++An adapted excerpt from Lane Mooreâs You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult. +
++I really thought Iâd have friends by now. Donât get me wrong, I have people I talk to who I really like. I have people I laugh with and see once every six months, people who text me and say we should do something soon, and we might even make plans, but then we each hope the other will cancel because weâre both tired. I have those, yes. But I really thought Iâd have friends by now, in the way I understood friendship to mean as a child. +
++My earliest memories from childhood are watching, in awe, the depictions of tight-knit friend groups in TV and movies. Iâd watch them excitedly on-screen, as though it was a fortune teller showing me a glimpse into my future great-friend-having life. I always assumed that even if I didnât have the friendships that I saw on TV at that very moment, once I became an adult, they would surely materialize. And maybe you did too. +
++As I got older, though, that didnât turn out to be the case. It didnât stop me from trying, though: I needed all these types of friends, because society told me I did, so I clung to the people I met who even remotely fit these descriptions like hard-won Girl Scout badges, no matter how unhealthy the dynamic was, as proof I could do it. I could be just like everyone else in this one way, since I couldnât be like everyone else who had perfect families. (Please see my first book: How to Be Alone.) That was very much out of my hands. But friendships? I could do that. Contort myself to make a bunch of people like me and never leave? Canât wait! Thereâs no way you could go wrong when that is your very upsetting view of friendship! +
++Perhaps this was a self-fulfilling prophecy: Because this is what I thought friendship was, it always devolved into nightmare territory. As close as Iâd get to having a best friend, the relationships were always short-lived. No matter how promising the beginning was, something would invariably throw a wrench into the intimacy Iâd craved so deeply and needed like air. My junior high best friend decided we were both acting âtoo into each otherâ (we were into each other), so she ended the friendship. My high school best friendâs family moved far away, and I grieved the loss of her like a death. Replace, repeat, and never stop trying and then grieving, trying and then grieving. +
++We donât teach people how to do this, how to create friendships, how to nurture them, how to choose better, and then when and how to end them if theyâre not working. And because of that, so many of us are just fumbling around, hoping one day weâll stumble into the friendships of our dreams because we want them, because we deserve them. +
++Even if you ask someone how to do it, most people just tell you, âJoin a club!â or âJoin a gym!â But if youâre like me and you have no idea what kind of club you would join (a club for people obsessed with watching the same TV show over and over again? Those people are at home watching the same TV show over and over again) and either you already belong to a gym and you go there to exercise quietly and then leave, or you just really, really donât want to join a gym, here are some places to start. +
++
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Courtesy Abrams Image
++Message someone you constantly interact with online. +
++If youâre on social media or in any groups online, odds are you have someone who always replies to you, sends you messages, or likes all your posts. These are a lot of subtle interactions that could easily turn into âdude, we should be friends maybe?â messages. So why not try? +
++Write to a mutual friend who youâve always felt like youâd get along with. +
++You already have your friend in common, so itâs worth it to see if youâd get along when itâs just the two of you. I once knew a guy who had really cool friends, but honestly I was not that into the guy himself. One day, I ran into some of his friends on the subway and it turns out they all thought I was really awesome and also didnât like that other guy. It was a beautiful moment. +
++Go to shows or restaurants alone. +
++I canât tell you how often Iâve heard people tell me they came to my comedy shows by themselves and met really cool people they became friends with. And if the idea of this terrifies you, itâs so helpful to see this less as, âOh no, Iâm gonna look like a loser who is aloneâ and more like, âWhat if I meet another cool person who is also there alone and we bond, and because I went alone, I created space for that to happen?â +
++Make plans outside of work with that coworker who you think is cool. +
++I once worked with a woman who was basically my best friend in the office and then, one day, it dawned on me: Who says she couldnât be my best friend in general? And lucky for me, she was just as hilarious and fun outside of work, if not more so. +
++Reach out to someone you only see in drinking situations to do something non-drinking during the day. +
++Cool Drunk Sara is also probably Cool Sober Sara Who Loves Getting Tapas After Work. You wonât know until you try. +
++Invite your friendsâ significant others to stuff. +
++This can be touchy depending on the situation, so obviously donât do this if you know it could pose a problem, but if you think your friendâs girlfriend is really cool and thereâs a possible friendship there, go for it and see if youâre right. +
++Go to a dog park. +
++Dog or not, dog parks are such great ways to meet other really friendly people (well, mostly, sometimes there is someone there who is such a dick and youâre like, âWhy are you bringing this energy to such a holy place? Why?â), and worst case, you get to play with dogs. But in general, dogs are such a great icebreaker. When Iâm with my dog, I meet multiple people every day who are extremely kind and cool to chat with. We might not become best friends just because our dogs played together for 10 minutes, but it can satisfy that need for connection in a really beautiful way. +
++Try putting more effort into the friendships you have. +
++It can be easy to think your current friends arenât good enough for you or not giving you the things you want in the relationship and you should find new people, and sometimes thatâs true. But before you go off thinking itâs not you, itâs them (which it might be!), try reaching out, and communicating, and putting some more effort in and see if that helps things. +
++Encourage yourself to make/keep plans with your friends, even though sitting inside alone watching friendships on TV seems way better. +
++Sometimes you genuinely need to recharge and reschedule, which I fully encourage, but other times I need to remind myself to actually keep plans and take a chance that this might be exactly what I needed, even if solitude seems safer. And then I come home feeling so happy that I took the risk and left my cocoon for a bit. +
++
+Does all of this take more effort than sitting there waiting for your dream friends to show up like UPS packages? Yes. Is that scary because there might be rejection or disappointment? Yes. But often the only way for things to be different is for us to start doing things differently, and putting all that weâre learning into practice. +
++Because you deserve to have friendships in which the conversation is easy, and you feel seen. You deserve to have those days where you get in the car, and you pick that person up, or they pick you up, and they got you a coffee exactly the way you like it, aw thanks. You deserve to pick up ice cream on the way because oh man that place looks so good, you wanna stop? And sing along to whateverâs on the radio, one hand out the window. And that is all it is. No asterisks, no fine print, just purely good. +
++You deserve to have friendships where thereâs an equal give and take. Friends who understand you, and you have fun, true, silly little kid fun (even if, and especially if, you never got to truly have fun as a kid, because you were already basically an adult). Friends who allow and encourage you to have healthy boundaries, as they work to establish their own. +
++And then maybe what happens next isnât tragic this time. Maybe itâs just good. +
++Lane Moore is a writer, actor, comedian, and musician. She is the host of the show âTinder Liveâ as well as the podcast I Thought It Was Just Me. Her first book, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Donât, was published in 2018. Her second book, You Will Find Your People: How To Make Meaningful Friendships As An Adult, from which this piece was adapted, is out now from Abrams Image. She can be found online at @hellolanemoore. +
++Author Sara Petersen on how a certain image of motherhood took over social media and makes moms feel bad. +
++The momfluencer has a perfect kitchen. +
++Her dishes are washed, her countertops are clean, and her walls are a pristine landscape of eggshell white. Not coincidentally, she is also white. She is thin, able-bodied, young but not too young. She has somewhere between two and 10 kids. She puts her baby in a Moses basket, her toddler in an Uppababy stroller, and her older kids in earth-toned separates that match her own maxi dresses and wrap sweaters. All these products are expensive, but they can be discounted if you use her code. +
++The momfluencer, obviously, is not a real person. Sheâs a construct, created by real mothers in the mid-aughts, in concert with tech companies and consumer brands, as a way of making a living on social media. Today, momfluencers are big business for advertisers, since women make the majority of household purchasing decisions, and moms in particular are often the ones choosing big-ticket items such as strollers and cribs. They also hold cultural importance â more than ever, theyâre the ones communicating messages to the rest of us about what motherhood should look like. +
++Sara Petersen, a New Hampshire-based writer and mother of three, has been following the rise of this unique brand of influencer for nearly 10 years, since, she says, âI had a newborn and a toddler and was simultaneously lured in by the rosy depictions of motherhood while also feeling like I was being sold a partial truth.â Her new book, Momfluenced, released this week, looks at how momfluencers became the economic force they are today; how their images and videos replicate the sexism, racism, and classism baked deep into American family life; and how their aestheticized version of parenthood has gotten inside our heads. +
++I spoke with Petersen by phone about those issues and why we should all care about momfluencers, in a conversation that has been condensed and edited for clarity, and that was interrupted briefly by my sick 4-year-old, reminding us all of the messiness of real-life parenting. +
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Courtesy of Sara Petersen
++What is a momfluencer? +
++The simplest definition is someone who has monetized her maternal identity on social media. I sort of broaden the definition to really explore anyone who performs motherhood on social media, whether they have 100,000 followers or 20 followers. +
++We perform motherhood on various stages throughout our lives, but our performances on social media can be revealing in terms of what we perceive to be valuable about mothers and what we donât perceive to be valuable about mothers. +
++Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of momfluencing? When did this start, and how did it progress to where it is now? +
++The early mommy bloggers like Heather Armstrong, Natalie Lovin â that was the early- to mid-aughts â made money off of their blogs primarily by banner ads. A company would have an ad that they had already created, and pay the mommy blogger for them to just put the ad on the side of their blog. Their blogs were largely personal narrative-driven. They were word-heavy versus image-heavy. And often, they were really unvarnished. They opened up a lot of dialogues about maternal mental health, and about the struggles that mothers have always been experiencing, but that I donât think had really been introduced to the mainstream. +
++Once Instagram became a thing, many of these mommy bloggers transitioned to Instagram, which was very image-focused and dedicated to selling a certain aesthetic that often hinged on âauthenticity.â It was very much about celebrating the beautiful in the everyday and making oneâs life look like art. When that happened, you know, image was king, and the monetization model also changed. Some of the early mommy bloggers became savvy about how much marketing influence they were having on consumers and demanded to be paid for their work. And so now, the monetization model is centered on sponsored content, so a momfluencer can get paid to post, you know, two Instagram Stories, a reel, and a post about a baby carrier or whatever. +
++How big a part of the influencing economy more generally are momfluencers? Why do brands want moms? +
++One reason, in addition to just the sheer numbers of mothers on social media and numbers of women actively engaging with social media on a daily basis, is the fact that motherhood encompasses so many consumer categories. You can sell moms couches, you can sell them vacuums, you can sell them nap dresses, you can sell them diapers, you can sell them books about child-rearing. Almost everything in contemporary life can be directly linked to becoming a âgood mother.â Many of us roll into motherhood completely unprepared and relatively clueless about it and we certainly donât have many systemic supports in this country. As a result, I think many of us are understandably looking for ways to make motherhood easier or ways to do motherhood âright.â +
++Can you talk about the economics of momfluencing a little bit from the influencer side? Why do people do this? Do they make good money from it? +
++Some of them do, but I would say not many. In her book, (Not) Getting Paid To Do What You Love, Brooke Erin Duffy â who studied influencers across the board, not just momfluencers â estimated that only 9 percent make enough to live on. The tippy-tippy top, super-successful ones make a ton of money when they have huge brand partnerships with Amazon, for example. +
++I think that is one of the misconceptions, that itâs easy, that you just take a few pretty pictures and the money will come flooding in. Thatâs just not the case. +
++Another trope is the idea that if you are an influencer, you are still staying home with your kids, but youâre also making money. Is that part of the draw, in theory, of being a momfluencer? +
++I totally think thatâs a huge draw, and itâs an indictment of the lack of flexibility and humanity in most professional work environments. If every caregiver and parent knew that they could get child care on site or wherever their workplace was located, and that child care was quality and paid for, I donât know how much MLMs would be thriving, or these sort of dubious promises of work-life balance for mothers. +
++I also think itâs not fully the case â yes, you can be at home with your kids. But if youâre a full-time momfluencer, youâre working. Youâre taking photos, youâre editing, youâre writing copy, youâre dealing with emails for brands and sponsorships. Chances are, you probably need child care too! +
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++Why do people follow these influencers? +
++Everybodyâs reasoning differs depending on their cultural context and their personal backgrounds. I do think many of us gravitate toward momfluencers who we perceive to be succeeding in ways that we perceive ourselves to be failing. My kryptonite has always been the joyful mom, the easy mom, the mom to whom motherhood seems to be coming really naturally. Other people might gravitate toward mothers with impeccably organized playrooms or whatever. +
++Can you talk about the tradwife and tradmom phenomena? What does it mean to be a tradmom on Instagram or TikTok, and why do people â including those who decidedly are not tradmoms â follow these accounts? +
++Broadly speaking, a tradmom or tradwife is someone who adheres to traditional gender norms. This might look like somebody whoâs wearing a dress that could be mistaken for having been made in the 1880s. Or it could be somebody who really wants to make sure her husband has a sandwich when he wants a sandwich. +
++The tradmom accounts that are aesthetically grounded in some sort of sense of nostalgia or some sort of âsimpler timeâ do appeal to those of us who are firmly centered in the complicated now. I think it comes back to this human need to hope for things. We want to hope that, for example, work-life balance can be more equitable for women in this country and mothers in this country. We want to hope that we wonât always feel so frenzied and burnt out in our roles as mothers. So I think one reason that we follow is a sense of escapism, like, this woman is kneading her sourdough and milking her cows, and it feels wholly removed from my life. I donât feel like I have to compare myself to it because itâs completely different from my everyday. +
++But I think itâs insidious in that it assumes that there was a sense of purity or rightness in a time when most women were oppressed. When we think, it was simpler then, it was easier then, we have to ask, who was it simpler or easier for? And the answer is usually white, rich men. +
++You talk a lot in the book about the whiteness of momfluencing, and how the momfluencers who make the most money tend to be white, cis, thin, and straight. But you also talk to moms who donât fit into those categories â moms who are fat, for example, and Indigenous moms â who find community on social media or who have a more nuanced profile as influencers. Can you talk about visibility in momfluencing, who is represented and who isnât? +
++It would be remiss of anybody to denigrate all social media influencer accounts because they are really a democratic way to spread awareness about social issues and a relatively easy way to create communities and support networks where otherwise it might be harder to access. And so much of it is just like being stuck in your own echo chamber â if youâre only following the beachy waves white mommies in their Nantucket mansions or whatever, youâre only going to keep seeing the beachy waves moms and their Nantucket mansions. The algorithm will feed you what it thinks you want to see. +
++I remember talking to Myleik Teele in the book about how white momfluencers still make the vast majority of money in this industry. She was talking about when she was trying to pitch her haircare company, there was an Herbal Essences product that was the Holy Grail of hair products for Black women. She was trying to explain this to somebody who she was trying to get funding from, and none of the people in that meeting were Black, and therefore they didnât know about this. My point in bringing this up is, if the majority of people forging these marketing deals and sponsored content deals are white men, then theyâre going in with their own assumptions about what sells and what mothers want to see. So in every stage of this ecosystem, there are imbalances to blame for the pervasiveness of the whiteness weâre being fed. +
++Letâs talk about TikTok. Instagram was really the dominant platform for momfluencers for a while, but now it seems like TikTok is ascendant as people feel like they can go viral more quickly there. How is TikTok changing momfluencing? +
++One major differentiator is that itâs way less polished-image-focused. With so many smart, brilliant TikToks, the lightingâs shitty, you donât get the sense that anything was super orchestrated or staged. And that doesnât seem to be where the value lies. The value really seems to lie in the quality of the messaging itself. +
++Does that allow a bigger diversity of momfluencers, or a different kind of momfluencer, to build a following? +
++I think so. Both Kc Davis and Laura Danger are big on Instagram, but theyâre huge on TikTok. TikTok is where they first built their platform. Laura Danger talks about gendered inequity within the home, and Kc Davis talks about the moral neutrality of care work. These are both really specific, meaningful issues that impact most moms on a daily basis. Both of these accounts are about the specifics of mothering and caregiving labor rather than the performance of maternal identity. +
++Thereâs also been a movement toward more relatable moms, on Tik Tok especially. Iâm thinking about Kathryn Jezer-Mortonâs recent newsletter about the rise of the messy house on TikTok, for example. Is momfluencing getting more real? Is it just on the way out? Are people tired of aspirational mom content? +
++This question is so hard for me because I have to check my own echo chamber. I feel like you and I probably consume similar content and are having these conversations about rejecting these ideals and interrogating these ideals. And I think many moms post-pandemic are thinking similarly, along the lines of, who are these ideals for and who are they hurting? I think many of us are also more conscious of our social media usage post-pandemic. +
++That being said, I do think that the âidealâ white mother is still making the most money as a momfluencer. Also, all of the either openly white supremacist or tradwife momfluencers I feature in the book, when I first started writing the book, I recorded all their follower counts, and when I went back to do final edits, all of their counts had grown precipitously. +
++On the one hand, I see some mothers becoming really aware of the toxicity of celebrating one type of âidealâ mother, and becoming really politically engaged in terms of trying to improve conditions for all mothers. I also think weâre more aware that many of the things that weâre struggling with in our daily lives are the result of systemic inequities, not our personal failings. But I think alongside that are also people that feel like their ways of life are under attack and feel like the nuclear family is under attack. I see both things happening simultaneously and maybe in direct relation to each other. +
++That makes sense. I have one more question, but Iâm going to go check on my kid because heâs kind of making groaning noises. [Several minutes elapse.] Okay, heâs fine. +
++What can we learn from momfluencers about our culture as a whole and about what parents need? Are we turning to momfluencers because our culture is devoid of community and support? +
++I do think we are drawn to momfluencers because weâre so devoid of easily accessible support networks in contemporary life. I think just understanding that these ideals are cultural constructs that are not a reflection of any supposedly natural way to exist as mothers is really freeing and helpful. +
++Say goodbye to early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Say hello to potentially years of chaos. +
++
++Joe Bidenâs announcement of his candidacy released Tuesday is the incumbentâs fourth bid for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. It will be not only Bidenâs first run for president as the presumptive nominee, but also the first without Iowa and New Hampshire firmly set at the top of the primary calendar. In early February, the Democratic National Committee formally voted to shake up its primary calendar and ratified a change to move South Carolinaâs nominating contest first, while reducing the role of New Hampshire and eliminating Iowa as an early state altogether. +
++For Democrats, the changes would remake the presidential primary calendar, with the Palmetto State going first on February 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on February 6, then Georgia on February 13 and Michigan on February 27. The change follows decades of Democrats carping about the primary order, especially complaints about the process in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those complaints have ranged from the fact that the traditional early states are insufficiently racially diverse to their penchant for rewarding anti-establishment candidates to the specific details of the stateâs election processes. This has been particularly true in Iowa, a state that has long used a precinct caucus system in which Iowans typically gather with their neighbors to debate candidates and elect delegates to county conventions as the first step in a multipart process. Iowaâs caucuses do not have an absentee component and require participants to commit to spending part of the evening at their caucus site in order to participate. +
++So why have Democrats scrambled around something so arcane as the particular order in which states hold presidential primaries? Itâs because of the mammoth amount of attention that early states get. These states tend to winnow the field of presidential hopefuls, which can often reach the dozens, down to something more manageable. The result is that politicians and activists in those early states get heavily courted and political campaigns spend tens of millions of dollars wooing voters there. And, with Biden likely to face only nominal competition in Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, doing it this year has no impact on the ultimate result. +
+ ++The problem for the DNC is that this specific calendar is an exercise in fantasy, and the DNCâs decree is likely to have as much impact as when King Canute of England ordered the tide to recede 1,000 years ago. +
++Why wonât this work? +
++The big problem is that it is up to individual states to schedule primary elections, not the DNC. The power of the DNC is that it can control the Democratic presidential primary nominating process and threaten states that donât comply with the calendar it laid out. However, even this power is somewhat limited by the fact that the United States has a two-party system and the Republican National Committee (RNC) has the same control over the GOPâs nominating process. As of now, the two partiesâ nominating processes are set up to be quite different. The GOP will use the calendar that has been used for the past few cycles â with Iowa first, then New Hampshire followed by South Carolina and Nevada â and they have the power to sanction any state that moves up. +
++For example, this means that while the DNC changed its calendar to allow Georgia to hold an early primary, there is no way that the Peach State will actually do so. Georgia is controlled by Republicans and its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, told the Associated Press in February that the state wonât change its date on the presidential nominating calendar â at least not until 2028. +
++The even bigger drama, though, is over the states that the Democratic Party is trying to shunt aside. In particular, New Hampshire has a law that mandates that it hold the first-in-the-nation primary and that no other state can hold an election before it (with a caucus-sized loophole for Iowa). New Hampshire also has a Republican governor and Republican majorities in its state house who have made clear that they are not changing the state law to appease the DNC. (Then again, state Democrats have not been especially eager to appease the DNC either). Gov. Chris Sununu has made clear in a February interview with the Dispatch, âit doesnât matter what the Democrat Party says, it matters what New Hampshire says, and weâre going first.â +
+ ++As part of its vote to shake up the primary calendar, the DNC gave both Georgia and New Hampshire an extension to sort things out, into June â though it is unlikely that anything will change. +
++So what happens next? +
++Itâs a mess. There is precedent for Democrats sanctioning states that violated their rules. In the 2008 presidential primary, Michigan and Florida tried to jump ahead and hold early Democratic primaries. All major candidates agreed not to campaign in those states and, in Michigan, both Obama and John Edwards kept their names off the ballot. The DNC initially stripped both states of all their delegates, but eventually allowed every delegate elected from both states to participate in the convention as part of an elaborate compromise that ended the brutal primary between Obama and Hillary Clinton. +
++Needless to say, that decision did not make the DNC look formidable. But if the DNC does follow through on a threat to strip delegates from states that go early, it could be electoral poison for Democrats. New Hampshire is a closely fought swing state that has four electoral votes and two swing district members of Congress. And, while Iowa has been trending toward the GOP in recent years, it still has several competitive House districts. (One congressional seat in the state was decided by precisely six votes in 2020). +
++Further, unlike Michigan and Florida in 2008, Iowa and New Hampshire are part of the national political landscape. Candidates are used to going there and, with a ferocious Republican presidential primary, the national media will be camped out there. Those two states had never offered many delegates, but they were an opportunity for underdog candidates to capture national attention while doing retail politics. Any sanctions wonât change that. Instead, they would simply make it harder for Biden to engage in the state and make it easier for a fringe candidate to mount a real challenge for the incumbent. Already Bidenâs two declared opponents, Williamson and Kennedy, have visited New Hampshire, but neither has visited Iowa. +
++Does the presidential primary schedule matter? +
++It does, but not for this Democratic presidential primary cycle. Barring something unexpected, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee regardless if Georgia or Guam holds an early nominating contest. The DNCâs move, however, does further blow up the nominating process ahead of 2028, which will be a totally open field regardless of the result in 2024. +
++Those who are unhappy with Iowa and New Hampshireâs role in US politics have spent decades trying to remove the states from their place at the head of the calendar. With an incumbent president who did poorly in both New Hampshire and Iowa in 2020, and who was aided by the fiasco around Iowaâs 2020 caucuses, those pushing for change finally have a real opportunity. Whatever the calendar looks like in 2024 will not be the status quo. +
+ ++But it also means that future debates about the primary calendar will take place with a presidential election looming and with candidates already positioning themselves for the future. After all, every state is different and has an entirely different political profile. Supporters of candidates who have struggled with retail politics while having strong national profiles like Kamala Harris might prefer bigger early states, where retail politics is far less important than having superPACs dominate the airwaves. Those who back underdog candidates might prefer the traditional calendar, which has rewarded candidates like Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg for their work wooing voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. +
++In the meantime, by at least attempting to change the calendar, Democrats have set expectations for the future. As for the chaos this could all cause, itâs the second oldest story in journalism. Right behind âdog bites man,â itâs âDemocrats in disarray.â +