I'm Lookin' At You, Pinterest

Ok, can we just stop for a second and ponder why everything has to be a fucking THING now?  People can't just do things.  Everything has to be a giant fucking special occasion where everyone is a special and unique snowflake, and I blame Pinterest.  And yes, before you ask, I totally have a Pinterest account.  I got it when they first started out, primarily out of curiosity.  It seemed interesting enough, kind of like a Tumblr for crafters, foodies and home improvement fanatics.  I can get behind that.  I used boards to organize recipes and also to gather inspiration photos for theater productions.  But now it seems like Pinterest is like a giant pool of shit to make you feel like you have to make everything a THING.

I notice this the most with baby related things.  People can't just say that they're pregnant.  They have to announce it in some sort of cutesy way, sometimes with the assistance of a professional photographer.  You can't just say "It's a boy" anymore, you have to do a cutesy fucking photo shoot, or bake stupid color-cream filled cupcakes so that people have to bite into them to find out your kid's gender.  Then there's the maternity photo shoot, where you have to have a million pictures done with you looking all knocked up and fabulous.  All in the name of making it a THING.  Simplicity has taken a back seat to making people feel like a unique and special snowflake who needs a shit ton of attention and has to come up with cutesy ways to get it.

It doesn't just stop with maternity and baby related stuff though.  No.  Since the target demographic is primarily women, let's post a ton of shit that will forever make other women feel like they're just not doing enough.  Ever.  I should take that back.  The target demographic isn't just women.  It's mommies.  And we all know how I feel about mommies.  But basically it's like a giant pool of shit that will inevitably make every mother feel like she's not being super mom if she doesn't do a bunch of meaningless bullshit.  Timmy's life might be less happy if I don't learn how to perfectly pack his lunches into Bento boxes with adorable cutout shapes in the sandwiches and a perfectly balanced meal every single day.  If I don't carefully hand construct every one of her Halloween costumes, Mindy will grow up to resent me forever and will become a stripper.  If the nursery I design isn't completely perfect, my kid will be suicidal before they're 5.  If I don't carefully preserve every crusty umbilical cord fragment, footprint, first curl, or lost tooth, I am a failure as a mother.  If I don't hand make every bit of baby food or decide to use formula instead of breast feeding, I might as well just birth the kid and send it to prison.  I think my personal favorite was when I saw someone post a tutorial on how to cover fabric burp cloths with other fabric so they would be "prettier".  You honestly want women to spend hours sewing and covering something that is, essentially, a vehicle for vomit?

And then this bleeds over into Facebook.  Every day I'm inundated with a ton of "shares" from random Facebook sites that have large graphic art like this:

Like.......really?  Why the fuck do women feel the need to post this?  Don't all moms love their kids?  It's kind of the whole point of being a mom.  Sure, I understand that some moms are shitty and don't actually care about their kids, but I'm willing to go on a limb and say they're in the minority.  So why are we as a gender feeling compelled to post things like this so that we can reaffirm that we DO love our kids, as if anyone was questioning it?

Let's stack on top of that all of the fitness tutorials that are on Pinterest, and all of the many many techniques for getting thinner, getting flatter abs, getting a tighter butt, and then the bullshit self image bashing "inspirational" posters like this one:

What the actual fuck, people?  Let's just sit around and remind ourselves that as a gender we will never be good enough.  We will never be doing enough.  Not as parents.  Not as individuals.  Women, you just suck.  That's what I'm seeing.  And unless you do all of the right things, you will NEVER be the unique and special snowflake that need to be.  You will never be as pretty or as smart or as good as all of those other mystery women on the internet who are doing all of these things SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU ARE DOING THEM.  Oh wonder women, teach us your secrets.  Our perfection is out there, just out of reach, and if only we could do just one more thing like our fucking pins tell us to, we could achieve it.

Or maybe we're not all unique and special snowflakes.  We're also not all pretty, or skinny, or perfect.  Some of us work two jobs and then come home and look after our kids.  Some of us don't have kids, but work our asses off in our careers and then donate our free time to charitable programs.  Some of us don't have the perfect body.  Some of us fucking LIKE CAKE.  Not everything has to be a fucking THING.  Sometimes, being you is actually just enough.  

And to my mom friends out there.  Do you have a kid?  Did you grow that little alien for 9 goddamn months?  Did you have it forcibly ripped from your body either through your girl bits our out the top of your sliced open abdomen?  Did your kid get fed, loved, cared for today?  Did you keep it alive?  You are fucking super mom.  

Fuck Pinterest.