Don’t you hate it when the skirt of your sequined ball gown bunches? Ugh, that’s the worst. Or when the tail of your furry raccoon skin hat keeps bumping into your neck? Or when the front half of your two-person horse costume won’t slow down and you have to run around after them like a half-horse crazy person? The point is, clothes are hard. And once you have kids, it gets even more complicated because all of a sudden, you need to make sure you’re not breaking any of the rules about what moms should wear. The last thing anyone wants to see is a mom who doesn’t look like a Mom, right?
OK, you can probably tell I’m kidding. But buried deep down in these jokes about moms and clothes is a teensy, tiny nugget of simple truth: becoming a mom can affect how you lookand how you feel about how you look...and what people expect of how you look and what you wear. Say whatever you want about society’s expectations of female appearances — I’m not here to police or judge how anyone may or may not feel about that — but I think most of us can agree that it’s just not realistic to be on top of your appearance one hundred percent of the time. The good news, though? There is not one “right” way for a mom to look. Granted, we probably all see the same stereotypes when it comes to commercials for cleaning products (seriously, does anyone actually wear pastels when eating spaghetti with a toddler?) but that doesn’t mean we have to match them, and here’s why: