The Strange Politics of Feeding Your Toddler
When homemade cereal is a pipeline to insurrection
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Do you know about Donut Mom?
Her name is Alexandra Sabol and her viral star is on the rise for the unfiltered and unenthusiastic way she feeds her young children.
While much of the toddler food content you see on social media focuses on cutesy, colorful plates of food to lure picky kiddos into eating SOME sort of healthy food, Donut Mom takes a hard right.
“Plate my 1 year old’s breakfast with me,” the text says in her most infamous Tik-Tok clip. Sabol stands at a harshly lit counter, blank faced, and chucks a pink plastic plate at the camera. She places three Hostess powdered donuts on it. Breathing heavily, her glasses sliding off her face, she slices them up with a plastic spoon. Then she unscrews an applesauce pouch and smears it on the plate before handing it to her toddler.
The online reaction has been immense. Donut mom has been spoofed, stitched, excoriated, and defended (she’s also in a throuple with a man and another woman— who has children of her own, what a time to be alive!) .
If you scroll through the comments you will, of course, find a fair amount of disgust and horror but also an equal if not greater amount of supportive comments. Such as:
“Keep doing an amazing job momma!”
“Any breakfast is better than no breakfast tbh”
“Your kids are going to have a great relationship with food when they get older. Ur doing good mama!”
“My daughter’s pediatrician simply stated ‘at this point, whatever she’ll eat.’ And I take that to heart. Fed is Best”
I was unaware of the fact the “fed is best” crowd had moved on to the post-formula ages. Donut mom has garnered one think-ish piece, defending her, opening with the line “No one's ever taken their kid to Dunkin on a Sunday morning?”
I have to admit when I saw Donut mom, I felt horror about what she was feeding her kids but I’ve fed things to my own kids for breakfast that I’m not proud of. We were doing canned cinnamon rolls occasionally for a month or so. That’s no different than the donuts. I could either side with donut mom and say “fed is best” or take a look at ways I could try to improve my kids diet. When you feel guilt or shame it’s a great opportunity to investigate your own bullshit!
So I used that as a jumping off point to prioritize healthier options in my kids’ diets. They’re not perfect, because they’re pretty picky, but I know I can do better than canned cinnamon rolls.
Let’s keep following the Tik-Tok train to what would arguably be considered the antithesis of Donut Mom and that is the 22-year old pregnant, Mormon mom of 2, Nara Smith. I don’t know what you’re picturing when you read the phrase 22-year old pregnant mom of 2 but it’s probably not a 5’11 runway model dressed in lingerie or evening gowns making mozzarella cheese from scratch. But that’s what you’ll find on Nara Smith’s Tik-Tok page.
Move over Ballerina Farms, there’s a new tradwife turning heads on main and the hot takes have been shooting up from the content pits of hell!
“I asked my toddlers what they wanted for lunch and they said grilled cheese so I got right to work making my bread….” one Smith’s videos starts. She narrates making both bread and cheese from scratch in a breathy monotone. She adds rennet to her cheese curds while her svelte baby bump pokes out of her designer dress. Smith exerts minimal effort in the video as if to say, What? you don’t curdle your own milk?
Smith’s videos also feature her baking in (very expensive) pajamas, sipping coffee while staring vaguely outside a window, add lots of smoldering in beige minimalist settings.
The comments on Nara Smith’s videos are almost uniformly incredulous.
“Laughing out loud at the dress. Girl you are pregnant put some fucking sweatpants on”
“Nara cooking from scratch in $500 dollar dresses is absolutely propaganda”
“Somethings off about her life, idk”
“Do you ever just eat some Dino nuggets?
“Kids hungry AF by the time you’re done”
Meanwhile, Smith has never stated any sort of position on anything remotely political, religious, or really about anything beyond how to make homemade cereal (I used her recipe! My kids still didn’t eat it!). Nevertheless, the commentariat has accused Smith of “selling” a type of “female slavery” which is “racially coded” and that she is becoming a figurehead for “alt-right propaganda.”
Girl, she’s just baking bread! Of all the insidious shit going down on the internet, you think videos of women making lasagna are some secret pipeline to alt-right extremist views?
Even more disorienting, is the ONSLAUGHT of legacy media pieces trying to parse the meaning of Smith's very existence: Rolling Stone, People, New York Magazine, New York Post have all churned out ‘articles’ analyzing Smith.
Why doesn’t Donut mom earn this level of scrutiny and frothy obsession? What is so offensive about Nara Smith making homemade grilled cheese and cereal? Why does she have every “culture analyst” in a tizzy trying connect sourdough bread with the revocation of abortion rights?
Why aren’t the same conjectures and political assumptions made about a mother in middle America who feeds her kids junk food and is in a polycule? IS SHE THE FUTURE LIBERALS WANT? Will she vote how Taylor Swift tells her to? Is she a corn syrup psy-op? Is this the future of feminism: communal, carb heavy, open relationships??
People defend Donut mom but they hate Nara Smith. Why? It could be our own jealousy over Smith, our pity for Sabol, the class dynamics, the body fat index or maybe it’s because our society has an extremely dysfunctional relationship with food and where it comes from. Particularly the food we feed our young children, whether it’s breast, bottle or beyond. America has no real food traditions and if you think about it the ones we do have are pretty messed up.
What is considered traditional American food? And does that tradition come out of the crops we grow and the seasons when those crops thrive? Most Americans don’t know much about the seasonality of foods because they can get imported mangoes in a Milwaukee supermarket in January.
We weren’t taught by our grannies to turn masa into tortillas; or how to perfect and deepen a perfect Sunday sauce by our Italian grandfather. Many Americans are scarfing down fast food in the car while scrolling their phones. People are obese yet nutritionally deficient. Calories are cheap!
Meanwhile if you’re trying to cook 30 to 35 meals a week, while having a 9-5 job, or caring for small children, and making sure those meals aren’t filled with LEAD or DISEASE it costs a FORTUNE. Then there’s whole swaths of people that can't even access grocery stores with whole, real foods. Food banks are giving out garbage to people who need healthy food THE MOST. And THAT’S SHITTY! OF COURSE WE’RE MAD! We SHOULD have better food traditions. We SHOULD be teaching our children the importance of knowing how your food is made and where it comes from.
And maybe when we see women like Nara Smith who lucked into an income bracket that allows her the time and space to devote to cooking her children good food we lose our shit because WHY HER AND WHY NOT US?
Which brings up back Donut Mom’s poorly lit kitchen. Between the two, I’m fairly certain every woman would choose Smith’s life again and again, but seeing what is so unrealistic for so many and what we all deserve but can’t have is just too depressing sometimes. I guess so many people like Donut mom because she is just giving us what we want: a way to feel better about ourselves.
As a woman in the older age bracket who raised my kids in the pre-internet era, I am left wondering what is missing in the lives of these women that makes it so important for them to work so hard for the praise, adoration and notice of strangers? My (and my mothering cohort's) important social circle was our family, friends and neighbors and I never felt any need to gain the attention of the entire world or the adoration (or abhorrence) of thousands of people I didn't know. I guess I just don't "get" the value of celebrity. And it's not my place to use my children as instruments for my own "success" because children cannot consent to this sort of exposure.
Being able to feed your kids like Nara Smith is always the dream. It’s the aristocratic life. Someone else is doing all the heavy lifting so she can spend her time making bread from scratch. In the past it would be aristocrats with their full kitchen staff instead. But when in truth, the hoi polloi have always eaten the same damn carb and veggies every single day. In other words, gruel and similar substances. It just so happens that today’s low class fare is much more delicious, addictive and toxic. Not much in terms of quality nutrition, but how many farmers and peasants could afford meat on the regular? Now that the aristocratic life is fully visible and aspirational via social media, we hate seeing it.