Tattooed Mom Claps Back at Boring Busybodies Who Don’t Like Her Pink Hair
What do people think happens to the tattoos when a young, tattooed woman gets pregnant? Do they think they disappear? Do the tattoos absorb into our skin? Or do we get them lasered off at the same time we go in to get our “mom hair” haircuts, as part of the big makeover that turns all women into Kate Gosselin? Because somehow it is 2017 and people are still surprised to see a tattooed mom with pink hair, and they’re shockingly comfortable with saying snarky things about it.
U.K. mom Gylisa Jayne apparently gets a lot of that, because she has long pink hair, tons of tattoos, and a cute 2-year-old daughter named Lily.
Most recently some basic asshat actually commented to Jayne that she didn’t seem like “the type to be a mum,” which is a pretty weird thing to say to a woman carrying a toddler. Jayne stewed on it for a couple days before finally posting about the exchange on Facebook to clap back at this dumb idea of what a mom is or looks like.
“A ‘Mother’ has to live up to a certain standard, and it isn’t just taking care of your own kid… Mothers are meant to sacrifice every aspect of themselves, to fulfill their role,” Jayne complains. “Mothers aren’t allowed expensive bags, or shopping trips out, or to have a fresh manicure every few weeks. Mothers aren’t meant to have tattoos, or coloured hair or piercings.”
She hit the nail on the head with that one. Mothers are supposed to give up everything they previously enjoyed and just sit around in a cloud of maternal bliss while they wait for their children to get out of dance class. They certainly aren’t supposed to give any indication that they are also people who might like to dye their hair pink or take a dance class themselves. Babies good, outside interests bad.
But it’s obviously ridiculous. Plenty of women have pink hair and tattoos, and that means there are plenty of pink-haired, tattooed moms. But people still seem to think moms have to “look like moms,” which basically means looking like Kate Middleton if you’re rich and Kate Gosselin if you’re not. (Do we have to change our names to Kate, too?)
We don’t have to get haircuts and twinsets to be mothers, because mothers are just people, and people look all sorts of different ways.
“Motherhood isn’t an exclusive club that you can only get into if you look or act the right way,” Jayne says. “It’s full of women that all have lives and tales and colourful histories. Women of every type, from every background and every descent. Women that swear, women that don’t, women that are real, and women that don’t give a fuck about what you think…. So I might not fit someone else’s expectations of how I should be, but my daughter reckons I’m doing a pretty good job.”
Lily seems to be doing just fine, and will join the ranks of children all over the world who are unaffected by the fact that their moms have cool hair.
What does your “mom hair” look like? Let us know in the comments.
(H/T The Huffington Post; Image: Facebook / Gylisa Jane)