of the heirs of JetBlue, but that's not part of their branding, because it wouldn't go with like the down home aesthetic. The pointness, yeah. Yeah, obviously, yeah.

But she's just really selling the nuclear family ideal and like rural Eden type of stuff. Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm watching a video of hers right now, and she's dressed like a 1800s wife. Like, I mean, she's wearing like an apron with like a flowery... What are those, like a colonial outfit? Well, she sells the aprons, so you can buy one yourself.

Oh my god. That glorification of a time that was objectively hell for women everywhere is just something I cannot get behind. And for many other people too. Yes, yes. Oh my god. For literally everyone, well, even for the most privileged people, because everyone was dying right and left

of fucking tuberculosis. Totally. It was bad for everyone. I feel like the ballerina one, if she did like a week-long camp for adults, for her to be like their adult mommy, like I would go to the camp, put my phone away and be like, cook for me, clean for me, you know?

But that's a cult. She shouldn't do that. No, but I always say this. I feel like that would be a healthier mode of engagement than the Instagram shit. That's true. Yeah, because it would be direct and explicit. It wouldn't be. Says Amanda as she plans her retreat.

Literally though, I'm trying. I am hosting a retreat next year for aspiring writers. Awesome. One that I love, Casey Davis, her handle is at struggle care. Her platform is just all about how care work and domestic work is a part of adult life, but creating, for example, a beautiful bespoke laundry room is a hobby and is a gendered thing that women are taught to take on

as something that they should, quote unquote, naturally do. You know, I was chatting with a medieval historian, one of the sources for the book that I'm currently writing, who was talking about how one of the myths of the Middle Ages was that women didn't work and that women were just like cooped up in their little peasant cottages, but actually women in the Middle Ages worked a great deal

just as much as men. That's one of the reasons men wanted to get married so their wives could help them with the work. And it wasn't until the Protestant Reformation and then the Enlightenment, when people started attributing, pushing women into the home as like science, they were like, the domestic sphere is naturally what women are made for.

This is, you know, this is empirical here. The claim that women have never worked is historically just inaccurate because every human person comes out of a vagina. You know what I mean? So like, we have literally worked so hard that we have created a society. I mean, it's called labor. It's called labor.

Yeah. I love that darn chat. She does a ton on egalitarian partnerships within the home and she's hilarious. She's huge on TikTok too. You know, when people will like see a dad changing a diaper and be like, oh my God, he's such a great dad. Yeah.

For doing the bare men. Yes, yes. So she just excoriates that bullshit and it's delightful. The Enby Mama is queer non-binary. They've got some great posts, just sort of going through certain experiences that have been coded feminine

and experiencing sort of the gendered complication of that. Okay. One more. I want to shout out sitting underscore pretty. Her name is Rebecca. She's an author and she writes about disabled motherhood and is great for representation, but she's also just a stunning, stunning, stunning writer and is able to put the indescribable parts of motherhood

into words in a way that sort of floors me every time. So I adore her as well. Wonderful. Okay. Thank you so much for answering our questions and engaging in this tet-a-tet. Now we would like to play a game. We're going to play a game of what's called here

Mom Fluencer Edition. We're going to give you two Mom Fluencer scenarios and you're going to tell us what's called here. Cool. So scenario number one, a YouTube Mom Fluencer or an Instagram Mom Fluencer. I'm going Instagram Mom Fluencer. I think the YouTube Mom Fluencers can be a little more inclusive.

They can be a little more fun sometimes. You can get to know them a little better on YouTube as well. It's less filtered comparatively. Yeah. Okay. Which is called to your Mom Fluencer Edition, Mom Fluencers who sell MLM products or Mom Fluencers who sell their own DIY wellness workshops.

Oh, this one's so hard. I mean, I'm going to say the DIY workshops because I legit just saw like an anti-feminism, pro-femininity workshop. What? Hocked by one of these Mom Fluencers. So I'm going to say, basically I just think if it's a DIY workshop,

there's just no holds bars. Totally. I'm going to go with that. It can be like so fringe because a mainstream MLM would not want to identify as anti-feminist for fear of the fact that people would not sign up. Right. Exactly.

Okay. Which is called to your Mormon Mom Fluencers or Evangelical Mom Fluencers? This one is tough too, but I'm going to go Evangelical. Oh. Plot twist. Yeah.

I just, I don't see overtly incendiary stuff from the Mormons as much as I do for the, in Evangelicals. Evangelicals are so much more politically powerful in this country. Totally. I mean, George W. Bush was an Evangelical Christian. He never had a Mormon in the White House.

Right. Well, no. Oh no, he didn't. Oh my God. Yeah, I was going to say Mitt Romney, but he was never president. Oh, I forgot he was a Mormon. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, Evangelicals have their fingers in so many different mainstream American pies. I mean, the cult of the family who puts on the national prayer breakfast every year. I mean, Hollywood is like so obsessed with making Mormon docuseries right now. I'm like, where are the Evangelicals, dude?

Yeah. I don't like that content because since they have their hand in so many pies, you know, they prevent it from happening. Yeah. Can I shout out a book? I just read about Evangelical stuff. Please.

It was incredible. Janna Cadlex Heretic. It comes out in like a week. Oh my God. Yes, Heretic. So, so good. And I learned so much about Evangelicalism from it. So I highly recommend.

Yeah. She's an ex-Evangelical. She's a queer writer. She's amazing. I did an event with her for Cultish. Okay. Two more. Which is cultier, posting photos and identifying details

about your kids without their consent, otherwise known as share-inting, or raising your white kids on stolen land and claiming indigenous practices as your own. Oh, these are hard. I think I'm going with the second one. Because arguably you could do the first one quote unquote responsibly,

like if you put the money in a trust for the kids later. I'm creating all these loopholes. Right. I'm going to go with the second one, I think. Fair. Yeah. I feel like that one has like more societal repercussions, whereas the first one is more individual repercussions.

Right. Right. Totally. Yeah. Okay. Last one. Which is cultier, Montfluencers who post photos of their family,

but they only face to themselves, or Montfluencers who post photos of their family and also face-tune their children. This one feels impossible. Okay, I'm going with the face-tuned kids, because that's just creepy. That's creepy. It's so creepy.

I mean, objectively like seeing a face-tuned child is scary. Yeah. Okay, I will say this though. A friend of mine showed me a photo of a friend of hers who'd just given birth, and it was one of those like, I've just given birth photos in like the hospital bed, and she had face-tuned the living shit out of herself,

and it was so obvious because the baby looked like a little goblin, as all babies do. Yeah. I don't get the goblin picture. I actually like will die on this cross. I don't think newborns should be posted. No. They need to bake.

You know, like let them, let them stay out of the oven. Yeah, they need to rest. Let them cool. And then in a week or two, you can post the baby. I know. She's got like porous skin,

and they're still placenta on the fucking baby. So rude. It is. Yeah. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion of the Cult of Momfluencers. If folks want to keep up with you and your cult, where can they do that?

Thank you for having me. I guess the cultiest place you can find me is my newsletter, which is called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, and it's all things Momfluencer and all things like Cult of the Ideal Mother. And I'm on Instagram and Twitter, at S Louise Peterson with an E.

Oh, and my book. My book. Yes, right. Yeah. And my book comes out in April, and that's called Momfluenced Inside the Maddening Picture Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture.

So Amanda, Momfluencers, what do you think? Do you think that they're a live your life? A watch your back. Or a get the fuck out level cult? Sorry, I'm really, this is a pregnant pause, so to speak. Because I'm really torn here.

I mean, Sarah did tell us that there's like no truly healthy way to engage with Momfluencer content, which leads me to believe it's teetering up against to get the fuck out, but I think ultimately it is a watch your back. Yeah, I would 100% agree. It's a watch your back because it's like,

there's no safe way to engage with the content, but as long as you're watching your back, as long as you're aware of the games that it plays, then it can be like a fun outlet for mothers. A fun outlet and also a nourishing outlet. At the end of the day, it's like, what's the alternative? Do we just want mothers not to seek community online?

Like, do we want them to be as alone as they once were? I don't think that's reasonable. It's just about finding certain Momfluencers who are not trying to push an agenda, who are not trying to isolate you from your in-person support systems. It makes me think about how moms really should get into like watching sports more,

and this is all goes back to basketball. Because, like, maybe moms could have like an excuse of being like, oh, we're going to go watch the game the way that dads do, and they can have like an outlet to discuss their problems. That's like not serious. You know, it's just a game. Go watch a game.

I don't think it has to be sports, because that will never be me. But I do think that variegating and diversifying your sites of community is really important. Like, sure. You can have a couple of Momfluencers that you follow on Instagram.

Take it all with a damn grain of salt as much as you possibly can. Cults are unavoidable. That's the whole idea behind our podcast. It's just about being a follower of the right ones. But I love that, like, basketball is the, like, dumb activity that you won't stop talking about, and line dancing is my new equivalent.

They're both exciting. I mean, basketball is obviously better, but no, just kidding. Oh, my God. We never even got to talk about gender reveals or sex reveals or whatever. That's, like, a whole topic for another day, like, the cult of gender and sex reveals.

They're so cringy. They're so dangerous. They've literally caused wildfires, so. Wildfires, gender trauma. Like, there are physical and psychological repercussions to gender reveals. Yeah. Watch your back, babies, and for your babies.

Babies and moms. Yes. Well, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. We'll be back with another culty.

And Amanda here. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell, and feel free to check out my books, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and Wordslet, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. We also have a Patreon, and we would really appreciate your support there at patreon.com

slash sounds like a cult. And if you like our show, feel free to leave us a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you'd rate us. My whole thing about wanting to have kids is like, I just want to have one little gay son. Yeah.

I know you can't control him. And if he's not gay, he's not in the family. No, he'll be disowned. I'm excited for it. I mean, if you have kids, then I don't have to have kids. Because in cults, everyone raises everyone's kids. And sounds like a cult is a cult at this point.