At my last haircut I told my stylist I wanted to go short, but like, French-girl short, not “mom hair” short. She nodded immediately. Because, of course, I don’t want mom hair. I left the salon feeling light and bouncy. When I texted my sister a selfie, she replied with, “yessss HOT mom!” There’s pressure on women at all stages of life to be attractive, but there’s something particularly gratifying about being perceived as not just a mom, but a hot mom.

My desire to be hot didn’t start after birth—I was told through Barbie, through animated mermaids, through the cool clique in high school, through the manic pixie dream girls of the early aughts, by everyone really, that to be hot was to be valuable. And by hot, I mean thin, conventionally very pretty, and sexually desirable. Catching a man’s interest was the pinnacle of mattering.

So I muddled through unfortunate wispy bangs and purple braces until I felt something close to hot in college. My boobs emerged and I wore tight tops from Wet Seal. My look has changed through the years (Abercrombie & Fitch clone, Anthropologie boho, quirky boys’ T-shirts from Goodwill to communicate that I was “chill”), but my goal was always the same: to be whichever version of “hot” the guy I was with wanted. Eventually, all this effort led to an engagement, which led to a wedding, which led to my ultimate performance of hotness: blushing bride. Everyone told me I was beautiful, and I stuffed myself with external validation until I felt full.

In my first trimester of pregnancy, I frantically Googled “cute bump,” “bump vs. bloat,” and “celebrity maternity style.” Olivia Wilde was aspirational. Beyoncé was otherworldly. “Have you popped yet?” asked my cousin over the phone, to which I would woefully respond in the negative. When my soft belly finally turned hard and round, I felt relief, and the relief was justified when people said, “You can’t even tell you’re pregnant from the back!” Or “You’re so tiny!” Or “All belly!”

Writer Ashley Fetters wrote about mom jeans (and how adding “mom” to anything renders it immediately uncool) for The Atlantic, referencing the famed SNL sketch which includes the line: “I’m not a woman anymore. I’m a mom.” And while the sketch is hilarious, I think it rings eerily true for many of us. Recovering from childbirth in the hospital, the nurses all called me “mom” as if my real name—my real self—was no longer relevant.

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