SO… WHEN DID MOMS STOP BEING ALLOWED TO BE HOT?
Apparently becoming somebody’s mom was supposed to make us less hot. Nobody told the moms. Because if The MILFication of Motherhood has taught us anything, it’s that becoming somebody’s mother doesn’t mean retiring the woman who existed before her. If anything, I think we’re getting a little louder about the fact that she’s still very much fucking here.
There is something so funny to me about the way women are allowed to be sexy right up until we become mothers.
Before kids? Wear the tiny dress. Take the thirst trap. Buy the lingerie. Go out with your fine ass hanging out. Be young and hot and maybe even a little reckless. Nobody really questions it because that’s just what women in their twenties do, right?
Then you have a baby and suddenly the entire vibe changes. Now you’re a mom. And for some reason, that title has historically come with this weird expectation that you’re supposed to tone everything else down a little bit. Dress a little more practical. Act a little more respectable. Stop caring quite so much about whether you’re hot because there are lunches to pack and children to raise and shouldn’t you have more important things to worry about now?
Meanwhile, MILF culture is fucking everywhere. Which is honestly hilarious when you really think about it. Society somehow managed to tell mothers they shouldn’t care so much about being sexy while simultaneously creating an entire category specifically dedicated to how hot moms are.
Make it make fucking sense.
And maybe, just maybe that contradiction is exactly why The MILFication of Motherhood feels so fucking interesting right now. Because at some point, women started taking the word back and having a little fun with it.
CRAZY I KNOW, BUT MAYBE THE MOMS WERE NEVER THE PROBLEM.
I actually think something has changed with our generation of moms, because somewhere along the way MILF stopped feeling like something people exclusively said about women and started becoming something women were perfectly happy to claim for themselves. And as someone who takes pride in becoming my hottest self post babies, I’m not mad at it.
Like yeah, actually. I am somebody’s mom. And I’m hot as hell. Thanks for noticing.
And I fucking love that.
I want to state the fact that no, it’s not because motherhood suddenly made us sexy. Not because we need somebody else to confirm we’ve “still got it.” And definitely not because we managed to somehow escape pregnancy and motherhood looking exactly like we did before. (And if you did, fuck you for real. *respectfully* lol)
I believe it’s because more women are FINALLY realizing those things were never mutually exclusive in the first place. You can be obsessed with your kids and still be obsessed with the way your ass looks in a pair of jeans. You can be at Target buying fruit snacks at 3 PM and buying lingerie at 3:15. Shit, you can even put them right next to each other on the conveyor belt at the store! You can sit through a school concert, clean somebody else’s pee off a toilet seat, answer 47 questions about snacks and still want your husband to look at you like he’s about to make another one.
Sorry. (Not sorry)
But, both women live here.
CAN WE PLEASE RETIRE “GETTING YOUR BODY BACK”?
Because where exactly did she go?!
I understand what women mean when they say it. Your body can feel wildly unfamiliar after having children. Mine certainly has. And honestly, I don’t think iv ever healed the body dysmorphia that came for me after birthing 3 whole ass kids. The reality is, things move. Things soften. Your boobs go through whatever personal crisis they’ve apparently decided to have. Your stomach might not sit the same way anymore. Your hips can change. Your weight can change. Even if your body looks relatively similar, the way you exist inside of it can feel completely different.
But I don’t think we need to spend the rest of our lives chasing the woman who existed before our kids.
I don’t want my old body “back.” This one is mine too. And maybe that’s part of what I find so interesting about The MILFication of Motherhood happening right now. Women aren’t necessarily trying to rewind themselves anymore. We’re watching thirty and forty something women dress hotter, train harder, care about their skin, get tattoos, wear the thong bikini, take the pictures, flirt with their husbands, go out with their girlfriends and openly admit that yes, they enjoy feeling attractive. They enjoy feeling HOT. SEXY.
And inevitably somebody will try to package all of that into empowerment. And sometimes it is. But sometimes I think women are allowed to care about being hot simply because being hot is fun.
THERE. I SAID IT.
Not everything needs to be healing. Not every lingerie purchase needs to be an act of reclaiming your femininity. Not every picture of yourself needs a caption about finally learning to love your body. Sometimes your ass looks fucking incredible and you would like photographic evidence. Period.
I think we’ve spent so much time trying to prove women shouldn’t derive their worth from their appearance that somewhere in there, we accidentally made women feel guilty for enjoying their appearance at all. As if there needs to be a reason for it. And often, we use trauma as the reason. We lost ourselves. We went through something. We’re healing. We’re reclaiming our bodies. All completely valid reasons, but why does something have to happen to us first?
DOES BEING HOT REALLY NEED A BACKSTORY?
YOU CAN BE NEEDED AND STILL WANT TO BE NOTICED
Why can’t a woman just really fucking enjoy being hot?
Your worth does not depend on being hot. You’re also allowed to thoroughly enjoy it when you are.
And here’s the reality, your motherhood doesn’t revoke that privilege. Maybe especially because motherhood can consume so much of you if you let it. Suddenly everyone needs something from your body. Your time. Your attention. Your calendar. Your brain is keeping track of appointments and grocery lists and whose water bottle disappeared and whether anyone actually brushed their teeth when they said they did. You become so accustomed to being needed that it can be incredibly easy to stop noticing yourself unless something specifically requires you to.
SOMETIMES YOU JUST WANT THE FUCKING PICTURE.
I think that’s part of why I love creating this experience for moms so much.
I’m not interested in giving you some dramatic “before and after” where you walk into my studio as a tired mom and walk out as this completely different sexy woman. Because respectfully, she was already fucking there. I don’t need to manufacture her. I just get to put the camera on her. And there is something really fucking good about watching a woman who spends most of her life documenting everybody else suddenly become the subject. Not somebody’s mom in the picture. Not somebody’s wife. Not standing behind her kids because she likes that side of her face better. Just her. Intentionally photographed because she wanted pictures of herself looking hot.
That gets to be enough.
Your children will have thousands of pictures documenting who you were as their mother. Your camera roll is probably already proving that. I think you’re allowed to have some evidence of the woman who existed at the exact same time.
The one with the car seats and the lingerie drawer. The one making dinner and making eyes at somebody across the room. The one who can be deeply maternal and deeply sensual without needing to reconcile the two. Maybe that’s the MILFication of motherhood I’m actually interested in.
Maybe that’s the MILFication of motherhood I’m actually interested in. Not moms suddenly becoming hot.
Moms finally deciding they don’t have to pretend they aren’t.
