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Include Me Out
Well, I was going to write about something else, and I still will, but my dander is up, up, up.
The New York Times has recently become obsessed with issues of class (registration necessary), so this article (registration required here, too) in Sunday's "Style" Section shouldn't have caused even a tremor of surprise; and perhaps it was such a slow week in the world of style that the Gray Lady was desperate for any story, but this seemed as Jane Austen would say "beyond everything." (If I had a blood pressure problem, I suspect I would be advised to avoid the Sunday Times.)
Apparently, a bunch of privileged mothers in New York City and Los Angeles are not happy with the usual advantages they enjoy and would like to find new ways of celebrating their status and bank accounts and they want to do this in an environment where they and their children can be protected from the hoi polloi. The threat from the outside is compounded by an internal problem, which is that many of these mothers don't want to spend tons of time alone with their children and they don't have enough time for certain spa treatments. These women have found a simple solution in an old tradition: the private club.
Imagine, please, a secluded expensive place with velvet ropes around the doors, where fancy mommies can force their children to become accomplished with cooking classes and language lessons while they enjoy beauty treatments and the challenge to eat only a few bites of spa meals with like-minded women, similarly burdened by their kids.
Now, I will happily believe that being a mother can sometimes be lonely and boring, and I have no quarrel at all with private clubs, though I can safely say I have never had the slightest inclination to join one. What I can't stand is the sense of entitlement that these women have, which will blossom in their children- the idea that they are so special that they must keep themselves apart from the world on the one hand, while calling attention to themselves as objects of envy on the other (I wasn't kidding about the velvet ropes). And I also deplore the attitude of this article, which while somewhat critical of these Mommy and Kiddie Clubs for being elitist, finds them so interesting and novel. Private clubs are hardly a new phenomenon, but the idea that this new breed is somehow important and necessary because it involves mothers and children is unpleasant.
The utopia that the Mommy and Kiddie Clubs promise is very strange. The idea behind them seems to be that these women want to somehow simultaneously faun over their children while ignoring them; nurture approved and improving interests for their offspring while getting pedicures and eating watercress salads. There's nothing wrong with sending kids to classes or getting a massage or sitting around with friends, and I suppose that elitism and social-climbing are facts of some people's lives, but claiming that this is virtuous or necessary is more than a little weird. Why encourage your kid into a person who feels superior to anyone who isn't a member of the silly club? Why foster the feeling that the world is a horrible and threatening place, save for these little provincial islands? And as for the media, why encourage the idea that a whiff of motherhood makes even the most offensive project worth celebrating?
posted by Elise at 10:10 AM
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