Less & More: The WFH Mom Edit

Or be whatever the trendy word for embarrassing is right now…

In a world obsessed with optics and being cool I am here with a message: it is OK to be cringe. 

I was having a conversation with my tween recently about the changing social dynamics as he gets older and it struck something in me. With social media and constant connectivity there is an obsession with being cool and curating this perfect image but that tampers down our authentic joy. Joy is loud and messy and sometimes really nerdy or weird. We can be so worried about upholding this online image of perfection that we forget to be dorks. And that, my friend, is a travesty. 

I spent a good chunk of my life – like a lot of us probably do – toning down my personality for the sake of being cool or trying really hard to be. Guess what. I wasn’t cool and all that muting did was make me feel like I was missing out. That’s a lesson I learned as an adult that I desperately want to impart on my kids early on: be who you are and like what you like, who cares about fitting in. It truly isn’t worth much in the end. 

I like Real Housewives and wear loud colors and love dinosaurs and headbands and all sorts of things that someone else might deem as cringe but I don’t get paid to care, bb. Now that my kids are getting older I see the super subtle shift to sometimes toning down what they like because other people don’t like it. And to that I say? Don’t waste your time. Life is too short and the world feels like it is on fire so collect the Pokemon and sing the showtunes at top volume. If people don’t like it, they don’t have to. If people roll their eyes or screenshot your Instagram story to make fun of you? Bless their hearts. What a bummer for them. As my favorite saying goes, “sucks to suck.”

There’s this unspoken societal rule that enthusiasm is embarrassing and I am OVER it. Post your silly social media story! Snap that selfie! Wear your cutesy Mickey ears on your family vacation! Dance like a loon at the concert! Be excited about the sequel to your favorite movie! You don’t have to like everything but the things you like? Like ‘em with your whole heart.  You get to be alive one time (as far as we know) and you may as well enjoy it. Being enthusiastic and dorky is endearing! 

Since my kids were little I have responded to anyone saying they don’t like something I love with, “Ok, I like it enough for both of us” and I just cross my fingers that in this era of middle school and hyper-connected kids that it rubs off. I l-o-v-e the writer Sam Irby and in one of her books she has an entire chapter about how she likes to say she likes things even if they are basic (“I like it!”) and I have never felt so understood as a human being. I don’t know when we started thinking that if someone loves something we don’t we have to be over the top in letting them know. 

I don’t like muted nail polish colors, I am allergic to beige furniture, I am not a diehard Swiftie, I don’t like some really popular TV shows, Colleen Hoover is my least favorite author. AND THAT IS OK. If you love all those things and you have the merch and feel understood when you sit on your beige couch with your cream colored nails sipping out of your Coffee Era mug watching Game of Thrones and reading Verity? I like that for you. I love it for you, even. Because you love it. 

We don’t have to be cookie cutter humans. There’s a quiet peace and power in embracing your embarrassing and just being true to who you are or what you love. So go ahead, gorge, be cringey. Because cringe, at its core,can  just be joy with the volume turned all the way up.

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