The New Yorker - USA (2022-04-18)

THENEWYORKER, APRIL 18, 2022     21

SHOUTS & MURMURS

S

o much of who I was—my daily

habits, my identifying clothing—

had to get thrown away in making room

to become a mother. What’s left of me

now shares space with my son, and as

a result my mental capacity has been

reduced from a decent three-bed, two-

bath apartment to, at best, a tenement

studio. The one advantage of this new

limited space is that what can and can’t

come in is now very clear.

Harry Styles

For the first few years of Styles-mania,

I thought, The guy from One Direc-

tion? Surely this cannot be right. Then

he started dressing like everyone’s moth-

er’s wildest friend from the seventies,

and people got even more excited. At

the Grammys, he wore a leather blazer

with no shirt, which admittedly looked

quite nice. However, he also had a green

boa around his neck. I can’t help but

imagine there was a discussion about

the boa beforehand—most likely, a team

of stylists sourced multiple boas to pre-

sent as options. For me, this is a big turn-

off. I feel similarly about his rings—I

always picture him putting them on one

by one in the morning or taking them

off one by one at night, and I want to

hide under the bed.

The deep down of it, though, is that

all I can think about when I look at

Harry Styles is how much I would have

loved him when I was twenty-one and

how certain I am that he would have

hurt my feelings. From my middle-

aged-mom perch, all I can think is: Sorry,

but I am not falling for it, Harry Styles.

Waiting in Line for Brunch

The one meal I actually know how to

make is breakfast. Why did I ever need

to wait in line for someone to make it

for me? Well, O.K., I guess the answer

is that I wanted to look at attractive cool

people eating brunch while I ate brunch.

But now I feel like I’ve seen all the at-

tractive cool people I need to see for the

rest of my life. I’m fine with looking at

attractive cool people on my phone while

I eat my son’s leftover pancakes over the

sink. Please, don’t get me wrong—I’m

not trying to pretend I don’t still enjoy

brunch out with a friend. It’s just that

now, on the rare occasion I am able to

bail on my child in the middle of the

day, my friend and I need to get our butts

in seats and drinks in hands immediately,

because the clock is ticking on how long

someone’s watching the kid, and our lives

aren’t going to grouse about themselves.

Wishing I Was the Prettiest

Woman in the Room

All through my early twenties, right be-

fore I walked into a party or a meeting,

there would always be a moment when

I secretly wished I would be among the

prettier people there. I guess I was hop-

ing I’d be viewed as a nine if enough

fives were present, which was very much

the hope of someone who viewed her-

self as a six at best. I’m embarrassed to

be admitting this, but it’s true, and, in-

sofar as we live in a society that couldn’t

make it clearer that being pretty and

thin is the primary expectation of young

women, I don’t blame myself.

I would walk into a room of pretty

girls and ache with jealousy, crushed by

the pain of never winning the Pretty

Contest, even though it is unwinnable

by design. There is something comfort-

ing about being completely out of that

race—which isn’t to say I don’t think

I’m still pretty in my own forty-six-year-

old, cake-loving way. It’s just that I feel

so firmly out of the running now that

when I see some kind of weapons-grade

Zoë Kravitz beauty my mind actually

just lies back and enjoys it, as I would

a vacation sunset. Like, how lucky am I

that I exist at a time when Zoë Kravitz’s

face exists, wowowow.

TikTok

I was already about twenty social-media

apps behind when TikTok emerged.

Somewhere around Snapchat, I had

decided I just couldn’t keep up. None

of the new apps sounded interesting to

me, or they all seemed similar to the

ones I already had. I mean, how many

different apps does one need to tell one’s

partner, “Don’t forget 2 pick up

kid’s rash cream”? (The answer is

one.) Then TikTok came along and, as

with Styles, people seemed cranked up

about it. I’m not so wretchedly old that

I’m not curious, so I figured maybe I

would take a quick peek. And, lo and

behold, people do seem to be having a

great time on there. I mean, there’s a lot

of booty-short dancing, and that is in-

deed quite fun. Yet it feels a bit like a

party I’m not invited to, even though

technically we’re all invited. It’s proba-

bly more accurate to say it feels like a

party I shouldn’t have been invited to.

I can only look at, like, three TikTok

videos before I stagger backward, gob-

smacked. How are all these people per-

forming their lives with this level of en-

ergy? I think at age forty-six I just feel

a bit performed out, maybe because so

much of my recent non-TikTok life—

specifically, being a mother and having

to pretend I know what I’m doing—has

felt like one long, unending show. 

THINGS I DON’T HAVE

ROOM FOR AS A MOTHER

BYJESSI KLEIN

LUCI GUTIÉRREZ