Motherhood brings out the best and worst in us all. We all know who we’re talking about here: those mothers who, no matter the occasion, seem to blow us away with their looks. We see them in the pickup lines at school, at PTO meetings, and on the bleachers at local softball games. These “yummy mommies” cause our own husbands‘ eyes to stray and stir in us a potent mix of envy and resentment. How do they do it? Regular moms like us spend all day tending to children, barely getting five minutes to fix our hair before rushing to the next childhood event. We hardly notice how we look—until they show up.
While we’re lucky if our clothes match and are clean, these moms look like they stepped out of a magazine ad. Perfectly put together, evenly tanned, their hair—obviously colored—never shows roots. They fit into outfits most of us long ago gave up on, and they can even show up straight from the gym, smelling like roses and looking gracefully fit. When they arrive, we start tugging at our clothes, suddenly aware we only got mascara on one eye. Worse, some of them are nice if you muster the courage to talk to them! It must be a facade, right? In our minds, we imagine they have dentures, pimples on their butts, or are married to cheating jerks who treat them poorly—but deep down, we know that’s probably not true.
The Facade of Perfection
These yummy mommies seem to pass their flair for style down to their kids. Whether they have boys or girls, their children are overly concerned with their appearance, wearing clothes from the most expensive designers. While we shop at Walmart, they’re ordering Abercrombie jeans (for kids!) from catalogs. They skip the minivan for a sleek, convertible BMW, driving with the top and windows up to preserve their perfect hair. If we had a car like that, we’d bundle up in coats just to put the top down! We assume they’re stuck-up, snobby, rich, pretentious, and—surely—stupid. No one can look that good and be smart, right? They strut as if trying to show us sweatpant-wearing, no-makeup moms how inadequate we are. Well, we’ve got news for them!
They’re the ones who are sorry. If they spend that much time working out and shopping for the latest fashions, they must not be paying attention to their kids, right? They must have some major personality flaw that compels them to be so polished for something as simple as a zoo field trip. Surely, they didn’t graduate high school and married for money. Trophy wives! That’s what they are—trophy wives aggressively trying to make the rest of us feel bad. With so little going for them (except their looks), they must be jealous of us haggard housewives who put our kids first. We could all look like that with a makeover, massage, personal trainer, surgery, and tons of money. We stand by the belief that it’s more important to be real (boobs and all) and focus on our kids’ needs rather than our growing waistlines or dwindling self-confidence. That’s what being a mom is about, right? Sacrifice.
These yummy mommies have clearly sacrificed nothing. Our jealous, high-schoolish behavior refuses to let us think they’re good at anything beyond looking good. We refuse to see them as real mothers, real people with feelings as tender as ours. We stare at them across rooms or parking lots like they’re circus freaks. The truth is, we’re looking at them far more than they’re looking at us—and with much more intent.
Yummy mommies, the ones who seem to strike the perfect balance between being a mom and being a woman, silently force us to reckon with ourselves—what we long to be, what we lack, what we wish we had time for, or what we dream we could look like again. The truth is, we’re all yummy mommies in some form. The grass always looks greener on the other side, and yummy or not, moms of all kinds are constantly comparing themselves. The camaraderie of female companionship is often overshadowed by envy. We may grow up and leave high school behind, but something keeps us locked in the mindset that what looks better, is better. Nothing could be further from the truth. The beauty of motherhood is that it offers us a chance to mend our thinking, become all we want to be, and befriend those who are different from us. As we do this, we pass on our best qualities, nurture surprising friendships, and teach our daughters a new way. That’s what makes us all yummy mommies!
