I’m pleased to say that one of my favourite bloggers, The Kraken Wakes has blown in for a guest post. A sweary, ranty tornado of a guest post. Those are the sort I like.
Now, if you’ve not met The Kraken before then you will have to brace yourself because she’s not for the fainthearted. Gloriously ferocious rants, fuelled by anger and fantastic writing, is the best way I can put it.
Shall I tone it down a bit for your blog? asked The Kraken
Not a bit of it, said I.
What I didn’t expect was that The Kraken would have anything in common with Cherie Blair. But whilst Ms Blair has been denouncing yummy mummies, The Kraken is denouncing the label itself and arguing that it does none of us any favours at all.
Take it away, Kraken…
(BTW this may be unsuitable if you’re a child, easily offended or unacquainted with the business end of birthing )
“Bugger me. Just when mothering couldn’t be a bigger pisser than it already is, along comes the festering, pressure-dripping, guilt-inducing label of ’yummy mummy’.
Aye, it’s no longer enough to be a mother. Now, you have to be a mother from an Estee Lauder ad and ideally with no prior knowledge of fanny farts or suppurating pregnancy piles.
What a vile fucking concept this yummy mummydom is. It’s all utter cobblers, of course, and just another way of women bashing the shit out of each other rather than getting with the endless to-do list that they’re already wading on with.
Why the frig does anyone want to add the burden of being yummy to the already crippling responsibility of being a mummy?
Look at it this way: we, mothers, have already grown another human being, developed size 24 arses, had our vaginas poked/ stretched/ torn, shat on the delivery table with the effort of it all, leaked milk from our tits, fed another human from said tits, gone awol to the tune of PND, survived on two hours sleep a night, wept with exhaustion over such basic tasks as getting dressed, swapped sex for Benjamin fucking Bunny and blown cosmic sized holes in our careers.
And now you want us to look pretty too?
This yummy mummies malarchy is yet another unachievable myth, of course. Worse, it makes women feel like dribbling failures if their school run shoes have anything less than three inch heels.
The thing is, I see women who have achieved this myth as the biggest victims of all. For fuck’s sake, how much effort must it take? And why don’t they have anything better to do with their time?
The likes of Victoria Beckham are praised for their perfect mummydom but all I see is a woman so cowed by this mythical image that she’s not allowed to leave the house unless she’s catwalk ready.
Who, I ask you, wants a life like that? It’s amazing that VB has time to take a shit. Most mothers don’t and that’s when they haven’t seen the business end of a mascara wand for three months. How you do it while matching your spring wardrobe with your new Laboutins is beyond me.
Funny thing is, I have a picture of myself and my kid, Kraken Junior, by my bed and the frame has the words Yummy Mummy written on it. It was given to me when my fanny stitches still meant that I had to pee with my head lower than my pelvis just to stop the stinging (you work it out).
I now revel in how the frame and picture are poles apart. It’s my daily act of seething rebellion. My forcibly smiling face is hiding the rapid onset of severe PND and what would become visiting rights to the local psychiatric unit. That’s about as yummy as I managed to get. And that’s about as yummy as I’d like to stay, if it’s all the same to you.”
You can sample more like this at The Kraken Wakes, or compare suppurating piles with The Kraken on Twitter. She’s lovely really.