The Humiliation of Modern Motherhood

Last updated on: March 11, 2017 at 10:52 am by Anne Kennedy

The Humiliation of Modern Motherhood 2017-03-11T10:52:55-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I’ve just spent more whole minutes looking for some kind of explanation for why every single disembodied hand food video on Facebook exclusively uses chicken breasts. I must confess, I always stop and watch these videos, no matter how bizarre or how culinarily grotesque. The frozen banana dipped in chocolate, the Mexican tater tot casserole, and the most offensive of all–chicken breast with penna and any number of different kinds of sauce.

What gives, Tasty Empire? Why the obsession with chicken breasts? Wherefore the endless slabs of massive white chicken that dries out at the mere flicker of a flame? Never mind that it’s not any more healthy than its much tastier (get it…get it) and cheaper counterpart, the thigh.

These videos are so fascinating, so mesmerizing, to compelling–like a cat knocking a cup off the coffee table, or an overwrought mother dragging her children from the room during their father’s important interview with the BBC. You can’t look away, you can’t, even though you will never make the dish, not in a million Facebook newsfeed scrolls.

Anyway, I am longing for an explanation. Does anyone know why the breast is universally favored in these videos? And whose are the hands? And is there a body attached to them? And how do they decide what to cook? I don’t really want to do the hard work of googling to find out.

The only thing I cooked this week was a bizarre concoction of breakfast sausages and cauliflower together in a pan with a couple of chopped up tomatoes at the end. While I was doing that I heated up a tray of frozen French fries with seasoning that made them “too spicy” for the children, my bad, and some slabs of Aldi Naan to compensate for that mistake. It was kind of a low moment for me in the kitchen so I had a glass of box wine while the sausages were cooking and meditated on the fact that if I had really cared, I would have squeezed the sausage out of their casings. “This is what it’s come to,” I muttered to myself, and then yelled at the children to leave me alone, stop questioning me, and set the wretched table.

Later in the week I drank another glass of wine in solidarity for that mother dragging her children from the room, her head bowed in servile humiliation. I know that this is the funniest video of the year and that everyone is laughing in joy and wonder, but I can’t watch it without wanting to die. I mean, it is the Face of Modern Parenting. It gathers into one bright moment all the contradictory elements that make life so stupid and overwhelming.

On the one hand, there is the god of professionally shiny professionalism. Nothing should ever go wrong on screen. On the other hand, there is the cult of the child, strutting and marching and being the disobedient narcissist we value so highly for childhood. And on the third, disembodied hand we have the woman, kneeling under the weight of International Women’s Day, the fantastic message that she can have it all but only if she quits her children and family which she will have to do because there are no real cultural resources to help her cope except for complaining loudly on the blogosphere. Motherhood is the pits, isn’t it. The complete devaluation of personhood. I hate that she came into the room kneeling with her head on the ground. I would have done exactly the same, but I wouldn’t have been laughing about it.

Anyway, I didn’t read any books this week, but I did read this, which is like reading a book, which should be a book, which I love so much that I’m reading it again because I just love it. It merits locking yourself in a cupboard and savoring each word with a whole Brie, a glass of champagne, and a bevy of children and husbands banging on the door outside wanting to know when you’re going to come out and make dinner. “I’m not gonna,” you can shout, “order in.” Pretty sure that Samantha is my spirit artist, just like the Aye Aye is my spirit animal, and Jael is my doppelgänger.

Have a lovely day. I’ll be learning how to use the big scary coffee machine at church, because Jesus. Pip pip.

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