Philosophy
September 4th, 2006 by 
Terri
Yep, that’s my boy, swimming underwater at the age of about 20 months. Well they’ve gotta learn to swim at some stage don’t they?
Seriously I’m not so yucky … it’s just a lot of the literature pedalled to mothers is hateful!
It’s all about “winning back your husband” (when exactly was he lost) and entering competitions for new little black dresses with questions a newt could answer. How long is the period for human gestation? Too bloody long! EEEEERRR, wrong answer!
This blog is an antidote to the ‘yummy mummy’ phenomenon (post 2000).
These yummy mummies have gone one step further than the Supermum. They have it all and they look gorgeous doing it too.
Where do they find the time, and perhaps, more importantly, the desire, to look as good as they do at 9am swimming lessons. They wear ironed shirts – not sloppy-joes – brandname jeans – not tracky-dackies pretending to be pants – and smart-looking boots (winter) or sandals (summer) not sneakers!
Of course the fashionably styled hair and carefully applied makeup always makes your slash of eyeliner, yesterday’s mascara and a smudge of lip gloss look positively pointless.
The children of yummy mummies are invariably yummy too, and well-behaved, or maybe that’s just how it seems.
As a Yucky Mummy I have obviously become prejudiced.
So what’s the point of all this? I suppose it’s to say that it’s okay not to be yummy because your kids will never think you’re yucky – even if you are.
Apart from all this, the following might help explain why I’m doing this:
I never thought I’d find myself quoting a leader in the Catholic Church, especially on Yucky Mummy, but here goes.
What Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines said at the First Asian Mission Congress in Thailand, 19 October, 2006, really resonated with me.
He said: “A story is never just a story. A story is truly told or narrated, and hopefully, listened to … Human life is unimaginable without stories. Life itself has a narrative structure. Story mediates life and its meaning. Telling stories comes so naturally to us that we do not reflect sufficiently on its significance for our lives. In recent years, scholars have been rediscovering the role of narrative in their respective disciplines.”
Bishop Tagle defines good stories and storytelling thus:
· they are based on experience
· they reveal personal identity and people and events that shaped that identity
· they are dynamic, open to interpretation and retelling, and transformative
· they are ground for understanding spiritual, doctrinal and ethical symbols
· they form community
· when received, they can transform the listener
· they can be told in a variety of ways
· they can be suppressed
Bishop Tagle was speaking in reference to the telling of the story of Jesus in Asia, but for me, it helped explain my blogging addiction.
I love storytelling!
As a writer it is such a joy to be able to self-publish.
And if Yucky Mummy fulfils a few of the points above (other than the one about being suppressed!) then I’ve achieved my aim.
Posted in Uncategorized | 
December 7th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Terri
What a great site - I’ve finally got around to cheking it out - totally impressed and has hit the right spot after my day ‘far from yummy mummy’.
xx Andrea