The Mommy Mafia
Ever since I wrote this column two years ago and got this reaction, I’ve gotten recurring questions from friends, readers, and family members.
“Do you ever run into those Green Hills moms?”
“Aren’t you worried about what they’ll do if they see you?”
Well, no. I haven’t worried. Sure I’ve gotten occasional unwarranted dirty looks from well-dressed packs of moms, but that could have just as much to do with my Trophy Wife t-shirt as with a column I wrote years ago.
By now, those women must have let bygones be bygones, right?
Wrong.
A few weeks ago, I received a comment from a Green Hills MOMS Club member, lashing out at me for a recent column I wrote about attending Art Camp with my daughter. She informed me that some of her friends were at that art camp, too, and that they’d told her I was ‘lacquered up each day in order to be “seen” and excepted (sic).’
Whoa.
And then, just last week, this happened. And it became very clear to me that the madras-wearing moms and I go together about as well as a baby and a razor blade.
The fact is, it doens’t matter where you live- Once you cross your town’s Mommy Mafia, there’s no going back. That snooty playgroup you stopped attending may have consisted of just five women, but those women have friends. And their friends have friends. And their friends of friends have friends. And before you know it, your social life is pushing up daisies.
Read my cautionary tale in this week’s newspaper edition of Suburban Turmoil.
The full text of the column is below…
Beware of the Mommy Mafia
Their police records (along with their bed sheets) are lily white. They think a ‘shake down’ is what you do at the end of Jazzercise class. And they’d sooner eat razor blades than a plate of homemade manicotti. But cross the Mommy Mafia and they’ll whack your social standing faster than you can utter the words ‘Cosa Nostra.’
I should know. I did it two years ago, and I’ve been paying ever since.
Back in 2006, I attended one of their associate’s exclusive playgroups, only to rat them out later by writing in my column that I felt out of place in their world of Mercedes and monograms. That’s when the manicured claws of the Mommy Mafia came out. They flooded my blog with nasty comments. They threatened to sue me. They even claimed I wore too much makeup. Now that hurt.
Understandably shaken, I kept a low profile after that, wearing a wig and dark glasses whenever I found myself on their turf, which wasn’t easy, considering that it included Pottery Barn Kids, Cheekwood, and Dragon Park.
Despite my precautions, there were incidents. At Green Hills Mall one day, a bobbed blonde pushing a MacLaren stroller made eye contact and slowly drew her finger across her neck.
Another time, I found a Crane note card stuffed in my windshield in the zoo parking lot. Hope you enjoyed the fishes, it read. Maybe soon you’ll be swimming with them! Although I couldn’t prove who’d written it, I did know that the hearts dotting each “i” were standard Mommy Mafia procedure.
Still, after a couple of years had passed, I figured the worst was over. Surely these soldiers had called off their cavalier King Charles spaniels.
I should have known that a Mommy Mafia vendetta never dies.
Lately, I’ve been gathering my courage (along with my diaper bag) in order to take my son and daughter to the downtown library’s Story Time, a Mommy Mafia stronghold. After a few weeks of singing, “Let’s Make a Rainbow” without incident, I decided to let my kids play afterward in the children’s section. At one point, my 17-month-old son was standing up against the library’s picture window. A 3-year-old boy approached and tried to push him out of his way. “He’s just a baby,” I told the boy gently. “If you push him like that, he’ll fall down.” The boy looked at me in horror and then hurled himself to the floor, where he assumed the fetal position and began screaming at the top of his lungs.
As I stared at him, his mother ran over and scooped up her son. “What’s wrong?!” she said fearfully. “McBailey, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” a snippy voice said from behind me. “That little boy poked your son in the eye.” I turned and found myself nose-to-nose with what looked to be a high-ranking Mommy Mafia member. She was pointing at my son. “He did it,” she told the mother.
“What?!” I said, dumbfounded. “Are you kidding? He did not!”
“Oh yes he did,” she smirked with an evil grin, scooping up her daughter and getting the hell out of there.
“I’ll poke you in the eye,” I muttered, before turning back to the mom. “Look,” I said, turning back to the mom, “My son didn’t do anything. Seriously.”
The mother wouldn’t even look at me. “Use your words and tell me what’s wrong, McBailey,” she said through clenched teeth as he sobbed. “Use your words, darling.”
Standing there in consternation, I barely registered that the rest of the mommies in the play area had formed a semi-circle around me. As I took in their madras skirts and the subtle lowlights in their hair, it dawned on me that this — This was a Mommy Mafia hit.
Desperately, I reached into my diaper bag, fumbling around for something, anything with which to defend myself. Suddenly, I found it — an open packet of fruit gummies! Pulling it out, I poured some into the palm of my hand and offered them to the first Mommy Mafia spawn I saw.
“Want some yummy, yummy fruit snacks?” I asked. Eagerly, the kid reached for my hand. His mom gasped. “No, Millhouse,” she said tightly. “We don’t eat additives or preservatives!” She snatched him up and fled. I turned to the next kid.
“Oh well, more for you sweetie,” I said kindly. Instantly, her mother grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the elevators. Before I knew it, the Mommy Mafia was scattering like a bunch of J. Jill-clad cockroaches, their mission thwarted by the presence of processed foodstuff.
Once the children’s area had cleared, I sighed in relief, gathered up my children and headed home. But while I had won the battle, I’m coming to terms with the knowledge that I may never win the war.
That night when I crawled into bed, the decapitated head of an American Girl doll was waiting for me under the sheets.
Clearly, this is far from over.
>Ouch!The “Mommy Mafia” name made me giggle though.
>You crack me up. That was hilarious! Especially the cabbage patch doll head at the end. Too funny.
>Oh my- you know they will call a special meeting to deconstruct that column and form a plan of action… they will use it as a training tool for new recruits. Ther’s probably an “AL Quada-esqe” training center somewhere (if you push the women’s lounge sign at Nordstom 3 times, a false wall opens up to their secret lair) where they run through obstacle courses wearing Feragamos and pushing strollers and learn how to kill someone with their french tips or how to effectively and organically remove the unsightly bloodstains from from mowing down subversives such as yourself, from the front of their Mercedes.
>WOW! The South really is like that… come to San Diego. We’ll love you up. Trophy Wife T-Shirts would be greatly appreciated here. Can you bring more? We know how to take a joke. Or at least wonder if it’s true and then go back into the water at the beach. It’s all good! 😉
>Or maybe they just didn’t like you either. You were critical of them and yet you seem to get offended when they turn the tables on you.
>Just read your city Paper column today – hilarious! I had my babies/toddlers almost 20 years ago in L.A. and I can still totally relate.
>”Lacquered up”? Hysterical.You did post pictures of the resulting art work. Maybe she meant “liquored up”.You really can’t go by me, I never could make it into any of the mommy groups.
>Heh! Loved the hyperbole in this post and also enjoyed the links to older posts I hadn’t seen. The truth underlying the humor reminded me of a woman I used to know (my first mom-in-law) who was a knockout. Women were constantly digging at her. A surprising number of them came up to me after the divorce, just gleefully assuming that I would dish something on her.Next time the bitch pack crowds around a kiddy disaster scene, I’d whip out some other memorable treat and offer it around; see what will make them shudder the most. Fried pig skins? Funyuns? Pixie Sticks? Big red wax lips? I’ll chip in!!! :o)
>Oh I wasn’t offended, Virgie. Just shocked. Because EVERYONE is supposed to like me. And I mean EVERYONE.
>I agree with V. if you cant take it then dont dish it. And I’d be shocked if you don’t live in that very subdivision you are speaking about.
>You know you are always welcome in some sections of 37205. -215 is for the wannabees.
>You’re welcome at the 37087 – We like to meet at :the: walmart
>I’m pretty sure I’m going to be on that list in my town any day now. I have a tendency to piss people off too. Good luck making real friends.
>The ‘Mommy Mafia’ is strong in my neighborhood. I’m glad to know I’m not alone.
>I guess I am too new to my neighborhood in the Nashville area to figure out if there is a Mommy Mafia. I am sure I will find out when I go undercover to Bunco next week. What the hell is bunco anyway!?
>Bunco is code for “You’re in.”
>I’ve been ousted from that mafia for about a year now, and the water’s juuuust fine over here.You can hang with me anyday, ST.
>I think you mean “drunko.”
>I’m only here as a mommy mafia informant.I’m not very good at it, though, because I totally just blew my cover.
>This sums up why our family never fit in on the Eastside of Seattle. Once we failed to mesh with the Stepford Moms, that was all she wrote.
>The Mommy Mafia cracks me up, we have them running the PTA and taking over the story time. They NEVER, I mean never uttered one word to me at endless meetings and storytimes. I show up to one event with my husband and it turns out the grand puba of the mafia went to school with him (and he was quite the man back then). Now she acts as if she is my BFF (even though she has “known” me for years. Evil, pure evil. I figure if the Mommy Mafia is the best thing they have going, they really do not have too much going on.
>This is the reason I don’t do playgroups. Too damn dangerous. Someone’s gonna get shivved.
>To paraphrase Marge Simpson, they’re women, they can hold onto it forever.Loved Nashville. Perhaps not the 5 pounds we gained on our eating tour hurrication, but still. One very cool place.
>Funny, I was going to make a comment similar to Sugar’s. Come to the Bay Area. We’re very hang-loose and casual out here. I think honestly it’s not as catty out west. People are just happier and more tolerant and have a “whatever” attitude. I say this having lived east for most of my life.
>I will never fit in. I’m to young to hang out with the parent’s of either of my girls friends. Does that even make sense?I had Rapunzel when I was 19, so all the other 5th grade parents are older than me.I had SuperChic at almost 24, the kindergarten moms are mostly in their late 30’s early 40’s.Maybe in December when I turn 30 they’ll stop looking at me like a little kid. (Hey, I said maybe.)
>That’s so funny, I just posted about my experience with the local Mommy Mafia a few days ago. But unlike you, I didn’t go into specifics – because they have eyes and ears everywhere and I don’t want to be egged!Good luck. I am telling you, they have eyes and ears and they are everywhere!!! I’m pretty sure they will start making horror movies about them.
>Again, a mere bachelor’s perspective on the laughable “Mommy Mafia”…Screw ’em. Figuratively.They can’t hold a candle to you. Much as they’d like to…
>Man, I am all for the sisterhood, but these bitches give the rest of us nice gals a bad name.These are the same women who thought it was important to be in a sorority in college. Somehow an organized group, one that required expensive dues to join, furthered social standing within our community. Lindsay went in for Rush and was blackballed, probably for something stupid. I’m positive there are Mommy Mafias everywhere in the U.S. I’ve witnessed a good friend where I live become one of Them, and it was sad to see her morph into a judgmental, uptight, neurotic, dismissive person. Lindsay, you’re perfectly capable of expressing yourself in an adult, gracious manner. It’s clear you need no help from me, so I’ll leave you with this: there are people who are proud of you for not changing your routine to avoid them or compromising your integrity in any way. Trade your Trophy Wife t-shirt for a sweatshirt that says “GDI” on it.
>hey cc, i’m with you. had the girls when i was young, so i’m alot younger than the other mommies and i we just don’t get along, oh well. ST, LOVE your columns..just hilarious!
>That is hilarious! The Mommy Mafia is like the “A” crowd in high school. Don’t piss off the head cheerleader or you will never get invited to the good parties:-)
>They can’t take us on, Lucinda. We’re too tough (ain’t we?).
>Move to my state — or perhaps get the hockey and soccer moms on your side? They are more fun anyway!
>Ah, I love reading your posts- makes me feel like less of a loser. I know what you mean though… to an extent. I'll be leaving my MOMS Club at the end of this month, having spent 1 year attending activities with not a single new "mom" friend to show for it. Though my group wasn't even close to being as bad as yours. I wasn't snubbed so much as just didn't fit- like a square peg & a bunch of round holes. That's okay though. To each his own, right?
>LOL…I was just thinking, cause I don’t hang with the “IT” mommies either (actually I don’t even know who they would be). But seriously, is it because most of us are writers!;) Possible nerd alert?!;)
>Hey:Since I grew up here in the Tiny Kingdom but live on the fringes, I straddle the worlds of the Mafia and the Others. Kinda like I did in high school, come to think of it. I agree that there’s one in every town, but the Southern ones DO have more monogramming and pearls.I did want to put in a plug for Jazzercise and manicotti, for what it’s worth!
>Great post!! Even in Ca we have Mommy Mafia. They just aren't as put classy as southern. My town's local ones ..you must be over 40 w/ 4 children under age 6yrs. Your husband need to be a MD , dentist & laser surgeons are a plus.You need a mini van & a luxury vech. (bmw -porchse-Merc) to drive when you are away from the kids. Must have a nanny at least 3 days a week. A nanny which will sometimes take the kids to mom club functions when you are too busy.You must wear tons of old lady jewels & carry a Brighton bag, mom jeans belted too. Golf course or gated community. Have hoses or a lake home. Needless to say i'm 30 yrs w/ a 4 yr old, live in the burbs, wear uggs or flip flops. Wear lucky jeans & carry coach bages, I'm not cool enough!! It's okay I'm just glad i'm younger than them & no one asks if I'm my daughter's grandma or nanny 🙂
>I never fit in to these groups because:1. I have a brain.2. I don’t live vicariously through my children3. I don’t give a rat’s hindpart if anyone likes me or not4. I’m not a total bitch5. I don’t judge myself or others by their personal possessionsI’m obviously not qualified.I’m incredibly thankful that I figured out when my kids were toddlers/preschoolers that these groups were not for us. My kids are now teenagers, and are some of the nicest kids you’d ever meet–polite, respectful, helpful, etc. Their peers from the moms’ groups are sullen, rebellious, delinquent twits. (We still live in the same neighborhood, so I know.) So I win in the end.
>Well, crappers. I hate that I misguided you into thinking I was a Greenhills mom – but I guess that’s what happens when you assume things.. I’m actually one of the “east side” moms.. I guess it’s hard to tell since you can’t see me throwin my gang signs as I type.. My point (not to appear humorless or that I can’t take joke) is that, while I’ve been an avid reader for years, you tend to really push the negative in every single damn experience that you convey. I wish I could find the little comment I wrote to you because it was really just someone saying “look, I know some of the people you wrote about in this article – they are really super gals – too bad you are so caught up in your head about things that you can’t just let go and disarm”… But, again, you throw it out there as if I’m stewing over it for years and years with great bitterness in my heart. I’m not sitting here holding a grudge or thinking about how I can finally have vengeance… Your negative humor about everything just wears thin. And, I’m speaking as someone that ADORES sardonic humor and sarcasm at just about every turn. I’m not saying you should write about how motherhood is rainbows and kittens all the time cause we all no it isn’t, but you doggin on other moms (especially when I KNOW that the other moms are nothing like how you portray them) does nothing but perpetuate how hard it is to BE a mom sometimes… It just gets old.. That’s all I was saying.. There are other ways of being funny and quipy than to always, always cast yourself against others. And, to always, always talk about how much moms here in Nashville suck ass. And, yes, I too like the word “laquered”. It was one of my better word choices. 🙂
>Well, thank you for letting me know that the Mommy Mafia extends all the way to the east side. I don’t really go there very often with my kids, so there shouldn’t be a turf issue to worry about there. :)In the column you had a problem with, I said nothing negative about the other moms at art camp. I made it clear that the problem was ME. How did you not get that? Yes, I’m the lacquered up one. If that column was about anything, it was about the fact that I sort of don’t want to fit in, and yet I sort of do- like a LOT of other women out there. We like our individuality, but it’s not very pleasant to feel like the odd woman out at every mommy gathering we attend. What I write will never please everyone. How could it? The question is- if what I write bothers you so much, why on earth do you keep reading? I’m absolutely certain that not everyone will find my perspective valid, or my sense of humor funny. There are plenty of really popular comic writers and bloggers out there that I just don’t get. And do you know what I do when that happens? I stop reading. You can keep coming here and complaining about how unfunny and negative I am or you can just let it go and find someone else to read. I really think you would be happier if you did the latter.Good luck!
>I’m in shock over this. I will never, ever, ever, ever write about a mommy’s group.Abortion? Maybe. The death penalty? Possibly. Testing on animals? I’ve done it.But Mommy Groups? NEVER.Thanks for being such a wonderful guinea pig. 🙂
>It’s funny, there are approximately 1 Gillion mommy blogs out there and each one must be sought out by the reader. The reader is essentially a guest who drops by someone’s home to see what’s up and maybe make conversation. I wouldn’t dream of inviting myself over to someone’s house only to complain that I don’t like their couch or tell them that next time I invite myself over, they should serve something different to eat. It is a little like routinely going to a sushi bar and complaining to the owner that they don’t serve burgers. Why keep going?The reason I keep commenting on the haters, is that, although I just recently moved to Mommyblogville, I am a little confused by the zest that so many have to start arguments or complain about what the hostess is serving. Everyone kept raving about a blog that ryhmes with “moose”, so I checked it out a few times and hated it- but rather than hang around to complain, I found other blogs to read. It is really so simple.
>I so agree with ringleader. There are many popular comedians and actors and writers and etc that I just don’t enjoy. So I find ones that I do. I’ve never felt the need to tell any one of them that they must change to please me.For example, for light summer reading I enjoy mysteries. I abhor romances. I guess I should complain to romance writers that they really need to start writing mysteries.
>i pissed off a whole gaggle of snotty women in the city i live in when i posted an incident on my website.now that my book has been published, guess who wants me to come speak to their “group?”interesting, no?wait. could it be a set up? maybe they’ll beat me with their iphones and gucci hobos?
>I feel for you our MOMS club has woman in here that talk smack about everyone. They are nasty here and I feel for you. I agree these ladies can be nasty. To boot their lives are not any better than us average Moms which is why they have the attitude. It is sad too. I say Redneck women all the way. Getchen Wilson all the way.