WARNING: This blog contains opinions, rants, and bad language and even a few moments of sincerity. Welcome to my world.
WARNING: If you are a man, a mommyblogger, and/or of delicate nature, you may wish to avert your eyes now. In fact, I’m even going to add a “more” tag to this, because I’d hate to think you got blindsided with details that might upset the balance of your life. I swore I’d never post about ooky things, like diapers and diarrhoea, and as far as I’m concered, menstruation falls in the category of things we really don’t need to discuss, however after stumbling across a Mommyblog this weekend, I feel a serious rant burning a hole in my brain, so I’m breaking the rules. By the way, if you want to write me something hateful which I will most definitely ignore, please write to yeahright [at] believethis[dot] com.
DISCLAIMER: I’m sure there are a hecka-lotta intelligent mommybloggers out there. I have met a few, including AnEnglishMum , among others. If you are one and know some others, you could form a “I’m a Mommyblogger But Don’t Have My Head Up My Ass” club. If such a club already exists, please let me know, and I’ll give them a link.
So… click below if you want to read on from here….
I’m going to have to start keeping a record of all the places I comment. I tend to just surf around, looking for sites about humor, about women’s issues, or internet/technology. For some reason I don’t quite understand, there are quite a few Mommybloggers who have themselves registered as either humor blogs or feminist blogs . I think some of these people are delusional about what’s funny to others, but whatever, that’s another rant. So anyway, this is to explain how I ended up in the scary vortex of the Mommyblogger world the other day.
I tell ya why I say “scary”…. I have a kid. A lot of intelligent, funny women, have kids. I’m sure many, if not all, of my bloggy friends have, or want to have, kids. But I do not, under any circumstances, understand why someone would devote an entire blog to talking about one or two people, whether that person be Britney Spears or your own spawn. It’s slightly obsessive. Not all such scary, obsessed-with-their-own-brood women are bloggers. I knew several of them when my son was small, and they wanted to talk about recipies for home-made baby food. It was a crowd amongst which I was embarrassed to talk about, oh, current events, politics, technology, work, etc, because they would look down their long, organic noses at me as though a moment spent not thinking or talking about your kids was a moment spent being a bad mother.
Oh right, so back to why I said: “I’m going to have to start keeping a record of all the places I comment.” So I found this blog, and believe me I’m kicking myself for not saving the link, but the author was talking about, get this, the virtues of reusable maxi-pads . And not only that, they were criticizing those who found it, well, nasty . For those of you who are truly interested, you can also get reusable tampons, called “The Keeper”, or “Moon Cup” and here are some instructions {?!} for how to use them. Personally, it makes me want to vomit, but whatever.
My real rant is not just about the product, about which Googobits.com said: “Commercial menstrual products are bad for the environment, bad for your wallet, and possibly dangerous for your health.” They’re right, but scroll down 8984902 inches into their column and you’ll also read that they say: “Some women keep a bucket of water handy for soaking the pads before they go into the wash (and, as I mentioned above, then use this to water their plants after the pads go into the wash). Some women just rinse their pads in the sink as they are done with them. They are compatible with washing machines and dryers, although using bleach and scented laundry products are not recommended.” Not recommended? Honey, I wouldn’t just use bleach, I’d use some fricking industrial-strength de-nastifier.
No, my real rant is about the organic, home-schooling, nipple-nazi breastfeeding, cloth-diaper advocating, republican she-horde that says that if I find the idea of being up to my elbows in a bucket of my own monthly flow (plus a gallon of water), that I’m somehow defective as a woman. The biggest reason I wish I’d saved this blog location where I saw this was the comments she received. Dozens upon dozens of them. All agreeing and trading their maxi-nasty secrets and not ONE person (besides, well, me) said “Holy Fucking Christ, that’s disgusting”. Although perhaps I was more diplomatic. That’s what I was saying in my head. I can’t remember what I actually typed.
This, my dear bitter readers, is why I hate Mommybloggers (with a few noteable exceptions.) If you know of a good one that’s funny and insightful, send it to me, but 99% of them make me wish there was such a thing as an anti-link.
(This post was originally written for my bitterwomen blog. Oddly, after posting it, I started getting requests for paid advertising from people who sold this weird stuff. I guess they googled the term, but didn’t actually READ my post. Lazy bastards.)
I've blogged about many many things in many many different places all over the web. It's exhausting. So instead I'm bringing it all together in one place, and hope that those of you I know and love won't mind if I natter about techie stuff, knitting, writing, or crack some wiseass remarks about random topics. Let's call it... holistic blogging. 
Ha ha. I had to laugh and I am completely with you on this.
I have watched many of my friends, who used to be able to talk intellegently about practically any subject, become almost cultish in their obsession with their babies and their own bodies. They also seem to be under the misguided believe that I find it all very interesting and crave the next instalment in the joys of being a woman and mother, as well as information on the ‘very helpful’ products out there! I understand that they are happy and excited, but, really, watching my friends being taken over is very unsettling…
You know how you can put a child lock on the internet to stop the little cherubs from accessing naughty sites? Do you think we can invent one that stops us from stumbling on the horrors that can be found on a mommyblog?
lmao… and who says it’s a man’s world?
I’m such an insensitive bastard…or something.
Whew, I wonder where your angst comes from? Zealots are a bit tedious in any form, even yours.
I’m glad I watched your space. It is a first-class rant a good one that is much needed! Thanks!
These are the same women who refuse to take a shower because it’s bad for the environment. How about this…..they stank.
I’m a mother and I don’t let that define who I am. I remember getting a whole ration of crap because I didn’t breastfeed and I bought disposable diapers. You know what? My kid turned out just fine. I don’t need to turn myself into some non-bathing, maxi pad washing dairy cow to be a woman. I thought those days were over.
I dunno, this whole dam thing is so funny, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Jayne, I admire your restraint. Wash your maxipads? Reusable tampons? Circle the wagons, I feel a rant coming on.
My grandmother’s generation were pioneers. Their “monthlies” were an awful shameful secret–no pads at all–no Midol–and they had a stash of absorbent cloths which they washed (separately) in boiling water and Clorox OUT OF NECESSITY. All things female were, hmmm, unclean. It was a curse placed upon woman by an angry, male Judeo-Christian god for Eve’s having been disobedient and tempting Adam in the Garden of Eden and causing the Fall of the Human Race. No shit. That was the dogma. (Don’t think for a minute it has all died out.)
My mother was Rosie, the Riveter. With tens of thousands of American Women, she slipped into her trousers–which were, for the first time, respectable attire for the ‘girls’–work boots, tied up her hennaed, skip-waved tresses in bandanas and built the hardware that won World War II. In her spare time, she raised the next generation of America’s children with help from one another, raised a garden and canned the produce, kept leaky roofs patched and the lawns mowed–while sewing EVERYBODY’s clothing (because manufacturer’s were making uniforms.) After which, Johnny came marching home again, America’s Rosies were sent back to the lunch counters and laundry rooms of the nation and expected to be ‘good girls’ with the thanks of a grateful nation.
In the 1960s, my generation confronted the ire of a (still) male-dominated nation, stepped out of our 3-inch Betty Davis come-fuck-me-pumps, girdles, and underwire-push-up bras and into the law schools, med schools, universities and businesses, then–finally–the polling places of this country and raised enough ruckus to (1) make the ‘git in the kitchen, girl’ crowd float to the surface–for easy identification, and picking off one at a time. Among the other things we raised was the consciousness of our everyday guys who just hadn’t given it much thought.
Breast feed? Recycle maxipads? Reuse tampons? You outta yer fuckin’ mind? We have a world to change before some damnfool makes it uninhabitable. Let’s save the human race from itself…then take up smaller issues as time allows.
Oh dear, dear, dear. This is just beyond the realms of ecofriendliness. I watched a BBC3 programme the other night called ‘How Dirty Can I Get’ which involved ‘Moon cups’…I nearly puked up at the thought of walking round with a baby’s bottle teat shoved up my bits.
I guess next we will be told to wipe our bums with Dock leaves after a satisfying dump. Well, not this Agnes Mildew. I am going to stick to my Andrex, tampons, pads, – whatever I want. I am not going to end up a smelly, fly-blown crusty for anybody!
The amount of VAT Gordon Brown rips off sanitary products would pay for a massive recycling plant, anyway, so yah boo sucks!
You mean not everyone washes their maxi pads?
wow. i, um, feel silly.
next thing i know, you’ll be telling me other women don’t use their monthly flow instead of buying blush.
then i’ll feel REALLY stoopid.
I am so glad you said it. I love the mommyblogs where the women are smart and funny and laugh at themselves and their lives. But, there are so many out there and many have nothing else to say rather than “Tommy had peas for lunch! Look!
I am way too snarky and bitchy for those blogs. It’s kind of like college when you could tell those of use learning secondary education Vs. elementary. Every class break we would take our hungover selves outside to smoke and check out guys asses. The Elem. Ed. teaches would be showing each other their new cool “wavy” scissors…
I love your blog. A little something to show my appreciation http://fishwithoutbicycle.blogspot.com/2007/09/belated-heaps-of-thanks.html. Fish xx
Thanks so much for the comments on this one, everyone. It felt fantastic to get it out of my system, and all day yesterday I was slightly worried that I was the only one who would see it that way.
)
I tell ya, sometimes writing this blog is downright cathartic!
I’ve just started in this blogging game and now you’re the second blog(ger) that has warned me of the dreaded mommy blogger. I’m starting to wake up in the middle of my sleep in hot sweats– yes, I’m waking up in hot sweat pants even though I went to bed in my PJs. Can anyone explain this? I suspect Mommy bloggers are behind it.
Yes, Lucy Dee, mommybloggers ARE behind it (them and other goddam Republicans)…contrary to what “Desperate Housewives” and “The Real Housewives of Orange County” would have us believe, mommybloggers are proudly cows slogging around in sweatpants–nurturing teats sagging–and they slip into homes of intelligent wimmin-who-have-brains-and-lives and slide off our PJs, Victoria’s Secret flimsies and tuck us into sweats.
Obviously, their (collective) hope is that we wake up next morning unaware of the switch, feeling especially comfy and call up a friend, whilst feeding Junior home-chopped raw oat bits, to discuss awful periods and arrange to swap cleaning tips.
You’re wise beyond your years.
LOL… I will say that there are a few that are great. I would find it exhausting to hate ALL of them, because there are so many, but yes, it’s amazing how far their reach extends.
~ Jayne
That is just nasty. I don’t even know what to say to reusuing maxi pads etc. ew.
My mung bean, eco psycho, designer hemp wearing neice gave to me a specially hand rolled, organic, biodynamic, non bleached, tissue wrapped tampon/med that she had rolling around in her handbag (urgent need). I ended up with a rather nasty and very unwelcome bug that required some serious and vile antibiotics (2 scripts) to get rid of. Needless to say, I now always keep a stash of STERILE and factory manufactured tampons/meds on hand. Washable pads – oh how nasty.
Holy guacamole. I hadn’t even thought of the sanitary issues. Just thinking about this made my girl-parts cramp up. Ewww.
PHEW! Really, really glad you mentioned me first or I might have got a complex! I’m still wiping the tears after howling with laughter at this entry! (Maybe I should change my blog name?!!)
I did actually wash out a panty pad the other day – only it was entirely by accident and made a right mess of the washing machine. Still picking bits of fluff off my DH’s undies now.
Oh yeah, I was going to give you the Bodacious Blog award, but I see you’ve already got it, and besides, my mother reads my blog and I’m not sure I want her following me here! Oh, what the heck! Have it anyway and I’ll just slip you in quietly!
Right then. Just off to become the inaugural member of the “I’m a Mommyblogger But Don’t Have My Head Up My Ass” club!
Oh dear lord. Here comes the comment ranting!
This takes nasty to a whole new level. I love the environment and everything, and most everything I build for myself is made of second-hand things.
But this? Um, no thank you. The landfills won’t be getting my newsprint or old ceramic cups (Recycling and mosaic art, respectively) but they can have my nasty old hygeine products.
And really? Is this all you can think to do for the environment? For women? This isn’t empowering, this is idiocy!
One of the things that annoys me most about “Post-feminism” is that it consists almost entirely of attention-whoring and playing the victim card as opposed to self-betterment.
See, the old-style feminists are the ones I really respect, because they actually fought to make themselves better! They worked in manual labor, they made it so they couldn’t be seen as dolls anymore because they proved themselves.
Sad news, ladies: When I think of feminists, unlike the rest of hte populace i don’t think of hippy-dippy college girls that wore cloth pads or bull dykes that sit around and complain. I think of the chicks out there that put on makeup, pull up their hair, and then go out and spend 8 hours working construction. I think of the women who decide that they don’t want to be seen as objects, so instead of complaining, they make it so they cant be!
You can’t change somebody’s mind! It’s that simple! You have to change yourself. Read some Voltaire, take a self-defense course, toughen up!
The only line of defense between strong men belittling and objectifying women is strong women. Not the whiners. The doers.
Torchlight, after reading your recent comments, I looked for a link to your site–I have to have more–sadly, didn’t find one.
Maybe it’s my age, but NEVER does feminism bring on thoughts of hippy-dippy college girls or bull dykes. I think of my Mom, who would spin big furrows in the Family Plot if she could hear me refer to her as a feminist. She was a single mom of three after three failed relationships, was Rosie the Riveter during WWII, with help from family kept us all in school–if not starched & ironed–there to be educated. She worked at whatever job a man wouldn’t be caught dead doing and never apologized to anyone for having the poor judgment to be born with female genitalia.
When I hear the early femist anthem, written by a MAN, BTW, “I am Woman (hear me roar)” nothing fires up in my dream machine. What my Mom and others like her would be proud to march to is “I’M A WOMAN” (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bettemidler/imawoman.html) which sums it all up, as you say: No whining, just doing.
Whether you wanna join our club or not, you just did. WELCOME!
It’s ironic. You’ll never guess what i did after reading that entry – went and bought a diva-cup.
I was kinda of thinking about it several times, but your post reminded me about it. Will see if it’s comfortable or not…
I hope I won’t offend you by disagreeing with the general notion of this being disgusting. In fact, i think wearing a pad/tampon is kinda disgusting…And, actually, the pads smell, whereas the diva-cups – eliminate the smell…
Really like your blog, btw.
And, my blog is in Russian, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to exchange comments, even though it would’ve been lots of fun. My style is somewhat like yours in terms of sarcasm