Ugh, no thank you for this. Star magazine has come up with a new low in celeb gossip -- and that's saying a lot from someone who writes about celeb gossip all day, every day. They're doing their annual "report cards" for celebrity moms. Yes, Star, bastion of parenting wisdom, is judging famous women for their mothering skills. And this is my cue to leave civilization and build a new home on a deserted island. It was nice knowing you, modern life. But this is just too much for me.
I'm kidding -- I can't get good Wi-Fi on a deserted island. But I still hate this "best" and "worst" moms idea. Let me tell you why I think the mom report cards issue is the grossest issue of Star of the year.
Maybe I'll start with the idea of judging women you don't even know. Oh we think we know these celeb moms. We see so many pictures of them and read about them so much, they've fused into the parts of our brains used for friends and family. But we don't know them -- at all. We have no idea what goes on in their homes or how hard they're trying. No freakin' idea.
Or there's the way it draws out the worst in us. It unleashes that self-righteousness that loves disapproving of others. It taps into that need of validation, which we sometimes think can only be answered by believing we're better than someone else. And it gives us that false sense of largess that we, the all-knowing ones, possess the power to approve of someone else's parenting.
Maybe I don't have my shit together as a mother, but at least I'm not as bad as Britney Spears. Right? RIGHT?!?
But most offensive of all is the idea of judging as a fun pastime. I know we all do it. We all have strong opinions about parenting, and we want to express those opinions. But in context! Not in some shooting gallery of arbitrary actions like that one time Nicole Richie laughed when her son fell down (C), or when Heidi Klum rescued her kids and the nanny (A).
I know it's not a big deal. Some of you are going to say it's all just in good fun, perfectly harmless. But it still makes me cringe. It's just gross that this is part of our culture. Yuck to the report cards. I finished school a long time ago.
What do you think of Star magazine's celeb mom report cards?
Image via Star magazine