I'm guessing this sounds familiar:
You're a first time mom, maybe you're pregnant and thinking ahead like a badass, or, like most of us, you're caught up in the change machine that is your life and the revelation that you need a new bra hits a little later, like say, when your boobs hurt too much to wear your old bras. Pain is always a helpful reminder.
So you poke around on the internet for some new lingerie for your killer mom bod. Oooh, maybe you should use this opportunity to get yourself something special, I mean, this is a special occasion, you should get you some fancy pretties!
But instead of luxurious lovelies, you find offer after offer of convenient basics in shades of neutral.
I mean, it sounds so reasonable at first. Yeah, so I need a new bra, but it's pretty short-lived, maybe it really doesn't need to be anything special. Of course it makes sense to be practical, I'm a fucking mother now, PRACTICALITY'S MY JAM.
On the surface "basics" seem inoffensive. They're so neutral and unassuming. The problem of a maternity bra appears to be one of basic practicality. So it's been solved with function.
But bras are more than a practicality for women. When that's all they are, we fucking hate them. They can be so much more, though. They can be beauty and sex and power and confidence and independence (and all the things that make women terrifying).
And when I think about why this problem pisses me off so much, I realize that it cuts much deeper. What does it say about how society feels about mothers when the only bras they're offered are "basic?"
Motherhood is feminism in retrograde.
Sure, you can be a woman and have a career and continue to fight for equal pay and equal treatment and play in man's world, but as soon as you have fulfilled your biological and social imperative for existing (baby making), it's time to stop your selfish game and put your family first.
This is in part why women are losing jobs far more rapidly than men. We've lost our childcare. Mothers are expected to take care of children. Fathers are expected to work the work. When companies are squeezed they keep the people they think will be there for them. (This is fair to no one).
100% of the jobs lost last December were held by women.
Being a woman in this society is full of contradictions. You should be sexy but not slutty. You should be successful but not too successful.
The paradox of motherhood is that you are pressured to become a mother, celebrated when you become pregnant, and then ignored (until it's time to pressure you for more babies). You've succeeded in procreating, now your job is to raise the next generation quietly in the background.
This mindset shows up in everything from healthcare to workplace benefits to marketing.
Let's use maternal healthcare as an example.
During pregnancy, and especially leading up to birth, you have regular healthcare visits. After birth, 1 visit.
During the after birth time, mothers struggle with postpartum depression, sleep loss, physical exhaustion, back pain, and other physical and mental difficulties recovering from childbirth. These can range from anxiety, pelvic floor recovery, diastis recti (the splitting of ab muscles), and infections.
Once you've successfully made the baby, you're done. The care for your wellbeing and the excitement of new things passes on to the baby and you're left to fend for yourself.
But back to basics.
The root my problem with "basics" is this:
It reinforces the belief that mothers (like their underthings) are meant to be practical and functional. Mothers are meant to serve society and not themselves - often at the cost of themselves.
We are women first and mothers second.
We have worked our asses off to get to where we are and we will not have it swept under the rug.
We are still independence and confidence and power and sex and beauty
and we are mom.
Motherhood's not a transformation, it's an addition to all that we are.
We are not basic.
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