two-twenty

mother fucking working mother, a rant | joanna

As you've probably figured out, two-twenty is on Summer vacation. Or has just gotten really, really lazy. Or preoccupied. Or whatever. No matter...

About a week ago I spied a telephone kiosk poster advertising Working Mother Magazine. Redundant, no? Hell yes. Isn't the fact that it's a titanic job to raise kids -- especially ones who don't turn out to be peer-shooting, crack-smoking monsters -- what the non-monkey members of society have learned over the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the magazine's inception? I certainly hope so. I also may have been overreacting (perhaps strangely, as all members of two-twenty are the progeny of "Working Mothers" -- their definition, not ours).

But when I took a gander at executive editor Betty S. Wong's advice on how to pitch to the mag, my temporarily lowered hackles shot back up.

According to Wong, "Our readers want to know about women like themselves -- someone who had to go back to school while juggling two kids, women who are one cog in a big machine, but who have still carved out some success."

Okay, fine, but here comes the qualifier: "Not women who are too successful or too entrepreneurial." At the same time, she adds, don't pitch someone who's too average: "There has to be a lesson learned from this woman."

Lessons I've learned from Betty S. Wong and her magazine:
1. A woman is only a working mother if she has a job that she has to balance with raising children.
2. Balancing a job outside the home with raising children is only interesting to 25-49 year old readers if the working woman has to "juggle".
3. Reading about women who have some degree of success offers lessons to learn; reading about women who are "too successful" does not.

God my head hurts. I didn't see that piece of glass.

Articles: How to Pitch: Working Mother | mediabistro.com (access restricted to members of Avant Guild)