Commissioned by H&R Block for reasons I can’t really fathom (maybe they think we’re all making the big bucks blogging and they wanted to let us know they care/want our business?), the Infographic – bright pink (strike one), featured a white, blond woman in a frilly apron, (strike 2), and defined anyone who has even READ a blog as a Mommy Blogger (you’re out!). One of the very first comments, by Dresden Plaid, points out one of these problems right away:

Could you have used a more offensive/obnoxious graphic to “illustrate” a Mommy Blogger? Blonde, white, in pink and an apron? …. these women are writers. The term “Mommy Blogger” is jaw droppingly backwards. These are women, who are mothers, who write, and sometimes they write about being a Mother. Packaging it in pink fluff is just a bummer.

The comment immediately following pretty much exemplifies the problem.  And of course, it was written by RJ Silva, a man, at least judging by his avatar:

You seem to be missing the point, here. A mommy blogger, by definition, writes exactly about that: being a mom. Otherwise she wouldn’t be considered a “mommy” blogger but just a regular, sports, finance or tech blogger….

Ah, if only that were so, RJ.  The fact is, brands pitch women bloggers – regardless what they write about – as Moms.  I know one blogger, a single woman without children, who is routinely pitched as a Mom Blogger.  By virtue of the fact that we are women, regardless of whether or not we have borne children, or write about them, we are called Mommy Bloggers.    Even Silva’s use of the word “regular” in his comment speaks volumes.  A Mommy Blogger isn’t “regular?”

And then there’s that moniker – Mommy Blogger.  In the comments on Mashable a lot of people wondered – why should it be offensive? – we are, after all, Mothers.  True, in and of itself, Mommy is not a derogatory term.  But intent counts. Mommy is a word reserved for only one relationship: mother and child.  To use it in a business relationship is to imply an intimacy that is presumptuous, and, I believe, calculated to condescend. You are a Mommy, it says,  and Mommies have never been duly compensated for doing the work they do – raising a family, keeping a home.  Using that phrase excuses companies from thinking they have to compensate us for our work.  Mommies’ work has always been undervalued.  Why should Mommy Bloggers’ work be any different?

So yes, I am a mother, but the only people who get to call me Mommy popped out of my womb.

And what about Dad or Daddy bloggers? It isn’t quite the same.  Dads are men.  And as such, automatically wield more power in the world.  Unfortunate, but true.  Calling someone a Dad blogger isn’t derogatory.  The word Dad – even Daddy – doesn’t have the same connotation. Quite the contrary – men who are devoted fathers, who take part in the minutiae of their children’s lives aren’t just Dads, they’re heroes.  It’s like I always say, when I make the bed – I made the bed.  When my husband makes the bed, it’s a national holiday.

Karen Wilson, also in the comments, made this point:

For those who insist on calling bloggers who happen to be moms “mommy bloggers”, would you call Meg Whitman a “Mommy CEO” and get away with it or Sheryl Sandberg a “Mommy COO”? Absolutely not. There is a level of respect…that isn’t afforded to bloggers who are mothers ….

These women are life or lifestyle bloggers if you have to categorize them. Why should they be in a different category than someone without children who is also writing about their life?

Wilson doesn’t even mention men.  Think about it, did anyone ever call Dave Barry a Daddy Columnist?  He wrote about his life and his kids. Or me, I earned a living for nearly two decades writing and producing for television – much of it at Lifetime and Nickelodeon, where (no surprise) I wrote a lot about women, moms, and kids. Never in all my 17 years on the job did I ever hear a woman called a Mommy Writer/Producer.

So there goes your “the topic makes you a Mommy Blogger” argument.

This whole thing got me thinking about historical perspective. While there were women journalists as early as 1746 (well, at least one – a widow who inherited a newspaper), and there were a few women in history who made their mark in US Journalism (though I challenge you to find one – other than Nellie Bly – who is even close to a household name), until fairly recently, women who wanted to write were consigned to the Society Pages, or the Gardening, Household Hints, and Gossip columns. These women weren’t called reporters, or even columnists.  They were people who wrote the society pages.  Or people who wrote about gardening.  I somehow doubt that men covering crime or international affairs were called anything other than what they were: columnists, reporters, journalists.

What women lifestyle bloggers face today isn’t, sadly, all that different.  By virtue of our sex – and by virtue of having had pro-creative sex – we are Mommy Bloggers.  Not writers.  Not even “regular” bloggers.  Are there Mom Bloggers – women who choose to write about babies, family, and parenting?  Yes.  They earned the title much in the same way Parenting Experts earned theirs. But why should all women bloggers be defined exclusively by our parenthood any more than men are defined exclusively by theirs?

What galls me is that the stats prove we don’t deserve the condescension.  According to the infographic (and these are the facts I hope they got right, since I assume they got from somewhere else), Mom Bloggers (I simply cannot type the phrase Mommy Blogger any longer) are 52% more likely to have College Degrees than non-bloggers, and earn, on average, $14,000 more than their non-blogging counterparts.

We’re not so easy to dismiss now, are we?

We are writers, we are bloggers, we are business owners, website owners, entrepreneurs. In some cases, we blog for fun.  In some cases, we blog for a cause.  And in some cases, we blog to help support our families, generating real income.  In all cases, we will not be labeled.

So here’s a bit of advice, brands, (and Mashable) unless I birthed you or raised you, don’t call me Mommy.

And then I became a parent.

It was humbling  just how many of those “fill in the blanks” I did.  Lollipops in the morning (airplane rides.)  TV as babysitter. (I had Swine Flu).  Screaming at the top of my lungs. (More often than I’d like to admit.)

Suddenly, I wasn’t so judgmental.  As a parent, you do what you have to do to stay sane, keep your children from bodily harm, and keep those around you from wanting to strangle your perfectly lovely (most of the time) but (at the moment) incredibly, inappropriately loud children.

And then I started blogging.

Why did she get that invitation and I didn’t?  Why is her Alexa Ranking so much higher than mine? She’s working with WHAT brand?  That’s not to say I wasn’t happy for my new friends’ successes.  But the truth is, often, it’s hard not to be jealous of others’ success in your sphere.  That’s just the truth. As a full fledged, mortgage carrying, crows-footed, tween totin’, grown up, I can (at least outwardly) squelch my jealousy – my shameful, embarrassing jealousy – and congratulate others on their triumphs.  And mean it.  Truly mean it.

But still.  There’s that jealousy thing.  Those pangs, like acupuncture pin pricks, not painful, exactly, but you know that if you just make one wrong move – man, is it going to hurt.

But recently, I’ve had my own success.  KidzVuz, the company I founded with Rebecca Levey of Beccarama.com, was featured in the Wall Street Journal. And suddenly, that jealousy masked as praise was directed at me.

Most people were terrific – they sent emails, and Facebook messages about how happy they were for us.  They Tweeted about the article and passed it around.  But some people  – people I thought were friends – or at least close colleagues – were silent.  And that silence spoke volumes.  And in others, I recognized myself — it wasn’t that they didn’t genuinely wish us well, but that their jealousy was palpable.  As I’m sure mine has been numerous times I’ve congratulated someone – and been happy for them – but still felt jealous, and disappointed – why not me, too?

A few years ago at Bissdom, I heard someone speak about Blogger Jealousy.  (Although really, anyone, in any industry, can be jealous of another’s success. It always strikes me as sexist that women – especially bloggers – get singled out.) But what the speaker said was “If someone gets a job or an opportunity that you did not, rather than sitting around complaining, or feeling jealous, think to yourself ‘what did that person do that I’m not doing to get herself that opportunity?’  Chances are, she worked harder.”

Rebecca and I worked hard these past two years. We learned COPPA laws, and investment terms.  We wrote a business plan, made spreadsheets, hired developers and designers and lawyers, and an accountant.  We filed for a registered trademark, wrote and sent out press releases, watched countless kids’ videos, schlepped banners and handouts across the country and hawked our wares on trade room floors, and (most horribly for me) created a term sheet (first, having to learn what that really was) and endlessly bugged our Friends and Family for investment money.  Once we raised that money, we distributed Subscription Agreements, and an amendment to that agreement, and another amendment to that. We created bank accounts and got a company credit card.  We stayed up late in the night to make sure that kids in different times zones still got to see their videos up right away. We spent thousands upon thousands of dollars, and thousands upon thousands of hours building KidzVuz.  And it’s only the beginning.

I know a lot of people do just that, and they don’t get a cover story in the Wall Street Journal.  Because that’s where luck comes in.  But as my father’s business partner used to say “Luck is putting yourself in the position to get lucky.”  And we worked hard for that position.  There’s nothing more insulting than being told “You’re so lucky.”  Not lucky.  Ready.  Hard working.  Aware.

Still, I know there are plenty of times when I think “what luck” when someone I know has something marvelous happen.

But just like the me before I was a parent, and after -I’m talking about the me before I really worked my butt off to accomplish something- and after.  Now that I’ve worked this hard for my “luck”  – now that I continue to work that hard – I don’t think I’ll be so jealous of other people’s accomplishments anymore.

Oh, sure,  I’ll be jealous. Just not SO jealous.  Because I’ll know what it took to “get lucky.”  What it takes, to even taste success.

It’s hard.  It’s exciting and exhilarating, and challenging and fun and frustrating and thrilling — and did I mention, really, really, hard.

Plus, if  Rebecca and I don’t make the most of the opportunity the article created, it will have just been a lost opportunity. Not a big success. The article isn’t in itself a measure of our success; it’s what we do with the exposure it has afforded us that matters.

So to everyone out there poised for success or enjoying it already- I know how hard it is, and I salute you.  I know the hours you put in and I respect that.

But am I still a bit jealous?  You bet.

In fact, I like Brazil so much, I’m hoping that, lexicographically speaking, “Brazilian” bikini wax is kind of like “French” Fries. No one really knows why it’s called Brazilian. But I’m guessing it’s more like French Kissing. Anyone who spent her Junior year abroad in Paris knows where that came from.  And it ain’t lexicography. Trust me on that.

What I don’t love, is the Brazilian Bikini Wax.

Remember that episode of Sex and the City where the girls all go to LA and Carrie gets waxed?  She’s surprised by what the waxer leaves her: nada.  nothing. zip.

It’s called a Brazillian, she tells Samantha and Miranda. Out here in LA, everybody’s doing it.

Well, here in NY everybody is, too.  And the other day, not on purpose, I came close.  First of all, ouch. And second of all, I don’t think so. Why am I so opposed? Here goes:

1. I am not a porn star. We all know about the skewed body image girls get when they are surrounded by images of impossibly thin models and ridiculously beautiful movie stars.  It’s bad enough that that’s the standard of beauty we’re supposed to live up to.

Now I’m supposed to aspire to look like a porn star, too?  Because that’s where this lack of pubic hair look comes from. Porn stars have been trimming and shaping “down there” forever.  But until now, “regular” women weren’t.  Now they are.   Really?  Is this what it’s come to?  We have to look like porn stars to be desirable? Yuck.

2. I am not pre-pubescent.  I find it hard to imagine that any mother of a girl anywhere near puberty would wax off all of her own pubic hair.  Because it’s saying that childlike genitals are sexually appealing. Maybe when you don’t have kids, or don’t have a girl, or don’t have a girl nearing that age, you don’t see it that way – but I do have a girl approaching that age.  And that men find that attractive? That has a name: pedophilia. What a sad, shocking, and upsetting thought.

3. It sends a bad message to young girls. What does it say to a child who is already uncomfortable about her changing body that her mother does everything in her power not to have hair exactly where she, the child, is getting it? Thatit’s so bad to have hair “down there” that her mother pays someone to rip the pubic hair off her body?

I’ll tell you what it says: your changing body is horrible.  Your changing body is bad.

Is that really the message we want to send?

There was an uproar recently over an article about Virgin Waxing: the practice of taking young girls to get their bikini lines waxed the moment hair appears.  Ostensibly, it is to prevent overgrowth in the future.  But a lot of women were outraged.  “It tells girls their changing bodies are bad and ugly” they claimed.

Well, where’s the outrage over grown women being sent the same message?  And then sending that same negative message themselves every time they lie on a table, remove their skivvies, spread their legs, and have some stranger slather them with hot wax and rip out every last one of their public hairs by the root?

Look, I’m all for shave and a haircut.  I’m all for a neatly trimmed look.  I don’t want  – to go back to a Sex and the City term – to have “a situation” down there.

But I also don’t want to look like a porn star or like a child.  And I don’t want my daughter to look like that either.  Who would?

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

This week, the Supreme Court ruled that a California Law banning the sale of violent video games to minors violates those minors’ first amendment rights, and was – as a lower court had determined – unconstitutional.

Justice Antonin Scalia argued that while sexual content has long been regulated for children, there is no precedent for limiting children’s access to violent content. The Court determined that the government’s “legitimate power to protect children from harm… does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

So what the Supreme Court is saying is, kids shouldn’t be exposed to sex, but if they rack up points by shooting someone – more points for shooting them in the head, and even more for shooting them in their private parts while playing a video game (in Bulletstorm), or if they shoot up a street full of Russian civilians whose blood spatters everywhere (Modern Warfare 2) — well, that’s freedom of speech.

I find this argument ridiculous on a number of levels.

1. Precedent Schmecedent. Just because the Courts haven’t done something before, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it now.  Take child protection laws.  For more than a century, there were no such laws.  Should we have allowed the continued abuse of children in the workplace, or at the hands of their parents simply because we’d never limited it before?

2. Degree matters.  The violence in the Red Shoes (which Justice Scalia referenced in his decision) is that of a girl forced to dance herself to death. Snow White?  A poison apple. Compare that to a child playing a character that beats someone to death with a hammer – with splattering blood and all — and who gets points for it! Not the same thing.

3. Consistency Counts  The law they struck down was pretty specific, it defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that was “patently offensive,” appealed to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

So Scalia’s argument (And Ruth Ginsberg!! How could you agree with this?) that these video games are conveying “ideas and even social messages” just doesn’t work.

4. Obscene isn’t just about Sex. Doesn’t  content that includes the “entertaining” depiction of raping a prostitute then killing her when you’re done (Grand Theft Auto) seem obscene to you? Seriously.  How much more obscene does it get?

4. Do the Research  Do violent video games encourage violence in kids?

Read this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

Many academics and medical professionals say yes, though not all agree. The  American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement in 2009 concluding that exposure to different forms of media, including video games but also TV, movies and music, “can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares and fear of being harmed.” The American Psychological Association takes a similar stance  in a resolution on violence in video games and advocates reducing the amount of violence in them.

True, there are some studies that show no correlation.  But the prevailing wisdom is that it’s unhealthy for kids to be exposed to graphic violence.  In the case of video games – to graphic violence in which they virtually participate.

So what’s next?   Hopefully, much like the Motion Picture Association – the video games association will monitor themselves, and limit childrens’ access to such games.  But in the end,  it’s up to parents to be – well – parents, and monitor what their kids are watching and playing.

Cause otherwise, they might be exposed to such terrible violence as a princess biting into a poison apple, right?

I mean, they’ve already got a head start; you can’t throw a wimpy little kid without hitting a “news” piece about cyber bullying.  And I’m not denying that it’s a real issue.  I know all about the Boston area teen who killed herself after prolonged bullying – cyber and otherwise. (read this excellent piece about whether or not cyberbullying was at fault about this story here.)  I know about the college student who killed himself after having a sexual encounter webcasted by his roommate.  So before people start getting all hysterical on me: I know cyber bullying is real -  and is  real problem.

I just can’t help but wonder if it’s as big a problem as the massive, endless media coverage would have us believe. And I also wonder if all of the hype, all of the endless chatter, doesn’t add to the problem, rather than put a stop to it. I think that labeling every incident of unkind behavior between children bullying, dilutes the meaning of the word, and anesthetizes our children to real bullying – both online and off.  Is it the boy crying virtual wolf?

Recently, we had bullying expert Barbara Coloroso come to speak at our school.  She had a lot of good things to say about bullying – how to deal with bullies, how to teach kids the difference between tattling (saying something that’s only going to get someone into trouble) and Telling (saying something that’s going to get someone out of trouble.) She was funny, and dynamic, and filled with shocking facts and figures.  She also equated bullying with Nazism.  And that’s where she lost me. To me, that supposed parallel – between genocide and bullying – pretty much exemplified the problem: cyber bullying is serious, but it sure as hell isn’t as bad as genocide. But if you measured the seriousness of  cyber-bullying  by the sheer amount of media, community and educational attention it receives – compared to, for instance, what’s happening in The Ivory Coast or what went on in Rwanda – well, you’d think bullying was worse. Ridiculous.

Pushing, shoving, repeated taunts.  These are bullying behaviors. The systematic torture and murder of millions? That is not bullying, it is genocide.  There is a difference in scale.  And it matters.

Coloroso said, when I asked her to define bullying, that every single instance of unkindness between people is bullying. When I asked if there needed to be intent or any kind of continued pattern for unkindness to constitute bullying, she said no. “You only have to shove a kid’s head down the toilet once to be a bully.” she said.

Well, OK.  But what about the one time one girl tells another her shoes are dorky?  Or one boy tells another he smells?  Those aren’t nice behaviors – they’re mean – but to me, they’re not bullying behaviors because they happened once. Meanness, to me, does not equal bullying. Coloroso kept repeating something along these lines “Don’t tell me boys will be boys and girls will be mean, because it doesn’t have to be that way.”  Well, maybe it does.  Some childhood meanness is entirely developmentally appropriate. A child may do something mean unwittingly, because he or she is learning how to navigate socially. Children may be mean on purpose, too, but only because they are still figuring out how to behave at all, are testing the limits of what’s acceptable, or “trying on” a persona for a moment or two.  As long as parents, teachers and others in positions of authority address it and talk to the kids about it, explaining what is and isn’t acceptable, I don’t think the bully label is necessary or helpful. Kids can be mean, and they need to learn not to be, but to label every kid who does or says something mean a bully…well, there would be an awful lot of bullies around.  And an awful lot of those kids would never live down the label.

Are there real bullies?  Absolutely.  Are there real cyber bullies?  You bet.  But it does feel like the crisis of the moment.  I get it – back in the day, when a kid was called a name on the playground, it stayed on the playground.  Now, unkind words – and worse – will live on the internet forever.   There is – as I said before – a question of scale.  But ask anyone who was bullied as a child – did the feelings about it go away just because it’s not on the internet?  I can answer that. No.  I was bullied all through sixth grade by a boy who’d been held back so many times he towered over everyone. I still remember it vividly – internet or no.

Today, people are making a big deal about cyber bullying because it’s a socially acceptable way to attack technology as a whole.  Technology is the big bad unknown that our children are growing up with.  We don’t understand it, we don’t fully know it’s power, it’s new, it’s different.  And just like any prejudice – the bias against technology is born because people don’t like what they don’t understand.

I’m all for teaching kids to use the internet responsibly, for teaching them to be kind.  But I’m not all for attacking the technology that brings communities together, allows oppressed people to fight back, and puts a seemingly infinite amount of information out there for all. I want my kids to embrace technology – not to be afraid of it.  I want them to know how to protect themselves, to know how to behave online- but I don’t want the entirety of cyberspace to be demonized and labeled .

So stop picking on technology, everyone, or I’ll have to label you all bullies.

But it did get me thinking.  There are a lot of times I feel I’m just not being given 100%.  And I’m gonna sue:

1. My Children – for only listening 50% of the time (and I’m being generous here)  For only picking up after themselves 20% of the time.  For making me feel like I must have done something wrong to deserve…whatever it is they’re dishing out, just about 100% of the time they’re dishing…whatever it is they’re dishing. (Whew!)

2. My Body – for taking 25% longer to recover from a night out with the girls.  For gaining 2 of% my body weight every year since I turned 40.

3. The Weather – for snowing 80% more than I’d like it to this winter. For being 87% too humid for my frizz-ball of a head in the summer, and for making Fall and Spring – the most tolerable of seasons – last only 20% of the year.

4. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann for only looking into the camera 5% of the time during her “official” Tea Party response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.  Also – for only telling 10% of the truth about how much responsibility the Republican party has for the current financial crisis.  And for wearing 30% too much make-up.

5. The Cast of Jersey Shore – For being on 100% too many magazine covers, for being 100% more famous than they deserve to be.  For drinking 110%  too much.  For taking up even .1% of my consciousness.

6. The word “Like” as in “he was like…and then I was like” for being used by 90% of the intelligent, educated people I know (including me), when it’s not even .001% grammatically correct.

7. Bagels – for having 60% more calories than I thought they did, and for being the ruin of the diets of perhaps 88% of the Jewish women in New York City currently trying to lose ten pounds.

8. Fashion Magazines – for writing tons of articles about how horrible eating disorders are, about how you can be beautiful at any size, and then using models who are painfully skinny 100% of the time.

9. Justin Beiber. No percentages here.  He just bugs me.

10. People (especially men) who say “hmmmm” a lot when you’re talking. Because Hmm is really only man-speak for “I am not listening to anything you say. Damn, the Lakers lost again!”

11. Acronyms – because – FYI -about 80% of the time,  it takes longer to decipher the GD things than it would to just write them down in the first place. IMHO. (LOL)

12. The phrase LOL – see Justin Beiber, above.

I figure most of these lawsuits are a slam dunk. Though I might have to sue myself under the “people who use cliches in their writing” category for putting that way.

What’s that?  You don’t like my list?  So sue me.

“Where did you hear that word?” I wanted to know.

“Puberty Ed.”

The fifth graders at my kids’ uber-expensive private school have started what used to be called Sex Ed, but is now called Puberty Ed (evidently, it’s OK to teach the kids the word “p***y” but not to use the word Sex), and a big part of the curriculum, it seems, is telling the names of things.

“We learn the medical term, the slang term, and the vulgar term.”

Well, then.

“You know what else they call it, Mommy?  A c***! And did you know that the F-word means sex?”

That’s it! Too much for me!

I’m all for sex ed.  I wrote a post a while back about not telling my kids the facts of life because I didn’t think they were ready to hear them.  But when they were old enough,(for them, that was age 9), I did tell them. I’m not a prude, or squeamish about the subject. I want my kids – my daughter especially – to feel comfortable with their own sexuality.  I want them not to think of sex as dirty or shameful.  What I don’t want, is for them to be learning the words p**** and c*** in school.  From their teachers.

Here’s how it works: the teachers explain the “real” words for the reproductive and sexual organs, the sexual act and various and sundry other words having to do with puberty.  Then they ask the kids what words they know.  And it turns out, they know A LOT of words.

I know that I can’t protect my kids from foul language forever.  And maybe it is better for them to learn the words in a safe environment, where they can understand how they’re different from the “real” words, and why they shouldn’t be used.  But maybe not.  Maybe learning those words in school somehow validates the words themselves.  I think the theory is that letting the kids say the words in a controlled, monitored classroom environment takes away their clandestine thrill. But I’m wondering if all it does is teach them bad words.

I like that school has taught my ten year olds what’s about to happen to their bodies.  I like that the whole process of how babies are made has been de-mystified and de-giggle-fied for them.  But language is a powerful thing.  Words matter.  They don’t teach them bad grammar so they know what good grammar is. They don’t learn the N-word during Black History Month,  or the K-word during the unit on the Holocaust.  Teaching words like those – and like the ones my kids learned at school this week – only perpetuates their use.

It might be naïve to think that simply by not teaching kids bad, demeaning, prejudicial or offensive language that language will just go away.  But wouldn’t it be a nice goal? Wouldn’t it be nice to try?

This morning, with all that miserable ice and the frozen rain, that last little incline to the bus stop felt like a trek to the summit of some bleak asphalt mountaintop, but we made it and queued up with everyone else. (Yes, we ‘queue up.’ We get on at the first stop every morning and we line up. So sue us for being so British.)

Luckily, the bus arrived quickly and the kids and I shuffled along with everyone else to get on. Fast. (Did I mention it was cold?) And then, she arrived. The Woman Without Children. The WWC just walked up, passed the line, and started to get on the bus.

“Excuse me.” I say. No reaction. “Excuse me!” I yell. She turns.

“There’s a line.” I say.

“Yeah, well I’m cold,” she announces, as if that settles it.

“I’m cold,” said the three year old in front of us to his Mom.

“Yeah! We’re all cold.” The mob was getting angry. Mothers were banding together against her. Kids were gathering up snowballs to run her out of town.

Only not really. We all just stood there. Shocked, or maybe just frozen, and watched WWC get on the bus before all of us well-behaved, setting an example for our children Moms and our Popsicle toed kids.

I was enraged all day. But I guarantee she never gave it another thought. Guess there are all kinds of ways to be cold.

Not Me. Not my kid. But look! She’s a mom!

Here’s something I’ve noticed at Mom Blogger events: to most PR companies, “Mom” means “mother of a baby.”  At most Mom-Blog events, all of the products are geared towards babies.  It was such a relief at Blissdom this past weekend, to see Unilever there with a campaign geared toward tweens – Don’t Fret the Sweat.  It was a deodorant campaign, true.  Not exactly sexy, but at least it acknowledged that not all moms have babies.  My kids are loooong out of diapers, and I’m still a mother. Really, I am.

It’s odd that this “all moms are baby-moms” thing bothers me, given that it also bothers me that companies pigeon-hole me as a Mommy Blogger in the first place, even though I almost never write about my kids. I think it’s because assuming that every mom in the universe needs a diaper bag demeans all mothers.  Let me explain.

How many of you stay at home Moms with school age children have been asked “What do you do all day?”  As if, once your children are gone from the house for a few hours a day, you’re home free.  Well, I’ll tell you what we  do all day: a lot. We keep the house in order, we do the grocery shopping, we get the kids to school, and to their dance classes, and basketball games, and playdates, and piano lessons.  Then we get them home and feed them dinner (that we cooked) and  help them with their homework.  We wait for the plumber.  We do the laundry. We remember to send Grandma a birthday card.  We volunteer at school.  Oh, and a lot of us also write blogs, keep up with friends online and through Twitter, and manage relationships with brands and sponsors to bring in a little extra cash.

That’s what we do all day.

But somehow, the world has once again conspired to minimize what we do.  When your children are diaper-aged, they patronize you by assuming that all you are is a bottle feeding, diaper changing, spit-up stained cliche. But at least they recognize you, that you’re doing something.  The world at large knows (or at least thinks they know) who you are. And then, when your children are at school, they suddenly assume you are….what?  Not a mother anymore? Just some person filling up their days with talk shows, lunches and vacuum cleaners? It’s as if, once the baby stage is over, they have no idea what to make of us. As if being a mother to babies was the sole defining aspect of our identities, and once those babies are grown, we no longer exist. I don’t like either side: being solely defined by my motherhood, or having motherhood – an essential part of my identity – discounted.

Motherhood is motherhood at any stage.

And if that’s not enough of a reason for PR companies and marketers to think twice about me, how about this:  the tween market is huge.  Look at this from MSN:

Twenty million strong nationwide, tweens — kids ages 8 to 14 (…) — now flex $43 billion worth of annual spending power,

So even if you think that moms of school aged kids sit around and eat bon bons all day, you should also know that we have access to those coveted Tweens.  That those tweens are still young enough to care what we have to say. And that all of those tweens have parents who care what we have to say, too.

Motherhood is hard enough – just read this post -  without feeling like you have to defend it simply because your children have grown up a little.  What would you rather?  That we kill off our young and make new babies every two years, just so you know how to categorize us? We are no less mothers than women who have young babies. (who, by the way, will also grow into school aged children.  Go figure.) Once a mother, always a mother.  And motherhood no more defines a woman when her children are babies than it does when they are adults.

I am woman. I am writer. I am blogger. Sister. Daughter. Wife. Business Woman. Friend. And yes, mother.

I will not be categorized or pigeon holed. Get used to it.

And if you paid any attention to it at all, you’d see that it made lots and lots of people very, very mad.

If you don’t know what happened, here’s a recap: Last year (I promise, this’ll be short) the Disney SMMoms Celebration (not conference) was invitation only.  Lots of people were upset about that.  It felt exclusionary.  And Very publicly, on Twitter, people complained that it was exclusionary, that they felt snubbed.  So this year, after months of teasers (from Disney) and rumors from everyone else, Disney announced that 2011’s limited space celebration would be first-come, first-serve. (Once you’re credentials were verified.)

They announced the date and time that registration would begin and we manned our lap-tops, iphones, and anything else that had internet-connectivity and were off to the races.

Only instead of a race, it was a frustrating waiting game.  You couldn’t get onto to the site.  Or you did, and then you got booted off.  Some of us spent hours trying to get registered.  And those of us who got through were asked for our blog names and urls, our professional and brand affiliations, our advertisers, our blog, twitter and facebook stats, and the names and age ranges of the people in our family.

The next day, the attendees were announced…and they looked suspiciously hand-picked.  One of my friends was told she registered too late, and by the time she did, the slots were all full.  But another friend, who didn’t get through until 30 minutes than that, was in.

So while no one knows for sure if all of the attendees were hand-picked, it certainly seems that way.  So why the hysterical rush? Why the charade (if it was one.)? Why not just tell people they would look through applications and pick?

Because all the Mom Bloggers would have complained, that’s why. We want to be valued, we want to be taken seriously, we want to be paid for our work.  But we also want don’t want to feel like there’s a popular club. We want to be one, big happy family. We’ve even gone so far as to include men in Mom blogging conferences that purport to be about empowering women.  We want every single one of us to feel equally valued and loved.

That’s awfully nice, but it doesn’t work that way.  If you want to have a big business like Disney to invite you to an event  – to effectively hire you to promote their brand – you have to have the goods.  In the blogging world, that means a minimum of 5000 unique page views a month, at least a 60 klout rating on Twitter, and a proven track record of working with companies (if you’re a business), generating buzz (through lots of comments, if your blog is personal) or both.

I looked at that list of people attending the conference.  And they’re the women I would want if I were a big company looking to get the word out.  They’re influencers.  They’re smart.  They’re funny.  Many of them are my friends.  I’m happy that they’re going.  And the truth is, my stats and my influence just don’t measure up to theirs.  They’re earned the right to go to this conference.

It seems to me that a lot of the people complaining about how this whole thing went forgot something very important: Disney wasn’t inviting everyone and their families down to Disney World because they’re nice.  It’s because they’re a business.  And they want – and need – a return on that investment of time, money, and hotel rooms.

Should they have misled all of us and taken all of our personal information in the process?  Of course not.  But shouldn’t we, collectively, take some responsibility too?  Last year Disney took a lot of flack from the Mom Blogging community for making the event invitation only.  That’s our fault. We should have understood that hard work, and good work reap rewards – like increased ad revenue, paid writing and speaking opportunities, and yes, even invitations to blog conferences.  By putting Disney in the position to have to defend doing what any other business dealing with any other group would do – take the best of the best – we set ourselves up, and put them in such an awkward position that there was almost no way they could have gotten it right.

As my friend Beccarama pointed out, not everyone gets to go to Harvard.  There’s a reason only people like Michael Bloomberg, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffet are invited to the Sun Valley conference: they’ve earned it. Can you imagine every small business owner in America publicly whining about not being “picked” for that?

So in the end, I end up with this, I don’t approve of the questionable way Disney handled this whole thing.  I think it was unfair to put us all through that. But I don’t think we Mom Bloggers are blameless either. If we want to play in the big time, we have to act like big girls, and accept that while for many of us, Blogging is fun, and creative, and a way to be a part of a terrific community, for companies like Disney, it’s business.  And businesses don’t invite (really hire) everyone.   They pick the best of the best.

And that is fair.