Two weeks ago, a Vanity Fair article titled “The Coast of Utopia” dissected the lives of a group of Byron Bay mums, who referred to themselves as ‘murfers’ (mum-surfers). They’re described by author Carina Chocano as “a cross-tagging, cross-promoting, mutually amplifying, audience-sharing group of friends living, loving, working and posting aspirational lifestyle content in a highly Instagrammable paradise”.
I’m launching a brand new social media platform for Mums who aren’t good looking. Mums with shitty lives no one wants. Mums like you and me. Mums who have unattractive or surly kids with bland names and no social skills. Mums who don’t have husbands, or if they do they’re tradies, or they gamble, or they earn a minimum wage.
This is a social media platform for Mums who have to work. They don’t get to stay home and take pictures of themselves being Mums because they’re only ever home in the early morning or at the end of the day because they’ve got a shit job.
Things mums never hear. Post continues below.
My social media platform is for Mums who cry in the middle of the night about how unhappy they are. Or how tired. Or how worn down. Or how angry. Yep, there’s a lot of very angry Mums on my platform. That’s why most of them are drunk by 9pm, collapsed on the kitchen bench. Yep these are Mums with IKEA kitchens with marble look laminate, not blonde beech wood hand-milled by a chai-drinking, palette furniture-making hippy with a top knot who chants ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’.
Welcome to Mumstagram. It’s not for influencers. It’s for ‘under the influencers’. Women who drink to kill the pain of their unimaginable life full of thankless burden. We’ll feature pictures of giant piles of unsorted washing. Dishes piled up in the sink. Bins so full of rubbish they are spilling onto the floor.
Mumstagram will also feature pics of Mums who’ve let themselves go, struggling to get into their jeans. Or perhaps trying to choose between which one of their last season Rockman tops to wear to cover the muffin top. Mumstagram is for women who don’t wear white frolicking with their small children. These mums don’t frolic. They sit on their towels sulking.
You can listen to Mandy Nolan on Mamamia’s divorce podcast, The Split. Post continues below.
Mumstagram really focuses on Mums of teenagers… and who doesn’t love pics of those adorable adolescents. There’s nothing cuter than your 14-year-old boy giving you the finger, or your 15 year old cutting herself in the bedroom.
Mumstagram even has a special ‘you ruined my life you fat b*tch’ emoticon for when you take the devices off the kids for sending dick pics.
And no Mumstagram site would be complete without the workout section. That’s where Mums document their ‘intent’ or ‘attempt’ to exercise. This will feature women rolling over and smashing the alarm with their fists then going back to sleep. Dragging a recycling bin up the road chasing a rubbish truck in T-shirt sans undies at 6am. And everyone’s favourite: the camel toe collection. This is where chubby Mums see how many followers they can get with their toe of the season in their Kmart polyester tracky dacks.
Mumstagram features mums doing naff mum stuff, and so you can tell, and to diminish its relevance, we put a ‘M’ in front of it.
So we have Moga, and Milates, of course Murfing, and Morseriding for the Mums who can still throw their leg over.
We’ve even got merch. So we’ve made the world’s first menstrual cup/keep cup. One of the big challenges for our Mumstagrams is carrying aforementioned cup in the car, but pop it into the vagina and it’s always on hand! And the bonus is the coffee shop has to wash it! That’s one less job for Mum!
So for those of you with unfulfilling lives lived in messy houses with ungrateful children and inattentive husbands. For those of you dying on the inside and sick to death of privileged white girls romping on lush lawns with amber bead-wearing toddlers called Phoenix or Gravel, get on Mumstagram. Mumstagram is full of users. Because everyone loves to use a Mum.
For more from Mandy Nolan you can follow her on Facebook or Instagram.
Top Comments
I personally don’t mind the Murfers. They have good points- none look fake and none look botoxed or filleted to the hilt which is a nice change.
They seem like great friends which is nice- women who support each other. They support small, starter women’s businesses, they make environmental choices.
My only issue is the use of their kids in their businesses while simultaneously being screen free.
There are worse things then linen. I thought it was a rather mean article as they obviously trusted this woman.
I know this is a jokey account to counteract the perfect insta mum world, but I really would just love a middle-ground between the wealthy/vegan/antivaxxer/organic/sahm crowd, and the “wine o’clock” mums who think it’s cute to talk about how drunk they get due to parenting and practically hate motherhood and their kids.
Serious question: can you not meet normal, sane people like that in real life? Why do you need to find that online? I get why people subscribe to the "extreme" bloggers, because they are considered "aspirational" (cringe) or someone you hate-follow or pity or whatever - either way, those chicks are not the type of person you'd usually want to hang around with IRL (unless it was as a joke or a dare). But those middle-ground folk: wouldn't it be far more productive to simply make friends with those types of people, rather than seeking a "relationship" with them through the internet?
I think that is 90% of mothers, but we are so boring that no one would want to read an article about us!