The mommyblog

Module by Matthew Stringer

Yesterday I was introduced to Seriously, So Blessed!, the ultimate mockery of two genres of societal practice all wrapped in to one.

Seriously, So Blessed!'s February Banner

Trust me, just take a peek if you can stand it and then come back… this site has got insulting two cultures down to a science! First, the phenomenon of the mommyblog, and second, an Inter-mountain West culture comprised primarily of LDS women that appears to gravitate around cultural artifacts like the scrapbook, knitting, and crocheting.

But, let me back up a bit before you assume I simply hate the mommyblogs and the LDS scrapbook crowd. Now, I’m all for subcultures and communities being crafted for, well, you name it; Star Trek fanfic, military veterans sharing war stories, automobile enthusiasts, eBay fanatics, teachers, political mavens, etc. The same goes for the mommyblog; it’s all good – as long as those participating in any given community are doing so with purpose – to share actual, relevant information about, in their case, parenting and the various issues facing the SAHM (stay-at-home mom). But, when some mommyblogs exist purely for sharing irrelevant personal information, for “shameless self-promotion”, that’s when I especially take issue (not that I’m a fan of these things to begin with). How tawdry is it for a blog to soak itself in the iconography of the craft-store and the scrap-book for no reason other than to self-adulate, to contextualize the mundane, with no intrinsic value to society? It’s annoying, it’s absurd, and it feeds an industry trying to sell a false sense of empowerment to thousands of women.

So, this is why I was highly impressed with the none-to-subtle skewering of these tandem cultures at Seriously, So Blessed! I mean, right down to the name it’s spot on. Browsing through the site, if you can stomach it, you’ll find examples of some extremely funny lambasting. Paragraphs with odd changes in font size to accentuate the most important elements of a sentence or phrase (which you can practically hear being uttered in a “valley girl” voice), letters in words with alternating colors, words with unintelligible alternated upper and lower casing, unnecessary abbreviations for words like “because” and “with”, strange and incorrect usages of everyday words, lingo like “feti” (meaning, fetuses) and “BFF” (best friend forever, an extremely overused term which needs to banished from the face of the Earth as far as I am concerned), and even jargon like “wifey”. But that’s not all! An embedded music player with the cultural lodestones of Taylor Swift and Beyonce Knowles (come on, Single Ladies!!!). Dozens of animated .gifs with images of hearts, unborn babies, hair, and makeup. A note indicating that Twilight is the best book ever over in the sidebar. And on and on.

The entries themselves vacillate between stories about preparing for the birth of twins, to hooking-up single friends, to makeovers, to cooking treats, to gloating about good deeds done for other BFF’s and so forth. Wow. And, all of this done with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. Hilarious! The best thing is, it’s so subtle that lots of fellow crafters and mommybloggers won’t catch it until they read posts like “What Mite [sic] Have Been“, where the story of rejecting a fiancé two weeks before the wedding simply because he shifted majors to social work (to quote the post: “I mean, I’m all about helping people, but not for a LIVING!”) is shared. It even includes an all-too-Mormon reference to personal revelation, going so far as to claim the girl used the concept (in this case, one’s seeking out personal revelation in determining who to marry) as an excuse to ditch out of her marriage that close to the wedding date. ‘”Just say “I don’t fill [sic] good about it” and the other person is seriously stuck!”‘ Talk about abusing the sacred with the selfish.

Anway, Seriously, So Blessed! is comedy gold.

Now, I think I’ll go read ESPN.com or something to get this cutesy crap out of my system.