“Does Your Mom Read Your Blog?”

This is the number one question I get from my readers and my friends.

“Does your mom read your blog?”

In a word: yes.

Here’s the thing. It’s not like I woke up one day and decided, “You know what? Screw this ‘good girl’ thing! I’m going to start being outspoken with a really sexual sense of humor, a general lack of shame, and an unwillingness to apologize for it.” No. I’ve been that girl since the day I was born. My mom knows.

• Sophomore year of high school I had to do a presentation on an immigrant group from my heritage (like French or Polish or whatever) and talk about their traditions, the foods, how they got to the U.S., etc. Since I’m half black, I wasn’t about to talk about slave ships, but my white family is seriously just white. We don’t have any ties to our ethnic background. We don’t have traditions. So I did my presentation on White Trash. It was so well-researched. My teacher hated it but gave me an “A” because I did it perfectly. My mom was just like, “Well you technically are White Trash on Grandma’s side.” (My grandma grew up in a shack in Alabama.)
• Junior year, I did stand-up comedy at my (private Catholic) school’s talent show. They practically dragged me off the stage for joking about how Catholics behave during Lent. My mom was there. She shrugged. She said, “It’s funny. Catholics make fun of themselves all the time.”
• When I started doing stand-up, my mom came to my shows. Even when I talked about sex number and said, “Don’t ask that. Don’t ask that while you’re still inside me,” she was there. It’s not like these are things we talk about over breakfast, but she understands that I’m an artist and that my type of art involves putting my life out there.
• When I started writing the Spartanette, my mom read that too. When people left me mean comments about my “over worked vaginal chasm” she was just like, “Ehhh. People are so stupid. Don’t they see it’s satire?” The most I can usually get from her is a shrug.
• She watches Shed Theater. After I posted the Read My Hips video, the next morning I came home at 8 am with a sore leg and last night’s clothes and she just quipped, “Maybe it was too much of the All Dogs Go to Heaven pose.” Oh snap!
• She hasn’t read my book but she’s read parts of it. When she read the summary I posted on my blog, and she got to the line, “On Spring Break in Rome, I decided to ‘do as the Romans do’ (if Romans snort Xanax and have one-night stands)” she said, “You snorted a Xanax?” a little indignantly. And then “…What’s a Xanax?” Then she rolled her eyes.

Part of  this comes from the fact that my mom is pretty young, and also because, from what I’ve seen in her yearbooks, she was no saint. But really, it comes from the fact that my mom knows me. It’s not like we sit around talking about sex — quite the contrary, actually — but she’s not really phased because she’s known me my whole life. And given that I’m almost 25 years old, she realizes that it’s not her job to control me. (And she knows that I’ve been 25 years old since I was two years old.)

Also, even though my life is a little ridiculous, I’ve always had my shit together more than most other kids my age. So it’s like, yeah, my mom could have told me to stop pissing of the Catholics in high school, but I think she realized that with my good grades, ambition, and lack of tattoos, piercings, drug/alcohol habits, and boyfriend, she better STFU and realize that as far as daughters go, I could be a lot worse. I’ve always worked extra hard to balance being outrageous with brains and real credibility.

When people ask me, “Does your mom read your blog?” I just want to respond, “Dude, I blogged your mom last night.”

I know a lot of people water down what they’ll put on a blog out of fear of what people will think or say. We’ve been scared by the whole “I don’t want my parents to see!” and “But what about my future employers!?!” question. Sorry, but having an opinion, passion, and a point of view and having tagged pics of you doing keg stands are not the same thing.

So blog fearlessly.

The next question I always get is: Do guys read your blog? And that, my friends, is another post for another day.

Tagged as: Rachel