Don't Call Me 'Mama'
I was such an easy mark. The day I discovered that I was pregnant, in January of 2020, I googled what to do when you get pregnant, and instantly the brands supplied me with their answers. They offered me leggings and belly oils and a new identity, too: They all called me mama. Not mother, or mommy, or mom. Mama. Its eerie ubiquity signaled the kickoff of a promotional campaign. I was being rebranded as a mother, and motherhood itself was being rebranded through me.
Mama is actually an old word—the Oxford English Dictionary guesses that it came straight from the mouth of babes, as it's 'characteristic of early infantile vocalization'—but now it's been fully integrated into the language of marketing. In 2015, Elissa Strauss traced the rise of 'mama' as affluent white women began cribbing it from Black and Latina communities. They were using it to style themselves as alternative wellness gurus, promoting homeschooling, cloth diapering, and organic feeding solutions. Now their mothering style is inescapable, and the word has acquired a totalizing power. The newsletter for the maternity dress company says: Everything in moderation, mama. The novelty mug sold over Instagram says: Deep breaths, mama. The mirror in the airport breastfeeding pod says: Lookin' good, mama.
Mama is not exactly new, but it's new enough that it wasn't applied to my own mother in the 1990s, or her jeans. The mama supplants all the other mother types that have come before her. She transcends the pattern set by the refrigerator mother, the soccer mom, or the mommy blogger. Her pharmaceutical drugs are not mother's little helpers, her glass of wine is not mommy juice, and her mind has not yet dissolved into mom brain. Using a fresh term lends an optimistic gloss, seeming to rescue motherhood from the cultural forces that have rendered past generations of mothers uncool, infantile, and generally unfit for public life. Of course, with every rebrand, the cycle begins anew.
Mama aims to transmit a sense of earthiness, sensuality, and above all, solidarity between the mother and the brand. There is a real smarminess to it, a presumed intimacy where none exists. It's the sound of a supplement start-up throwing an adult sleepover inside your phone, and it feeds on the isolation built into the structures of American parenthood. A 2021 Harvard report found that 51% of mothers of small children felt 'serious loneliness'; their degree of isolation was second only to young adults between the ages of 18 to 25. Both groups are Americans at transformative and destabilizing life stages. The brand capitalizes on the mother's aloneness and says: I see you, mama. But all it sees is an advertising category.
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