Welcome! In Pursuit of Clean Countertops isn’t about countertops. Not really. This newsletter started as a way to track my obsession with momfluencer culture and how that obsession reveals what so many of us pursue by way of mommy influencers.
Maybe it’s clean countertops (something all of the top momfluencers boast in perfectly lit photos). Maybe it’s a face balm that will make you throw away all your other beauty products (something momfluencers AND the Instagram algorithm try to sell me on a regular basis). Maybe it’s a more blissful, joyful, “nice and slow” experience of motherhood by way of macrame wall hangings or simply by being born Gwyneth Paltrow. Maybe it’s a nostalgic version of motherhood that never existed. Maybe it’s a $20,000 oven.
I will likely always find Ballerina Farm interesting (so. many. layers!), but after three years covering momfluencer culture, this newsletter has expanded to include feminist analysis of gender, domesticity, institutional motherhood, consumerism, the attention economy, and the perils of being a woman in 2025.
While politics with a capital P is not my beat, every single piece of cultural analysis you’ll find here is political because every single piece of culture is political. And when I write about motherhood, I’m necessarily writing about politics because I live in a country that claims to revere mothers while simultaneously chipping away at their rights and denying them respect or remuneration for their labor. I want to understand why our culture idealizes motherhood (online and off) but fails again and again to give moms what they need to thrive (like universal preschool, paid family leave, subsidized childcare, and bodily autonomy).
About Me:
I wrote a book about the many layers of momfluencer culture, MOMFLUENCED: Inside the Maddening, Picture-perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture (which you can read excerpts of here, here, and here).
For most of my career, I’ve written about motherhood and feminism and my work has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Glamour, Refinery29, and elsewhere. For Harper’s Bazaar, I wrote a piece about the cultishness of wellness momfluencers, and another about my own love/hate relationship with momfluencers.
I live in New Hampshire with my family, where I listen to podcasts obsessively while knitting. Feel free to check out my website to find more of my work and follow me on Instagram, which I tend to avoid because Meta! Occasionally I like to rant about the ads.
What your paid subscription gets you:
Access to the entire archives (a veritable feast of Ballerina Farm analysis).
The Friday newsletter - sometimes an essay, sometimes a Q and A, sometimes a pop culture post mortem.
An extra newsletter every Tuesday. The Tuesday essay is looser and sometimes more experimental than the Friday post, because it’s more subject to my moods and obsessions of the moment! Sometimes it’s my thoughts on Taylor Swift, Emily Henry’s men, or Rudy Jude. Sometimes it’s an excellent conversations about Bath and Body Works scents. Sometimes it’s the Ugliest Shit I Love.
Access to subscriber only chats - where we talk about bad male celebrities, momfluencer documentaries, and sometimes swap product recs!
The ability to comment on posts and engage with other In Pursuit community members.
My eternal gratitude and the the knowledge that you’re spending $5 a month or $50 a year to help dismantle the myth of the Ideal Mother, which has hurt all women, mothers or not - today more than ever.
What a founding subscription gets you
Everything the paid folks get, in addition to a signed copy of Momfluenced!
What your free subscription gets you
The Friday essay
Writing is my full-time job. And it’s no secret that the publishing industry and the wider media landscape is a mess. Media outlets are constantly folding. Freelancer payment is unpredictable and sporadic and dependent on news cycles. I typically earn anywhere between $250 - $900 per freelance piece. Some of these take months to research and report. Some of them take weeks. And I love writing these pieces! I love participating in conversations about motherhood, feminism, and trad wife culture on large platforms that reach diverse audiences.
But I write this newsletter because sometimes, something happens in the news (or on Instagram) that I know lots of people have feelings about and I want to respond immediately. This newsletter allows me to write fun, sometimes polarizing, timely cultural critiques in the moment. As a reader, I LOVE reading essays by my favorite writers responding to current events happening right this very minute. When sometime strange or curious happens in the news, whether it be related to entertainment, health, or literature, I seek out experts in those fields to better understand and process my own reactions.
And while this newsletter is meant to be a bright spot in your inbox, I also write this newsletter because I’m furious about the motherhood narratives undergirding so much of American culture. Narratives that uphold the ideal mother as white, wealthy, cis-het, non-disabled, thin, and wholly devoted to the mythology of the nuclear family. It’s fun to interrogate momfluencer culture, but it’s also necessary to unpack what’s going on underneath the surface so we are better equipped to demand structural supports for caregiving. And so we can create our own narratives of mothering, narratives that center mothers’ individuality. Whether or not our countertops are ever clean.
***** If you ever run into trouble with your subscription or Substack snafus in general, email me: saralouisey@gmail.com
