Kate Middleton exists to smile for us
A case study of the world's most famous momfluencer
I’m often asked to define a “momfluencer.”
The most successful, visible momfluencer is a white woman married to a white man. She has at least two children, lives in a spacious, beautiful (usually white) house, and makes the nuclear family look like an aspirational journey of belonging and becoming. She is thin, non-disabled, and she has glossy, voluminous, wavy hair. Her wardrobe aligns with traditionally femme fashion standards. Maybe it’s a gingham apron. Maybe it’s flowing linen. Maybe it’s an impeccably tailored dress that Betty Draper would’ve been happy to moodily smoke in.
The point of the clothing is that it’s highly gendered, marking our momfluencer as a woman and a mother first and foremost, and that it highlights a body seemingly un-impacted by the ravages of pregnancy, childbirth, or sleepless nights.
A good momfluencer tells a good story with her aesthetics. It’s a story most of us have been trained to view as good by sheer dint of whiteness, heteronormativity, and ever-ascendant life milestones. A good momfluencer falls in love with a prince, has a fairy tale wedding, quickly pops out a baby, and smiles unwaveringly through it all. She is powerful because her appearance confirms the mythology of the good mother, the happy mother, made whole by her adherence to patriarchal beauty standards and gender norms.
A good momfluencer understands that her power lies not in her beliefs or her opinions, or even her mothering labor, but in her willingness to be consumed.
Kate Middleton is a good momfluencer.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to In Pursuit of Clean Countertops to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.