++Mommy blogs and influencers are monetizing the horrible working conditions of motherhood. +
++When I became a mother in 2015, my old life no longer felt relevant. I lost friends; I stepped back from work. I was consumed by the labor of taking care, and I found an odd solace online — a form of recognition — hanging out in mommy forums and on social media. +
++I lurked on TheBump’s breastfeeding boards and the ambivalently political content created by sites like Scary Mommy, which reflected the horror and delight of everything I was experiencing. I was taken by the illusion of sisterhood and commiseration online and, not incidentally, by the mothers who answered problems with product. When I dared leave the house for the park or rare mother’s group meetup, women peddled leggings, makeup, belly wraps, oils. Every mother seemed to be in a whole “find what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” mood — a seamless integration between the domestic and the commercial that I found alarming and alluring. +
++A year later, former Ralph Lauren CEO Nicole Feliciano articulated the underlying promise of saleswomanship for new mothers in her book Mom Boss: In the age of social media, she claimed, any woman can “learn how to be a super mom.” In her bio, Feliciano refers to her company Momtrends, which began as a blog in 2007 but now specializes in sponsored content and influencer outreach, as every mom’s business-savvy BFF. +
++The Momtrends website remains, today, similarly chummy: It’s the self-described “girlfriend you always look forward to bumping into at yoga class” (yes, the website is the girlfriend). By way of curated products and entrepreneurial opportunities, the website-friend provides “solutions for the challenges of modern motherhood” for women who want to “live with purpose and passion.” But what it really offers is something that has become central to the story of American motherhood — personal reinvention. +
++The website-girlfriend says, “Wasn’t it easy before the kids came along? We all managed to look pulled together, travel, stay fit and even entertain on occasion. Well, we don’t believe motherhood is an ending. We think of it as a beginning. A time to edit what you bring into your life.” +
++The notion that the ostensibly natural destruction of women under American capitalism is not an ending, but rather just the beginning, is one that has come to dominate the discourse of motherhood. +
++Late-2000s mommy bloggers brought an overdue, if disorganized, correction of the archive, with women sharing stories of maternal discontent all over the internet. For them, motherhood was often a disaster. They depicted everything from their negative feelings about their children to their discomfort with their postpartum bodies. Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a sociologist who has written about the rise of motherhood culture on social media, calls the early years of the mamasphere “the Confessional Age” and an “emancipation.” +
++As with all internet trends, there were issues. Heather Armstrong of Dooce, once named “queen of the mommy bloggers,” eventually found herself experiencing treatment-resistant depression. And Lacey Spears made the disturbing quest for public power online acute when she poisoned and eventually killed her son with toxic amounts of table salt, the result of what experts have called Munchausen syndrome by proxy (now listed in the DSM-5 as “factitious disorder imposed on another”). She had been chronicling her son’s false illness, and her sacrificial care work, on her blog. +
++Mothers quickly learned to monetize their stories, transforming their raw and real platforms into lifestyle brands. By 2015, Jezer-Morton says, following the success of bloggers like Ree Drummond, who became a Food Network brand, and Glennon Doyle, who leveraged her blog, Momastery, to publish her first memoir, we had entered the “Influencer Age,” with momfluencers like Oh Joy and Love Taza depicting “the Insta-perfect life that everyone knows is painstakingly staged, but that we love to follow — and critically dismantle — anyway.” +
++Multilevel marketing corporations, which have since the mid-20th century posed as a solution to the boredom and overwhelm of housewifery, also found new footing online in the 2010s. MLMs built their digital mythos around the prospect of power and community, appealing to ordinary mothers who felt alienated from public life by offering up a ready-made digital commons — online communities where new moms could connect, build a life around products, and feel like they belonged again. By 2017, more than half of Instagram’s 800 million users were women, and mommy publications were teeming with listicles, memes, and tips about moms gettin’ that side hustle, many of which referenced multilevel marketing schemes. +
++Large corporate MLMs have since faced lawsuits and backlash, making them less popular, though companies like Beachbody — a fitness and nutrition conglomerate that bills a monthly fee to “coaches” who in turn sell Beachbody shakes and workout products — have profited off pandemic life, targeting mothers in particular. +
++But moms who build businesses online have diversified. Now they helm bad mom and drunk mom empires on TikTok, create merch lines with cheeky phrases, “help families sleep better,” and become cleaning experts. As Jezer-Morton told me, while the lure of traditional MLMs may be waning, “the content production of motherhood is still a viable MLM” with moms “creating content and teaching each other to create content.” Moms now sell their ability to sell anything, and they adapt, constantly, to social media functionality. “Anytime that there’s a new platform, there’s going to be this little cottage industry of how-to that can also turn into a low-key MLM,” Jezer-Morton told me. It’s a trend that has led some to question whether American motherhood has itself become a multilevel marketing scheme. +
++The momtrepreneur, or mompreneur, or more all-encompassing momboss, relies on what Jezer-Morton calls the performance of “successful neoliberal selfhood.” These are the obstinate, media-savvy daughters of Lean In. They live by inspirational stories of women finding a community and a calling, of pushing through what’s tough about working motherhood, playing off the vague “moral therapeutic deism” of American capitalism and the larger gospel of Instagram. They also sell the prospect of beginning again by positioning free enterprise as a fantastical path toward femme freedom and promising an escape from the isolation and trauma of motherhood under patriarchal capitalism without ever having to speak its name, much less question it as an economic system. +
++Lindsay Teague Moreno, one of the essential oil MLM Young Living’s biggest success stories, is now a micro influencer with a book and podcast, both titled Boss Up. Moreno’s profile serves as an inspo hub for women invested in the fantasy of public power that she represents. Her pre-2020 grid is full of glammed-up anti-entitlement rhetoric: All it takes to succeed, she says, is a little bootstrappin’ in the form of putting on your “big girl panties”! +
++Her neon, rainbow-colored memes bring surveillance culture to motherhood — one post reads, “Your Kids Are Watching” — and they have a dizzying economic logic. She quotes Fight Club but also embraces a merit-based pursuit of the dollar, as in, “Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret.” In another post, Moreno channels that popular phrase some mothers use with kids — “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” — when addressing the gendered wage gap. “Throwing a fit,” she writes in her caption, “won’t help.” +
++Empowerment imagined as power, in other words, is often disciplinary. +
++Mom bosses harness their power by bending time or just hiring others to care for their kids. They also, therefore, rely on the assumption that mothers’ lives will be devastated by motherhood, but that women should restructure their social, economic, and financial lives accordingly. The larger premise: We can solve the problems of the sexual division of labor, the unfinished feminist revolution, and the lack of social services in America by turning to individualism, the market, and work. +
++The problem with this thinking is that antisociality, emotional devastation, job precarity, and the motherhood penalty, each compounded by intersections of class, race, and gender identity, are not inherent conditions of motherhood; they are the conditions of the ongoing disaster of care in capitalist America. The disempowerment of caregivers, and the suffering that lack of power brings with it, is foundational to capitalist economics, which has always relegated women to the home to serve the family, a major economic institution. (For instance, 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts were also disciplinary, targeting women’s contraceptive methods, alternative relations to work, and public power in order to push women into the home — where they could produce laborers.) +
++The modern-day American devaluation of sectors like health care and education only provides further evidence that, culturally and economically, we value industry, not care. But this all fades from view under the guise of careerist liberation, where work equals freedom. Instead, failures of American economic and political policy, and the poor working conditions they engender for caregivers, are refashioned as market opportunity — a chance to cultivate resilience, better business sense, and new product markets. +
++During the pandemic, some pastoral mommy influencers are facing an identity crisis, but others have simply mapped the language of the “slay” onto anti-Covid-vax and anti-mask rhetoric, or they are shilling wellness alongside QAnon rhetoric. Momtrepreneurs, on the other hand, claim they are thriving, with some penning enterprising tips for survival. Moreno took some time off to lose weight and travel, and often cites, vaguely, the charged political climate in her Instagram content, including her refusal to “just sit at home and be scared of the world right now” and her belief that mask-wearing is “not good for our health.” +
++Meanwhile, the often apolitical and always aspirational qualities of the mom boss remain all over the wider mythology of motherhood. As Katherine Goldstein, creator of The Double Shift, a podcast about motherhood, put it in a phone interview, “The baseline narrative about being a mother in America is that every individual mother is fundamentally flawed in some way and the way to get out of it is through life hacks and products.” For this reason, one of Goldstein’s least favorite mom slogans is “You got this, mama!” because it sends the message that “whatever’s difficult about motherhood, you just need to try harder or buy your way out of it.” +
++Some of this discourse is just blandly encouraging, but other mothers, like those behind Big Little Feelings and Dr. Becky at Home, have monetized the illusion of “winning” at parenting while acknowledging the work is “tough.” They create “sanity-saving” content and courses that are an attractive mix of mental health and parenting philosophy meant to help mothers accept their perceived failings and tap into their inherent “badassery.” +
++You-got-this motherhood, in all its iterations, is, at best, a seriously limited rejoinder to the interconnected problems of patriarchy and capitalism and to the mental health struggles that result from their longstanding collusion. The you-got-this mentality also draws on a broader white corporate feminism. As Alice Bolin writes in her analysis of the MLM-turned-sex-cult NXIVM/DOS and the ersatz feminist support of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “The fact that many people cannot differentiate between postfeminist ‘empowerment’ and real feminism is a victory for those forces that have systematically opposed real gender equality.” +
++At its worst, you-got-this motherhood sounds an awful lot like a primer on both rape culture and capitalist life. A recent viral Nike campaign, for instance, glorifies the mother as “the toughest athlete” and as “someone who deals with the pain, hits her limit, and pushes past it.” Stamping any product with motherhood (and wellness) offers a moral hue that is akin, as Goldstein put it, to greenwashing. Nike has used the tactic before to deflect from its treatment of mothers and, as Sara Berliner of Vote Like a Mother noted, its practice of “making billions off our sisters working for subsistence wages in poor conditions at their factories abroad.” In this light, the ad was generally not well received, but many still rallied behind the imagery in the commercial — and that narrative of women “pushing, pushing, pushing.” But is this, really, the story of motherhood we want to promote? +
++As Naomi Klein writes in The Shock Doctrine, capitalism feeds on periods of shock by “exploiting the window of opportunity” created by “a gap between fast-moving events and the information that exists to explain them.” Motherhood in America has, perhaps, always been a prolonged period of disorientation susceptible to niche forms of disaster capitalism. But over the past year, caregivers have lived acutely within this dark hole — what Klein calls “pure event, raw reality, unprocessed by story, narrative or anything that could bridge the gap between reality and understanding.” She writes, “Without a story we are, as many of us were after September 11, intensely vulnerable to those people who are ready to take advantage of the chaos for their own ends.” +
++American mothers are maybe, kind of, moving out of that shapeless lacuna and into some kind of narrative. Policy institutes and reporters are documenting the many crises unfolding at once: Mothers are in crisis, schools are in crisis, child care facilities are in crisis, and, perhaps most importantly and auspiciously, Americans’ relationship to work is in crisis. In response, mothers are gathering online around political action and around the discourse of mental health. But it remains to be seen who will control the next part of the story. There is a lot of mommy internet, and the discourse shifts quickly, but as Jezer-Morton put it, “One thing that doesn’t change in the mamasphere is this constant need to affirm each other.” +
++Recently, affirmation has gained more urgency. “Right now, it’s very much ‘it’s okay to not be okay,’” Jezer-Morton said, pointing out that moms are crying on social media. “It’s okay to fall apart, it’s okay to cry.” Goldstein feels that what we’re seeing online doesn’t yet capture the full picture. “We have not even begun to deal with it,” she said. “I don’t think we’re actually really seeing, truly, how much moms are suffering online in terms of what people are publicly sharing.” +
++This culture of affirmation is less about productivity — or the empowerment alchemy of turning bad times into capital — and more about “feeling seen” and “holding space.” It’s you-got-this, but with a little more awareness that you don’t. In other words, it’s a mental health project that is tangled in grief and mourning, the politics (and aesthetics) of documentation, the larger mom-shaming resistance, and the ubiquity of personal branding. There’s a lot going on. +
++“It’s coming from a super-real, incredibly desperate place,” Jezer-Morton said of mothers sharing their pain publicly, “but it’s also turning into a form of accepted discourse.” +
++I have devoured the reporting and posts about moms over the past year, but I worry about the familiar consumption of women’s suffering — and about how others may monetize all this affirmation in equally resonant ways. In some senses, the documentation is working; policy like the direct payments included in the American Rescue Plan Act seemed implausible pre-pandemic. But even left leaners are tsk-tsking that strategy, claiming it will reduce women’s labor force participation; in the process, critics of the tax credit forget the legacy of Black mothers like bell hooks, who pointed out white feminism’s limiting quest for power through public work. Meanwhile, technology, education, and mental health industries are seizing their chance to privatize. And a Scary Mommy-sponsored ad for CBD that recently popped up in my feed reads, “Ain’t no stress like burnt-out-mom-during-a-pandemic-stress!” So it’s hard to say what motherhood will look like on the fabled other side. +
++What is clear is that mothers will have to continue situating our collective story, online and offline, within a larger economic and political history, rather than in some fuzzy politics of empowerment, if we want this moment to lead toward a radical restructuring of care in America. And we will have to make part of that story the real task of intersectional feminism, which is the task of rethinking power itself. +
++The next month could determine who lives to see normalcy come back. +
++The future of America’s Covid-19 epidemic can now be distilled into this: long-term confidence and hope, but short-term uncertainty and, perhaps, even despair. +
++Vaccines are rolling out quickly, setting up the country to crush the outbreaks that have warped our lives for the past year. +
++But in the short term, perhaps the next month, the US faces a few potential paths. The worst scenario: A fourth surge of the coronavirus outpaces vaccinations and kills thousands more people even as the country nears the finish line with Covid-19. The best possibility: The accelerating vaccine rollout and continued vigilance keep the virus at its current level or, hopefully, results in fewer infections — letting the US cross the finish line safely and with more lives saved. Then there’s a middle path: Cases rise, but vaccines shield the country from more hospitalizations and deaths. +
++The path the US takes, though, will be decided by one of the most unpredictable things of all: human behavior. +
++The public could loosen up on Covid-19 precautions too quickly, discarding masks and failing to social distance before enough people are vaccinated. As has already been done in some areas, policymakers could push the country in this direction by ending restrictions before the vaccine rollout is truly at critical mass. Either of those things, or a combination of both, could lead to a fourth surge. +
++But if Americans hold out just a bit longer, and vaccination rates continue to pick up, the US could reach the end of the current large outbreaks — as cases dwindle down close to zero — before that happens. +
++The good news is, an end seems to be in sight. At current vaccination rates, the country could inoculate its entire adult population by July, leaving us ample time over the summer to start getting our lives back to normal and, hopefully, celebrate with others. One country that has vaccinated the bulk of its population, Israel, has shown this is possible, reopening its economy and crushing the Covid-19 curve at the same time. +
++“Yes, there are some near-term concerns,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “But so far we’re — cautiously — on the other side of it. … If we push ahead and really accelerate vaccination, by the summer we’ll be in a much, much better place.” +
++The question now is what lies between here and there. +
++The worst short-term scenario: Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths rise in a fourth surge +
++This is the worst-case scenario — the one that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said fills her with a feeling of “impending doom.” +
++Here’s how it could play out: In the next few weeks, states continue to loosen the restrictions they put in place to combat Covid-19, opening up businesses (particularly indoor locations) and revoking their mask mandates. The public follows suit, embracing the near-end of Covid-19 by going out and engaging in close-contact activities with family, friends, and strangers, even if they’re not yet fully vaccinated. The vaccine campaign can’t keep up with all of this new social activity, and more people catch the virus than are inoculated. +
++So the coronavirus spreads, jumping between all these vulnerable people mingling together again, while more-infectious coronavirus variants spread rapidly at the same time, pushing the wave even higher. (B.1.1.7, the variant that appears to have originated in the UK, is now the dominant cause of new infections in the US, Walensky said Wednesday.) +
++That said, it doesn’t seem like the US overall is heading toward the worst-case scenario, at least not yet. A recent uptick in Covid-19 cases might have hit a plateau. The US still has a lot of daily new Covid-19 cases — nearly 500 times that of Australia after controlling for population — but it may not be getting worse. +
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Our World in Data
++The concern is that could all change — and quickly — due to exponential spread, which causes infections to pick up at an accelerating pace. During the US’s third surge in the fall, it took roughly a month for daily new cases to double from about 40,000 to 80,000. But it took only around two weeks for daily new cases to double once again, from 80,000 to 160,000. +
++This might already be happening in Michigan, which has been hit hard by Covid-19 in the past few weeks. The state’s current surge isn’t quite as bad yet as its previous one, but it’s still leading to more hospitalizations and deaths. If it’s already happening there, it could happen elsewhere. +
++The middle short-term path: Covid-19 cases rise, but not hospitalizations and deaths +
++Throughout the pandemic, Covid-19 deniers have claimed rises in cases were only a “casedemic,” meaning that cases rose but hospitalizations and deaths didn’t, and therefore there was nothing to worry about. +
++That was nonsense for much of the past year, fueled by a crucial misunderstanding: Increases in hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag behind increases in cases because it takes time for people to get sick, land at the hospital, and die after getting infected. +
++But something like this could happen now, thanks to the vaccines. So far, the populations more vulnerable to Covid-19, based on age, have gotten more of the vaccine. The result is that more than 76 percent of adults 65 and older have gotten at least one dose, and more than 57 percent have been fully vaccinated (either by the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine or a two-shot vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer). Over the past year, this age group represented around 80 percent of all Covid-19 deaths in the US. +
++With much of the vulnerable vaccinated, a rise in Covid-19 cases may not translate to a significant rise in hospitalizations and deaths. Younger people may contract the virus, but they won’t show up at the hospital or die at the same rates as older individuals. The virus would lose the race to the vaccines. +
++So the US may still see a fourth surge in cases. But, as Amesh Adalja at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told me, “It’s going to be of a different flavor than prior waves” because the vaccines “have defanged the virus,” including the variants that have been discovered so far. +
++This is still speculative. +
++“I think it’s a bit too early to tell,” George Mason University epidemiologist Saskia Popescu said about that scenario. Reducing a fourth surge to a “casedemic” still requires action — ensuring vaccines continue to go out quickly, especially to vulnerable populations. +
++The best short-term scenario: No fourth surge at all +
++This scenario — where cases, hospitalizations, and deaths all hold steady or continue to fall — is contingent on policymakers not reopening their states too quickly, the American people continuing to follow public health guidelines such as social distancing and masking, and the vaccine rollout improving, or at the very least, maintaining its current pace. +
++It could also be helped along by warmer weather in most of the country in the coming weeks, pushing Americans to do more in outdoor spaces where the virus doesn’t spread as easily. +
++History might not give much reason for optimism. America has generally done a bad job with its policy approach and public adherence throughout the pandemic (hence America’s high death toll relative to many of its developed peers). As Popescu put it, “The US has really struggled when it comes to maintaining vigilance when the finish line is in sight.” +
++But the country could do it. If Americans hold out a little while longer — possibly just several weeks — we could suddenly find ourselves in a world where most US adults have gotten at least one shot of the vaccine. If we get there and avoid the first scenario on this list, it could translate to tens of thousands more of us being around to celebrate. +
++The longer-term scenario is more certain — and hopeful +
++For all the uncertainty surrounding the short term, there’s a longer-term scenario that seems very likely: Thanks to the vaccines, the US will reach the end of the large outbreaks, and the summer will be the beginning of our return to normal. +
++There’s a real-world example that should fill Americans with hope: Israel. Thanks to good planning and flexibility, Israel has fully vaccinated more than 56 percent of its population, including the vast majority of older demographics. That’s allowed it to almost fully open its economy again as Covid-19 cases plummet to levels not seen since summer 2020. +
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Our World in Data
++This is incredibly encouraging. It shows that the vaccines work and are truly a way out of the pandemic. “It’s there,” Adalja said. “The real-world data shows what future we’ll eventually achieve if everything stays on track and we continue to vaccinate.” +
++The US is well on its way to that point. Already, more than 19 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated. With more than 3 million doses being administered a day, the country will be able to fully inoculate the majority of its population in a little more than a month — and all adults within three months. If that trend continues, the US could reproduce Israel’s crushed curve in just months or even weeks. +
++Then it will finally happen. We’ll find ourselves back at parties with family, at dinners with friends, and in movie theaters with strangers. What was considered too risky just months ago will be the normal we’ve desired for a year. +
++“I reckon that point will become apparent in retrospect,” Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard, previously told me. “We will suddenly realize that we are laughing, indoors, with people we don’t know and whose vaccine status is unknown, and we will think, ‘Wow, this would have been unimaginable back when …’” +
++There are still major challenges ahead. Avoiding the deadliest of the short-term scenarios could save tens of thousands of lives. Ensuring enough people get vaccinated — by both improving access and addressing vaccine hesitancy — will be crucial. And it’s a race against time: The possibility that worse variants will emerge increases as the virus continues to spread and mutate. +
++It’s important to help the rest of the world in its efforts too — not simply for humanitarian reasons, but because the coronavirus and its variants could creep back into the US from other countries. +
++Still, the happier future now looks like a matter of when, not if. After a year of our futures constantly seeming so uncertain, we now have this respite to look forward to — and it’s likely just a matter of time. +
++This year, Ramadan starts on April 12. But what is Ramadan? How does fasting work? Your questions, answered. +
++The Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts on Monday, April 12, and even amid a global pandemic, most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims will observe it in some form. +
++Which means there’s a good chance you might encounter someone — a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, your child’s teacher — who will be celebrating, fasting, and doing all sorts of other activities that are unique to the holy month. +
++But what is Ramadan, exactly? What’s the deal with fasting? And is there anything special you should do or say when you’re around Muslim friends and acquaintances during Ramadan? +
++Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered: Here are the most basic answers to the most basic questions about Ramadan. +
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+- What is Ramadan actually about?
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++Ramadan is the most sacred month of the year for Muslims — the Prophet Mohammed reportedly said, “When the month of Ramadan starts, the gates of heaven are opened and the gates of hell are closed and the devils are chained.” +
++Muslims believe it was during this month that God revealed the first verses of the Quran, Islam’s sacred text, to Mohammed, on a night known as “The Night of Power” (or Laylat al-Qadr in Arabic). +
++During the entire month of Ramadan, Muslims fast every day from dawn to sunset. It is meant to be a time of spiritual discipline — of deep contemplation of one’s relationship with God, extra prayer, increased charity and generosity, and intense study of the Quran. +
++But if that makes it sound super serious and boring, it’s really not. It’s a time of celebration and joy, to be spent with loved ones. At the end of Ramadan there’s a big three-day celebration called Eid al-Fitr, or the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast. +
++It’s kind of like the Muslim version of Christmas, in the sense that it’s a religious holiday where everyone comes together for big meals with family and friends, exchanges presents, and generally has a lovely time. +
++Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic has made many of the more social aspects of Ramadan a lot harder to do safely, given restrictions on travel and the need to maintain social distancing and avoid large, indoor gatherings. But Muslim community leaders are aware of this, and have put out detailed guidance on how to have a happy and fulfilling Ramadan while making sure everyone stays safe. +
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Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images
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+- How does fasting work?
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++Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars — or duties — of Islam, along with the testimony of faith, prayer, charitable giving, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims are required to take part every year, though there are special dispensations for those who are ill, pregnant or nursing, menstruating, or traveling, and for young children and the elderly. +
++The practice of fasting serves several spiritual and social purposes: to remind you of your human frailty and your dependence on God for sustenance, to show you what it feels like to be hungry and thirsty so you feel compassion for (and a duty to help) the poor and needy, and to reduce the distractions in life so you can more clearly focus on your relationship with God. +
++During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from eating any food, drinking any liquids, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in any sexual activity, from dawn to sunset. That includes taking medication (even if you swallow a pill dry, without drinking any water). Chewing gum is also prohibited (though I didn’t find that one out until about halfway through my first Ramadan after converting — oops). +
++Doing any of those things “invalidates” your fast for the day, and you just start over the next day. To make up for days you didn’t fast, you can either fast later in the year (either all at once or a day here and there) or provide a meal to a needy person for each day you missed. +
++Muslims are also supposed to try to curb negative thoughts and emotions like jealousy and anger, and even lesser things like swearing, complaining, and gossiping, during the month. Some people may also choose to give up or limit activities like listening to music and watching television, often in favor of listening to recitations of the Quran. +
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+- What is a typical day like during Ramadan?
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++During Ramadan, Muslims wake up well before dawn to eat the first meal of the day, which has to last until sunset. This means eating lots of high-protein foods and drinking as much water as possible right up until dawn, after which you can’t eat or drink anything. +
++At dawn, we perform the morning prayer. Since it’s usually still pretty early, many go back to sleep for a bit before waking up again to get ready for the day (I certainly do). +
++Muslims are not supposed to avoid work or school or any other normal duties during the day just because we are fasting. In many Muslim countries, however, businesses and schools may reduce their hours during the day or close entirely. For the most part, though, Muslims go about their daily business as we normally would, despite not being able to eat or drink anything the whole day. +
++When the evening call to prayer is finally made (or when the alarm on your phone’s Muslim prayer app goes off), we break the day’s fast with a light meal — really more of a snack — called an iftar (literally “breakfast”), before performing the evening prayer. Many people also go to the mosque for the evening prayer, followed by a special prayer that is only recited during Ramadan. +
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Robin Utrecht/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images
++This is usually followed by a larger meal a bit later in the evening, which is often shared with family and friends in one another’s homes throughout the month. Then it’s off to bed for a few hours of sleep before it’s time to wake up and start all over again. +
++(Note: There are good reasons for only having a small snack to break your fast before performing the evening prayer and then eating a bigger meal later. Muslim prayers involve a lot of movement — bending over, prostrating on the ground, standing up, etc. Doing all that physical activity on a full stomach after not having eaten for 15 hours is a recipe for disaster. Just trust me on this one.) +
++Despite the hardship of fasting for a whole month, most Muslims (myself included) actually look forward to Ramadan and are a little sad when it’s over. There’s just something really special about knowing that tens of millions of your fellow Muslims around the world are experiencing the same hunger pangs, dry mouth, and dizzy spells that you are, and that we’re all in it together. +
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+- So do you lose weight during Ramadan?
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++Some of you may be thinking, “Wow, that sounds like a great way to lose weight! I’m going to try it!” But in fact, Ramadan is actually notorious for often causing weight gain. That’s because eating large meals super early in the morning and late at night with a long period of low activity bordering on lethargy in between can wreak havoc on your metabolism. +
++But if you’re careful, you can avoid putting on weight, and you may actually lose a few pounds. One meta-analysis of scientific studies on the effects of Ramadan fasting on body weight found that “[w]eight changes during Ramadan were relatively small and mostly reversed after Ramadan, gradually returning to pre-Ramadan status. Ramadan provides an opportunity to lose weight, but structured and consistent lifestyle modifications are necessary to achieve lasting weight loss.” [Italics mine.] +
++So just like with any other extreme diet plan, you may lose a few pounds, but unless you actually make “structured and consistent lifestyle modifications,” you’re probably not going to see major, lasting results. +
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+- Why do the dates of Ramadan change every year?
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++For religious matters, Muslims follow a lunar calendar — that is, one based on the phases of the moon — whose 12 months add up to approximately 354 days. That’s 11 days shorter than the 365 days of the standard Gregorian calendar. Therefore, the Islamic lunar calendar moves backward approximately 11 days each year in relation to the regular Gregorian calendar. +
++So that means that the first day of the month of Ramadan, which is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, moves backward by about 11 days each year. +
++This has a large impact on how people experience Ramadan from year to year. When Ramadan falls in the winter, it’s much easier to fast: the days are shorter, which means you don’t have to fast as long, and it’s colder out, so not being able to drink water all day isn’t as big of a deal because you’re not sweating as much. +
++Conversely, when Ramadan falls in the summer, fasting can be brutal. In many Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, summer temperatures can reach levels usually reserved for the deepest bowels of hell. +
++And in some Northern European countries such as Iceland, Norway, and Sweden (where, yes, there are Muslims), fasting can last an average of 20 hours or more in the summer. (And in a few places above the Arctic Circle, the sun never actually sets in the summer. In these cases, Muslim religious authorities have decreed that Muslims can either fast along with the closest Muslim country or fast along with Mecca, Saudi Arabia.) +
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+- Okay, but why is there always confusion every year about exactly what day Ramadan starts on?
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++There’s a reason “Ramadan start date” is one of the most-searched phrases every single year. That’s because Muslims around the world do not know when exactly Ramadan is actually supposed to start. If you Google it, you’ll see there’s a little disclaimer under Google’s answer that says “Dates may vary”: +
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++That also has to do with the moon — as well as disagreements about science, history, and tradition, plus a bit of geopolitical rivalry. +
++The beginning of each new month in the Islamic calendar starts on the new moon. Which means the month of Ramadan starts on the new moon. Simple enough, right? +
++Wrong. +
++If it’s been a while since your high school astronomy class, here’s a reminder of what the phases of the moon look like: +
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Getty Images/iStockphoto
++Back in Mohammed’s day, in sixth-century Arabia, astronomical calculations weren’t as precise as they are today, so people went by what they could see with the naked eye. +
++Since the new moon isn’t actually super visible in the night sky (as you can see above), Muslims traditionally waited to start fasting until the small sliver of crescent moon became visible. There’s even a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed about waiting to start the fast until you see the crescent. (Some people think this is why the star and crescent is the symbol of Islam, but the crescent was used as a symbol long before Islam.) +
++This method was a bit messy, though, since things like clouds or just the difficulty of spotting the moon in some locations often led to different groups starting their fast on separate days, even within the same country. Each community, village, or even mosque within the village might send its own guy out to look for the crescent, with rival groups arguing over whether the other guy really saw it. +
++Today, however, we have precise scientific calculations that tell us exactly when the new moon begins, and we don’t need to wait until someone spots a tiny crescent in the sky. (In fact, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, “The need to determine the precise appearance of the hilal [crescent moon] was one of the inducements for Muslim scholars to study astronomy.”) +
++So, problem solved! Except that some Muslim scholars believe we should still wait until the slight crescent moon is visible in the night sky because that’s what Mohammed said to do and that’s the way we’ve always done it. +
++Others argue that Islam has a strong tradition of reason, knowledge, and science, and that if Mohammed were around today, he’d choose the more precise scientific calculations over sending the guy at the mosque with the best eyesight outside to squint at the night sky. +
++To make things even more fun, some argue that the whole world should just follow the official moon-sighting decrees of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the location of its holiest sites. +
++But not everyone thinks that’s such a swell idea — especially rival countries like Pakistan and Iran, which balk at the idea of treating Saudi Arabia as the ultimate authority on anything having to do with Islam. +
++All this means that each year, Muslims around the world get to experience the delightful lunacy of “moon-sighting fighting.” It’s such a familiar feature of Ramadan that there are memes about it: +
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+- Are there differences between how Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims observe Ramadan?
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++For the most part, no. Both Sunni and Shia Muslims fast during Ramadan. But there are some minor differences — for instance, Sunnis break their daily fast at sunset, when the sun is no longer visible on the horizon (but there’s still light in the sky), whereas Shia wait until the redness of the setting sun has completely vanished and the sky is totally dark. +
++Shia also celebrate an additional holiday within the month of Ramadan that Sunnis do not. For three days — the 19th, 20th, and 21st days of Ramadan — Shia commemorate the martyrdom of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed who was both the revered fourth caliph of Sunni Islam and the first “legitimate” imam (leader) of Shia Islam. +
++Ali was assassinated in the fierce civil wars that erupted following the death of Mohammed over who should lead the Muslim community in his stead. On the 19th day of the month of Ramadan, while Ali was worshipping at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq, an assassin from a group of rebels who opposed his leadership fatally struck him with a poisoned sword. Ali died two days later. +
++Ali is a hugely important figure in Shia Islam. His tomb in nearby Najaf, Iraq, is the third-holiest site in Shia Islam, and millions of Shia make a pilgrimage there every year. Although Sunnis revere Ali as one of the four “rightly guided” caliphs who ruled after Mohammed’s death, they do not commemorate his death or make a pilgrimage to his tomb. +
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Getty Images/iStockphoto
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+- What can I do to be respectful of my Muslim friends during Ramadan?
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++In some Muslim countries, it is a crime to eat and drink in public during the day in the month of Ramadan, even if you’re not Muslim. +
++Of course, this is not the case in the United States, where we enjoy freedom of (and freedom from) religion. And most American Muslims, myself included, don’t expect the non-Muslims around us to radically change their behavior to accommodate our religious fast during Ramadan. +
++I’ve had friends and coworkers who have chosen to fast along with me out of solidarity (or just because it seems “fun”), and that was sweet of them, but it’s not something I ever expect people to do. (Plus, they usually last about three days before they decide solidarity is overrated and being thirsty for 15 hours is not remotely “fun.”) +
++All that said, there are things you can do, and not do, to make things a little easier for friends or colleagues who happen to be fasting for Ramadan. If you share an office with someone fasting, maybe eat your delicious, juicy cheeseburger in the office break room rather than at your desk, where your poor, suffering Muslim coworkers will have to smell it and salivate (if they even have enough moisture left in their bodies to salivate at that point). +
++Try to remember not to offer them a bite or a sip of what you’re eating, because it’s sometimes hard for us to remember that we’re fasting and easy to absentmindedly accept and eat that Lay’s potato chip you just offered us. But if you do, it’s okay. We’re not going to get mad or be offended (unless you’re doing it on purpose, in which case, what is wrong with you?). +
++If you’re having a dinner party and you want to invite your Muslim friends, try to schedule it after sunset so they can eat. Muslims don’t drink alcohol or eat pork, but we usually don’t mind being around it. (Contrary to popular belief, we are not scared of or allergic to pork; we just don’t eat it. It’s not like we’re vampires and pork is garlic.) But do let us know if there’s alcohol or pork in something so we don’t accidentally consume it. +
++If you want to wish your Muslim friends or acquaintances a happy Ramadan or happy Eid al-Fitr, you’re welcome to just say, “Happy Ramadan!” or “Happy Eid!” That’s not offensive or anything. But if you want to show them you made an effort to learn more about their religion, the standard greetings are “Ramadan/Eid kareem” (which means “have a generous Ramadan/Eid”) or “Ramadan/Eid mubarak” (which means “have a blessed Ramadan/Eid”). +
++Even something as simple as learning one of those expressions and saying it with a smile to your Muslim friends will go a long way toward making them feel comfortable and welcome. +
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++Because terrorists are assholes. +
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