I hadn’t realized just how “stay-at-home mom” I’d become until a working mom friend dropped by recently and my toddler began to rub her legs and mutter, “Funny skin, funny skin.”
And then it hit me: She’d never seen Mommy in pantyhose. My friend’s exotic lawyer clothes included mysterious stretching skin that made her more exciting than a personal play date with Buzz Lightyear.
When you stay at home, you don’t have to wear pantyhose. Heck, you don’t have to wear anything if you don’t want to.
But you also have a lot of conversations like this:
“Honey, what do you want for lunch?”
“Mulan.”
(slower) “What…do…you…want…for…lunch?”
“Mommy, the Gingerbread Man is telling Rumpelly Still Zin that he’s in time out.”
“Mac ’n’ cheese or PB&J?”
“Hoodiedoodie, hoodiedoodie, hoodiedoodie.”
“Okay, I’m going to fix some noodles. You want juice or milk?”
“Alabama!”
You worry that your kid watches too many videos if you’re a stay-at-home mom, unless you’re one of those Mutant Moms who doesn’t believe in TV, and who has never raised her voice even when all her Lancome moisturizer gets flushed down the toilet along with a travel-size Magna Doodle, a pack of Chiclets, and some knee-highs.
What? This hasn’t happened to you?
I watched a Mutant Mom the other day at a fast food restaurant. Her toddlers happily wolfed huge green salads with cartons of milk while mine smeared ketchup-coated chicken nuggets on the table and screamed for Diet Coke.
They even said the blessing.
“Look at that,” I said, honestly awed. “Those little girls are eating their vegetables and saying the blessing. Isn’t that sweet?”
My toddler looked at the scene thoughtfully for several seconds, then grinned at me. “Pocahontas has orange hair,” she said.
But about these videos. I always thought that as long as it was Disney, how bad could it be? Then I started watching more closely.
Take The Little Mermaid. Sure, Ariel is pretty and smart and has a great set of pipes, but what does she do? At sixteen, she deliberately disobeys her doting father and tosses him and her adoring sisters aside like week-old flounder to chase after an older man whom she decides to marry just THREE DAYS after they meet.
Within mere hours of meeting Prince Eric, they’re shackin’ and her poor family back there “under the seaaaaaa” is sick with worry.
My daughter has Little Mermaid nightgowns, shoes, socks, underwear, dolls, tapes, and stuffed animals. How do I tell her that her heroine is an inconsiderate little tart with raging hormones?
Mulan isn’t much different. Sure, she’s a great role model, what with that Evelyn Wood weenie-to-warrior course she apparently takes before saving all of China, but here’s another teenager who can only achieve greatness by abandoning her loving parents and lying her way into the army.
It’s possible that I’ve stayed home too long, when I dwell on such things. Maybe it’s time to reclaim my “funny skin” and venture back to the real world.
But I don’t think so. Not quite yet, anyway. Somebody’s gotta be around to tell her that Pocahontas doesn’t really have orange hair.
Right?