ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1980s and continuing today, media represent and promote a kind of intensive mothering – the new momism – that seems to celebrate motherhood but ultimately works to promote standards of perfection beyond most mothers reach, while also being ensconced in economic, race, heteronormative, and cisgender privilege. The celebrity mom profile, which has changed in structure and focus, continues to be the most influential media form to refine and reinforce an intensive mothering that now rests on four core beliefs and values: the insistence that no woman is truly complete or fulfilled unless she has kids, that women remain the best primary caretakers of children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children, while also now requiring a third shift of body works as the energizing solution to “have it all” by doing it all, alone. More recent scholarship also reveals that, even though their responses vary by class and education, “real” mothers continue to be impacted by celebrity mothers, and reality TV celebrity mothers are beginning to play a key role representing the norms, values, and practices of mediated celebrity motherhood.
