Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Politics & government

MOMFLUENCED

Sara Petersen

Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture

How momfluencer culture impacts women psychologically as consumers, as performers of their stories, and as mothers.

On Instagram, the private work of mothering has been turned into a public performance that's generating billions of dollars, and the message is simple: that we're all just a couple of clicks away from a better, more beautiful experience of motherhood. MOMFLUENCED examines the performance of motherhood - producers of it and consumers of it - through the multilayered phenomenon of the mommy influencer. Sara Petersen tackles the complexities of modern motherhood. Drawing on personal experience, interviews with prominent momfluencers, literature, pop culture, and discussions with experts in (psychologists, linguists, sociologists, technologists) to construct a wide-ranging exploration of maternal glorification and self-erasure. For fans of Lyz Lenz's searing critique in Belabored, of how we treat mothers in this country and of Jia Tolentino's decoding of social media in Trick Mirror, MOMFLUENCED argues that mommy influencer culture has fundamentally changed modern motherhood by transforming it into a vehicle for consumption. More than an investigation into filters, or a critique of monetized identity performances, MOMFLUENCED considers what it means to define motherhood for ourselves when society is determined to define motherhood for us. Sara Petersen is a writer based in New Hampshire. Her essays about feminism, domesticity, and the performance of motherhood have appeared in the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, the Washington Post, InStyle, Glamour, The Rumpus, Longreads, and elsewhere.

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Book Published 2023-04-25 by Beacon Press

Comments

[Petersen] draws on her own personal experiences, making the book feel like dishing with an exceptionally well-informed and insightful friend. Readers who find themselves endlessly scrolling social media with that particular form of envy and aspiration it all seems to inspire will be fascinated by this insider's look behind the spotless countertops and cherubic children.

Sara Petersen is one of the foremost chroniclers of the world of online moms.

...incisive and engrossing exploration of the intensified pressure, in the age of social media, for women to perform "good" motherhood... I opened this book hopeful that it would contain the same qualities I've come to love in Petersen's articles: sharp cultural commentary, honest self-reflection, and infectious humor. MOMFLUENCED didn't disappoint.

Petersen, a journalist who has been studying and writing about mommy blogging since the early days, introduces us to the more recent phenomenon of momfluencers... With an investigative eye and a sense of humor, Petersen sheds needed light on a key part of the social media landscape.

Reading MOMFLUENCED is like having a frank conversation about motherhood, gender, and capitalism with someone much smarter, wittier and well-read than I am. Sara's vulnerable, incisive and funny-as-hell take on momfluencer culture will stay with me for a long time. Fans of Under the Influence will gobble it up.

MOMFLUENCED takes us on a journey to understand our own history of domesticity and how it affects so much of our culture today. Petersen unpacks influence through a lens of who has power in this country and teaches us how we can change the narrative for the women coming up behind us. A must-read!

For women disappeared by the Cult of Domesticity, MOMFLUENCED opens up the possibility of self-reclamation with a passionately conceived deep-dive into modern motherhood as performance, commodity, and fantasy. An eye-opening must-read.