This is a MomBod.
My new favorite feminist brand and newsletter (maybe it will become yours too?)
Happy Monday all,
I always love to share the great projects my friends are up to – last week I wrote about my friend Erica Cantley’s podcast, Maitre’D Diaries, and today I am sharing a little bit about This is a Mom Bod—a feminist newsletter (read it here on Substack), and a fashion statement built by two divorced moms for “anyone who calls themselves “Mom” (and thus, has a MomBod) and for anyone who loves them.”
While the name might have you thinking it is part of the body-positive movement it’s not (though they are fans. It is a smart and irreverent, sharp and agile commentary on the patriarchy and gender roles in and out of the home. I love it so much.
The brand comes from Alexina Cather, whom I met when I was working on school food advocacy. She’s a fantastic, inspiring, and hilarious woman, a divorced single mom to three boys (ages 10, 7 and 18 months) who is Director of Policy and Special Projects at Wellness in the Schools. Alexina launched MomBod with Emily Gaynor Porto, a divorced, co-parenting mom to boy/girl twins who works in the art world as a publicist. They met, as many mom-turned-best-friends do, through their kids.
“We bonded instantly over the joys, grievances, and absurdities of parenthood, and got up to all kinds of adventures such as picking out books at the Strand, playing in neighborhood splash pads, and losing Alexina’s son at a chaotic midtown playground!” Emily told me.
The two created This is a Mom Bod in part to help mothers feel seen and heard. “We want moms to feel supported in a world that makes all of the work that moms do feel so invisible and undervalued,” Alexina told me. “We have an economic system that doesn’t consider motherhood and parenthood to be work at all, so we’d like to validate that very real labor so that the daily experience of being a mom feels less isolating and hidden away.”
There are so many reasons to love this newsletter. They touch on legacy, the invisible load, and comment on why Pamela Anderson was called brave for deciding not to wear make-up and the politics of having or not having children.
I loved their “Acts of Microfeminism” newsletter, where they shared little ways to push forward in your power like not yielding the sidewalk. (What’s your favorite act of microfeminism? Put it in the comments!) Another favorite was a post Emily did when her entire family had a really bad case of lice and how impressed the nitpicker was that her then husband had lice too! To Emily, the mom, she said ‘Oh you know moms just aren’t perfect, you missed the lice!’ but to her then-husband, she was practically cooing because the fact that he had lice meant he was a really good dad! She said most dads don’t get it because they don’t spend enough time with their kids. “We were all just so proud,” Emily says on Instagram, and then she gets up to lower the bar behind her. Loved it.
While the brand is titled MomBod, it is for all women. “We are adamant that this is for women in general, not just moms,” Emily told me. “We believe that the experiences of motherhood are reflective of our treatment of women in general, and want to shed light on that. Take, for example, the decision or circumstance of being a woman without children, and how fraught the treatment of that position is.” So true.
I chatted with Emily and Alexina about their vision and mission, how the Dad Bod phenomenon became sort of a stand-in term for the patriarchy—and their MomBod brand its cheeky response—and what they would do to the world of motherhood if they could wave a magic wand (giving all dads lice?).
Andrea: What was the inspiration for MomBod?
The original inspiration was a newsletter about parenting that we began writing in 2021, during the COVID lockdown. We had both moved out of the city and had a lot of time to reflect on and think about parenting. Although we had fairly different experiences in parenting throughout COVID, we both found it to be a real time of reflection, and wanted a forum to express what we were feeling authentically, which meant a lot of levity and humor. Parenting today can be so weird, and we wanted to talk about that.
We called the newsletter Parent-ing, which is not great branding but was supposed to speak to how much “parent” had turned into a verb over the course of a generation. Our own moms and dads were parents, but it wasn’t so standard for that generation to spend a whole lot of time thinking about “parenting” as an activity.
In 2023 we took a break when Alexina gave birth to her third child, and we both felt that the newsletter was at an inflection point and needed to shift into a different gear. So we paused our writing for about a year while we prepared to take the project in a new direction. After about a year of planning and hatching MomBod as a more multi-dimensional thing, we officially launched This is a MomBod as a newsletter, column, and movement in late summer.
You never give advice as much as you observe, laugh and are curious about motherhood, women, and parenting, which I love.
Yes, that’s true. We understood that in many ways, the last thing that anyone needed was more opinions about parenting, so we vowed never to give parenting advice but to instead just share ideas and impressions. We felt that we knew just as much or little about parenting as any non-expert.
But we also felt a lack of acknowledgement of many aspects of parenting, particularly as moms, and wanted to find community and also have a laugh about how ridiculous and funny all of the parenting noise can be. We were curious about all of the cultural forces at play in American parenting and wanted a platform for exploring those more deeply.
Why that name — you certainly don’t have the Dad Bod equivalent of Mom Bods! You both are super fit!
One of the things that we love to do is to imagine speaking to or about men the way that people speak to or about women, or vice versa. When the Sexy DadBod phenomenon became a real meme somewhere in 2023, we realized how silly it was that we were making DadBods into this low-key appealing thing.
It’s not that we personally care what dads look like, but we realized that the idea of loving a DadBod hinged upon the premise that the archetypal man is somewhat detached from family and even slightly threatening. The DadBod was different: he was a dad who was devoted, chill, and gentle. He was also maybe a little lazy and clueless, but that didn’t matter because at least he wasn’t mean and scary. What’s more, this was all characterized as actively sexy.
It struck us how ridiculous this was, and how the reverse idea of the flabby and out-to-lunch but funny and sweet MomBod as some sort of symbol of desire definitely did not exist in the popular imagination. So for us, DadBod became sort of a stand-in term for the patriarchy, and MomBod is its cheeky response. It ultimately has very little to do with bodies, and our project is not one about body positivity or anything in that realm. Denouncing the patriarchy might help women heal problematic ideas about their own bodies, but we aren’t trying to be part of the bodies movement.
You also have a cute line of MomBod clothing — comfy sweats, hoodies, tanks, a cozy beanie and more. These are clothes that Moms actually need and want to wear while running after toddlers, sitting on the floor playing with trucks for hours, cooking dinner, booking doctor visits, untangling hair and warring siblings, wiping snot and various body fluids, and contemplating whether natural childbirth or stepping on a Lego barefoot is more painful.
Ha! So true. We think the tank top is the perfect day-to-night piece (laughs). And yes, the line is sustainable and printed on demand to reduce waste. The styles speak for themselves, and celebrate a multiplicity of motherhood narratives. And it’s not just a clothing line; we also have a giving component of the company, which is very important to us as a tangible way to support women. Every year we will pick a different cause or group to support by donating 10% of our clothing line profits to them. This year we are supporting Period.org, a non-profit dedicated to eradicating period poverty and stigma.
I loved your Dad Holds Baby column on Substack. “Holy Mother Mary, call the President! Somebody has to get this guy a medal!” What do you hope every mom gets from this?
We want moms to feel heard, seen, and supported in a world that makes all of the work that moms do feel so invisible and undervalued. We have an economic system that doesn’t consider motherhood and parenthood to be work at all, so we’d like to validate that very real labor so that the daily experience of being a mom feels less isolating and hidden away.
Is this just for moms or is it for women in general or women of a certain age?
We are adamant that this is for women in general, not just moms. We believe that the experiences of motherhood are reflective of our treatment of women in general, and want to shed light on that. Take, for example, the decision or circumstance of being a woman without children, and how fraught the treatment of that position is.
Of course, we share experiences about motherhood and focus much of our newsletter on parenting – the word “mom” is in the name – so we understand that we are attracting lots of moms. We are also millennials (Emily, just barely, having been born in 1980. Alexina is in firm “old millennial” territory, born in 1982) so we understand that our perspectives might resonate mostly with women around our age, but we hope to speak to as broad an audience as possible. We hope that men will pay attention too.
If you could wave a magic wand and change motherhood what would you do
We would turn the mostly imaginary concept of a “village” into a reality in this country.
Did you read NightBitch, by Rachel Yoder? That to me was the most accurate description of how I felt when I was a new mother - curious about your thoughts.
We did not but we are absolutely going to read it now! Thank you for sharing. The idea that motherhood is not what we expected really resonates, and the darkly comedic premise seems delightful and totally relatable. Being parents has definitely brought out all sides of ourselves, including the most animalistic parts that just want to howl.
Who else do you love to read?
We pay attention to people like Emily Oster, Jessica Grose, Becky Kennedy, and Aliza Pressman. We also love a good surprise from our Instagram algorithm because sometimes that thing knows us better than we know ourselves.
Love this so much!