Amy Sohn, Biz Markie and the Horrifying Rise of the “Regressive” Hipster Mom
They bother young guys for cigarettes and bum rides from restaurant owners named Dave. Dave! It doesn’t say it, but I imagine Dave wears a fedora and I imagine these mothers think that this is cute.
These mothers! They are so wild and crazy.
These mothers! They are so wildly afraid because they are getting old and their droopy tits splay and spread into and then under their armpits like raw egg whites when they lie on their backs staring at the ceiling, children curled around them in their family beds.
These mothers.
These mothers desperately want you to know that they’re relevant, that a TV show about twenty-something young women is really about them! These mothers probably refer to themselves as girls, when they’re not referring to each other as Hookers, Drug Addicts, and Sluts. These mothers will, I think, have an interesting time when their daughters hit the age of—ohidon’tknow—fourteen.
Sohn wrote this piece to prove that her novel about “Regressive” moms (which…regressive? no, just no) is anthropological in nature. Women like this exist, Sohn is saying. Women like this are her friends! Although, considering that Sohn makes a point of saying that “names and some details have been changed so I don’t lose more friends than I already have,” it doesn’t seem like these friends are desirable so much as they are the only people left who are desperate enough for companionship to hang out with her.
And here’s the thing. Women like this do exist! And I fully believe that Amy Sohn and her friends have nights exactly like the ones she describes. I fully believe that they drink a lot, do drugs, talk about sex, and hate their lives. Wait, maybe that last thing wasn’t mentioned explicitly?
Anyway.
Sohn ends her essay with a scene where a few of her friends are returning from a little of the ol’ outdoor pot smoking. She notices that her friends were smiling smugly and talking about how good the pot was “like if they didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t quite as rebellious.”
Which is supposed to be ironic? I guess?
Except that, well, none of this stuff is so rebellious. It’s not that rebellious to get drunk—even as a parent! It’s not that rebellious for a divorced woman to be dating and having sex again. It’s not that rebellious to do drugs. It’s not that rebellious to have an affair. It’s not that rebellious to talk about which of your friend’s husbands you’d sleep with “if you had to.” But more than not being rebellious, none of this stuff will make you young again.
It will only make you into the kind of parent that suggests a Pimps and Hos theme for your kid’s Halloween party. It will only make you the kind of woman who pays five dollars for a cigarette from some young guy who smirks at you the second you turn your back. It will only make you the kind of person who uses phrases like “wine o’clock.” It will only make you the kind of terrible, vampiric, youth-clinging person that you laughed at when you were actually young once.
And you’re still going to die. And you’ll probably be sexually unattractive for some time before that.
You and all your friends. All those Hookers, Drug Addicts, and Sluts. Even the ones with boob jobs.