Subversive Texts: Mommyblogs to Blog-Books in Spain Catherine B

Subversive Texts: MommyBlogs to Blog-Books in Spain Catherine B. Ross Southwestern University

Lauren Fellers Southwestern University

Abstract This article examines the importance of the mommyblog as an active way of questioning maternal norms, the consequences of the blog being published as a book, and the areas of maternal questioning highlighted in these books. Through an examination of these blog-books by Isabel García-Zarza and Eva Quevedo, we iden- tify three significant issues: a sense of isolation, a fear that they do not fit into the mold of the ideal mother, and a desire to subvert traditional perspectives of motherhood. These books mark an important change in the way in which motherhood has traditionally been represented in Spain, moving away from the self-sacrificial version of motherhood to a supportive, interactive new maternal norm. These blog-books illustrate the wide interest in re-examining maternal roles, focusing on issues that were formerly only part of the private sphere.

The way women approach motherhood is changing. No longer a societal requirement, motherhood has become a choice for many women in Spain. These changes in the way women mother have come about through many different channels, such as better access to healthcare and family planning, laws encouraging gender equality, and the internet. The mommyblog is a recent phenomenon that connects with many women because of its accessibility and autobio graphical content. In Spain in the past few years, two mommyblogs, Blog de madre: desdramatizando el mundo maternal and Mi vida con hijos: una visión irreverente de la maternidad, have been published as books titled Blog de madre (2012) and Diario de una madre imperfecta (2010). This article examines the importance of the mommyblog as an active way of questioning maternal norms, the consequences of the blog being published as a book, and the areas of maternal questioning highlighted in these books. The books share many themes, such as the fear of being a bad mother, the pressure to be a supermom, and the struggle to deal with the gap between their own experience of motherhood and the ideal promoted by society. By sharing their stories with their readers and by interacting with their readers on their blogs, these two bloggers, Eva Queve- do and Isabel García-Zarza, assume a mutually reassuring position that yes, we all do all that we can, as imperfect as we might be. The blog-books that stem from their online blogs illustrate the wide interest in re-examining maternal roles, focusing on issues that were formerly only part of the private sphere, such as fear of not fitting the maternal mold, changing family dynamics, and loss of self. These books mark an important change in the way in which motherhood has traditionally been represented in Spain, moving away from the self-sacrificial version of motherhood to a supportive, interactive new maternal norm. Spain’s perspective on mothers is unique due to its recent history of dictatorship and peaceful transition to democracy. In the past forty years, Spain

269 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 has transformed from a conservative, fascist regime to an egalitarian nation whose laws strive to support equality between women and men both in the public and private spheres. These rapid changes have caused what John Hooper terms a leap “from pre-feminism into post-feminism without having really experienced a feminist upheaval,” which has the consequence that “pro- foundly sexist attitudes have survived into an era in which women are acquiring much genuine freedom and equality” (Hooper 130). Traditional expectations for women as mothers persist des pite the fact that they no longer match Spain’s cultural and economic reality. Spanish psycho logists Sara Berbel Sánchez and María Teresa Pi-Sunyer Peyrí recognize that women “han parti cipado activamente en la vida pública a costa de grandes esfuerzos personales y, …la sensación general es desaliento: ahora que legalmente hemos alcanzado la igualdad, las mujeres seguimos sin encontrar nuestro lugar” (91). While Spanish society has changed from a conservative, oli- garchical structure to a liberal, democratic one, women still struggle to find balance among all of the different roles they inhabit. Mommyblogs provide a space for women to voice these concerns and create virtual communities of support for women as mothers, partners, workers, and women.

What is a Mommyblog?

A weblog or blog is defined by Meredith Nelson in “The Blog Phenomenon and the Book Publishing Industry” as “a frequently updated Web page that includes stream-of-consciousness entries by a single writer or group of writers” (Nelson 1). Blogs first began to be published online in mid-to-late 1990s and were often used to link to and discuss content from different sites and articles (Tucker 5). They increasingly began to form interconnected communities that linked to one another's posts and, when the technology became available, engaged an active dialogue with fellow bloggers via comments. As blogging became more popular, bloggers split off into many different subgroups, including topics as diverse as political blogs, writing blogs, hobbyist blogs, and our area of interest, mommyblogs (blogs de mamá in Spanish). While they may take many forms, in this paper a mommyblog is defined as a blog written by a mother about her experiences with topics such as pregnancy, childbirth, and raising children.1 While blogs were at first the province of the technologically savvy, as early as 1999, and to an even greater extent today, a number of popular platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr began to offer bloggers premade formats that reduced the level of technical skill needed to produce content (Friedman and Calixte 5). This made blogging more accessible to the average user and broadened the range of those who could participate in the blogging scene, although the digital divide can still limit the voices of those from lower socioeconomic classes or other marginalized groups who may not own computers or have regular internet access. Blogging as a practice has continued to grow in popularity over time, and in their book The Elements of Blogging Mark Leccese and Jerry Lanson note that the number of blogs has jumped from an es- timated 23 in 1999 to over 240 million as of 2013 (Leccese and Lanson 2).

1 It is important to note at this point that there is some controversy around the term “mommyblog(ger),” which has been criticized as infantilizing mothers, reinforcing traditional narratives of motherhood, and triviali zing their writing (even as the act of mommyblogging may be empowering), as discussed in Gina Masullo Chen’s “Don’t Call Me That: A Techno-Feminist Critique of the Term Mommy Blogger” (Chen 511). Nonetheless, it is by far the most common and accepted term in use both within and without the community, and in the interest of clarity we will continue to use it here.

270 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 What are the Politics of Mommyblogs?

Today, as Judith Stadtman Tucker frames it in Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the Mommyblog, the blogosphere is “principally a repository for tens of millions of first-person monologues on the subject of everyday life” (Tucker 1). However, the structure of blogs is very different from that of that of traditional media such as published autobiographies or newspaper columns, and this can have implications both for blog authors and for the audiences that they attract. Some salient features of blogs as opposed to print media in the case of mommyblogs are their reverse chronological ordering, their interactive nature, and the ease of distribution and accessibility of content. To expand on these points, posts are displayed in reverse order from traditional media such that someone first visiting would see the most recent posts rather than the earliest one, which prevents mommyblogs from presenting readers with a linear narrative of their experiences. Tucker criticizes the way that blogs can present mothers’ narratives as disconnected: “For better or worse, weblog structure--as well as received elements of blogging culture--favor the representation of maternal experience as a series of casual, disjointed events, rather than as a connected, complex whole” (Tucker 7). This can undermine attempts by mothers to present a cohesive alternate narrative of motherhood to readers. But this necessarily fragmented style, as opposed to a more traditional, cohesive narrative that appears in, for example, the book adapta- tion of García-Zarza’s blog, is not necessarily a weakness. In her article “Blogs of War,” Melissa Wall views the fragmentary, interconnected nature of blogs as essentially postmodern and suggests that these aspects can actually help direct focus to “small, local stories” that “give rise to non-official voices and versions of events” not represented in the mainstream (Wall 185). While Wall is interested specifically in blogs discussing the Iraq war, it is an argument that applies to the format as a whole. Because mommyblog posts are created as a reaction to current events in the blogger’s life rather than being laid out after the fact, they open up active discussions in the moment that invite participation and support, allowing mothers to generate their own narrative about events and concerns particular to them. In this view, the incomplete and intertextual nature of blogs can be viewed as a positive; it opens up avenues for new voices and directs readers to other such voices and stories. This interactive nature inherent to blogs manifests in a number of ways. Most directly, blogs include a comment section inviting readers to weigh in on the topic of the post, and the writer of the post often responds to and interacts with her commenters. This aspect is often brought up in the context of the subversive potential of blogs especially when opposed to narratives of events in traditional (print) media, whether the topic of discussion is political news or motherhood. In writing about the potential for blogs to subvert mainstream discourse in her article “Blogs as Alternative,” Linda Kenix observes that “While most blogs don’t see a fraction of their potential audience, blogs do have far more democratic possibility than previous print or digital publication formats” (Kenix 792). This is due to the strong sense of participation and engagement on the part of readers, who are encouraged to respond to and interact with both with the author and one another. The exchange between readers and writers (where even that role is often blurred) on mommyblogs can be interpreted as “an autobiographical practice that fosters community among women producing interlinked, self-reflexive texts on parenting” (“Compositional Stra tegies” 286). Indeed, many mothers who choose to blog, including Quevedo and García-Zarza, cited their sense of isolation and need to discuss non-traditional forms of motherhood with others as a reason to start blogging, and the sense of community was an important factor in their

271 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 decision to continue to blog. Though the recent monetization of mommyblogs can complicate this narrative, it has not yet become a viable option in Spain, where mommyblogs typically do not find the level of sponsorship that would make them a career choice in the way that some major mommyblogs, such as Dooce (Heather Armstrong) and A Cup of Jo (Joanna Goddard), have become in the United States (García-Zarza, “Re: Su libro”). Because of this, community and sto- rytelling are still the primary motives for both of the authors/bloggers examined in this article.2 This interactive format and dialogue between reader/creators has additional implications for who is consuming the content and how that consumption is conducted when compared with more traditional media. As Melissa Wall notes, “In terms of audiences, the traditional role [in print media] was that of passive recipients. On blogs, audiences are often invited to contribute information, comments, and sometimes direct financial support. In effect, audiences sometimes co-create content and also serve as patrons” (Wall 161). Wall is talking about newspapers and magazines here, but her point applies just as much to the question of published books as opposed to blog posts in terms of the role of the audience in one form versus another. If a large part of the incentive for creating a mommyblog is the community that forms around it, then this mutually supportive aspect changes when blogs are re-edited for publication in more traditio nal formats since this new product constitutes a change of audience, format, and in some cases content. A final and important point that distinguishes blogs from print media is their accessibility, both in terms of ease of use and distribution of content. Blogging requires an internet connection and a basic level of computer knowledge, but beyond these two limiting factors anyone who wishes to can create an account on a service such as Blogger and immediately begin publishing their content. There is no need to find a publishing agent or to edit your narrative to appeal to a commercial market. In this way blogging gives a platform to those voices that might not otherwise be heard and offers them an opportunity to form communities across the boun daries of space, and in relative anonymity if desired. As Tucker notes, “Blogging’s reputation as an avant-garde and potentially disruptive medium is due partly to its accessibility,” and indeed many mothers see themselves as filling a gap in the conversation about motherhood that occurs in mainstream media (Tucker 2). In her introduction to her book Diario de una madre imperfecta, Isabel García-Zarza cites her own sense of alienation from typical narratives of motherhood as the motivation to begin blogging: “Entonces [durante el posparto] fue cuando empecé a sospechar que a lo mejor nos habían vendido una película almibarada con la que no todas nos identificamos, un molde en el que no siempre encajamos” (García-Zarza 10). The relative accessibility of blogging enables women to write about taboo aspects of motherhood on a public platform as well as to read similar experiences of other women.

Why Mommyblogs Matter

When considering what the appeal of reading or writing mommyblogs is to the average mother, then, two principal motivations become clear: a sense of isolation and a fear that they do not fit into the mold of the ideal mother, and often a subsequent desire to change the narrative of motherhood to be more representative of the lived experiences of women. One perspec-

2 It is also important to note that while analyses of other types of blogs, such as alternative news blogs, ope rate with the intention of gaining as large a readership as possible, mommyblogs are not all identical; some strive to attract as many readers as possible, while others deliberately limit their accessibility or screen their readers, as they are often sharing sensitive personal information and want to curate a readership of like-minded readers (“Autobi- ography in Real Time” Morrison 2-3).

272 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 tive on this social isolation suggests that: El debilitamiento de las redes familiares tradicionales… ha sido sustituido por la aparición de gran cantidad de sitios web dedica- dos a la maternidad, foros, blogs, redes sociales y modos de apoyo virtual que permiten a las madres (y también padres) de similares inquietudes compartir conocimientos y experiencias, formando nuevos <>. (Alfonsín 14) In this view, the act of mommyblogging is filling a hole that previously would have been filled by, for example, a strong support network of female relatives. In the absence of open pu blic discussion on motherhood, blogs offer an answer to mothers who want to discover what other women have done or to find a supportive community that is not necessarily present in their daily lives. One issue that García-Zarza raises in explaining her own need to vent online was the fact that when she did look to popular discourse or attempt to discuss motherhood in her daily life, people were reluctant to acknowledge the negative aspects, leading her to seek out a community online. She describes her alienation and fears that she was somehow mons trous: “Y sobre todo, no me sentía en absoluto identificada con la imagen que me vendían de la maternidad, ese mundo almibarado de felicidad permanente. Primero me sentí un monstruo, pero luego fui descubriendo que no era yo la única” (García-Zarza, “Carta”). She echoes this sentiment throughout the book, questioning whether she is a “bicho raro,” somehow defective or different from other mothers. In light of this fear of being unnatural, blogging for her became a manner of “desahogándome,” of expressing feelings and thoughts that did not line up with traditional narratives of motherhood to a supportive community (García-Zarza 14). This is simi lar to the sentiment expressed in Mothering and Blogging: “mommyblogs nonetheless allow an ability to find like minds, and to push through the burden of isolation that is synonymous with modern day motherhood” (Friedman and Calixte 30). While not all mommybloggers see themselves as activists, the desire to change narratives of motherhood through blogging creates an environment where mothers can openly discuss negative or taboo aspects of pregnancy and child-rearing without being criticized as a bad mother. As García-Zarza notes in a letter to readers included with her print book, “Ya bastante complicado es esto de ser madre, como para encima ponérnoslo más difícil tratando de encajar en roles an- ticuados o convencionalismos absurdos” (Carta, García-Zarza 1). This is an idea that she brings up repeatedly throughout her book: that the absence of nuanced discussion of childbirth and motherhood initially left her unhappy and worried that something was fundamentally wrong with her. Her goal, she says, is to use her book as an extension of her blog to share “otra visión de la crianza y de la maternidad” with a new audience as well as with her old readers (García-Zarza 14). This view matches what Frances Shaw identifies in “The Politics of Blogs” as an important political function that blogs can accomplish, namely “disrupting and undermining hegemonic consensus” in order to advance feminist counter-narratives (Shaw 47). This is not by any means a unique viewpoint in the mommyblogging community; as Fried- man notes in Mothering and Blogging, many bloggers, including herself, are concerned with re- defining or widening definitions of motherhood.3 Friedman writes, “I saw myself as a political activist, urging those online to rethink their own biases around the institution of motherhood, but also to critique the very exclusive frames of reference many have around what it means to

3 This is a concern that Friedman and Calixte touch on in Mothering and Blogging; the “mamasphere” is predominantly white and middle class, and often people who don’t fit into those norms can find themselves dis- criminated against or side-lined in discussions of what motherhood ‘should be’ (Friedman and Calixte 24).

273 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 be queer, black and a mom” (Friedman and Calixte 24). This is not to say that every instance of mommyblogging is inherently activist or subversive or that the community as a whole is united in this task. Even as these women strive to denaturalize hegemonic versions of motherhood and to introduce a more open conversation about the lived experiences of mothers, they often up- hold other damaging structures, such as the idea that a mother’s experience is necessarily that of a straight (and usually married) woman raising a child. In addition to the question of which groups are welcomed in the online community of mommybloggers, we might also look at this issue, as Shaw notes, not just as a question of who can use their voice – that is, the accessibility of blogging – but of who is listening to the conversation – that is, its audience (Shaw 42). Mommybloggers are often the target of contempt, both online by writers and readers of more “serious” blogs and offline by news agencies who often frame their writing as the work of self-involved women obsessively documenting their children’s every action for the world. Very rarely is the activist or political potential of these blogs discussed outside of the so-called mamasphere, despite the vibrant and ongoing conversation about it among mommybloggers. In this context, then, the decision to publish a mommyblog as a book might constitute a way of stepping outside the relatively insular online community to promote these ideas to a very different audience. In addition to the question of who is being reached, Aimée Morrison identifies different obstacles for achieving radical potential in published (print) life-writing as opposed to blogs, which she identifies primarily as being a difference between broadcast and network forms of communication (“Suffused by Feeling and Affect” 37-38). In the former there is the problem of having to publish your information in a consumer market, and in the latter there is the problem of writing anonymously and losing the potential to have these conversations about motherhood on a wider scale or to translate them into action. Publishing a blog as a book is necessarily breaking with the 'secrecy' of the critiques of motherhood that Morrison identifies in the private, anonymous blogosphere (40). Morrison also discusses how blogs, unlike the intimate publics her theoretical frame was discussing, aren't undermined by being part of the broadcast/capita list structure but rather are networks of women who are engaged in conversation (51). The case of blog-books is interesting in this context, as García-Zarza and Quevedo are examples of wo men who do both: they continue maintaining an active blog but have published it and tied it to their real identities. Having the blog's content exist in two places means not only two different audiences but also two different messages with political and social implications. However, there are several considerations for bloggers as they decide whether to publish their blogs as a book or for the publishing industry in selecting manuscripts for publication.

Blogs to Books: Different Message, Different Medium

One of the principal questions that informs this article is why publish a blog as a book? As explained earlier, one of the most innovative facets of a blog is its interactive quality, the ability for the readers to interact with the blogger. In a published format, this interaction no longer exists; the reader becomes an imagined audience instead of a member of a blog community. When asked this particular question, blogger Isabel García-Zarza responded: Con el libro quería llegar a nuevos lectores y también ofrecerle a mis lectores, muy fieles, un compendio con todos mis posts 'en- riquecido' por decirlo de alguna manera. Sé que en EEUU hay mommy bloggers que se ganan la vida blogueando, ese era mi

274 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 sueño cuando creé mi blog en 2009. Pero en España es algo muy difícil, sobre todo para un blog que no habla exclusivamente de productos, como es el mío. (“Re: Su libro”) García-Zarza’s reasons for publishing her blog as a book are the expansion of readership combined with the commercial aspect of earning a living. For blogger Eva Quevedo, similar reasons exist: “Siempre he sido gran lectora, desde niña. Para mí publicar el libro, verlo transforma- do en papel, era el mejor premio a todo el trabajo invertido. Si además aumentaba el número de lectores del blog, mucho mejor” (“Re: Gracias por responder”). Quevedo talks about the support she received from her online community who encouraged her to publish her blog. For each of these bloggers, one of the steps was finding a publisher for her blog-book. As Meredith Nelson explains, “A blog shows an editor that the blogger is committed to the subject and already has a connection with readers, or 'ready-made fans.' The popularity of a blog can be measured precisely, so agents can show editors that their bloggers or blog-books offer built-in sales numbers" (Nelson 10). Nelson continues to describe the challenges in publishing a blog- book, because publishers find that little demand exists for blogs published as-is, so the writing and content has to be considerably reworked for publication (10). García-Zarza mentions this re-writing, stating that “[e]l libro no es una transcripción directa del blog, son soportes muy diferentes y tuve que trabajar el material para que fuera publicado como libro” (“Re: Su libro”). Quevedo explains that she first self-published her book before a publishing house approached her, picking it up. Once that happened, she states: Tanto el libro autoeditado como el que publiqué con Random House Mondadori son fieles a los posts del blog. No cambiamos ni una coma. Lo único que añadimos fueron ilustraciones para darle un valor añadido con respecto a lo que la gente podía encontrar de forma gratuita en el blog on line. (“Re: Gracias por responder”) Both bloggers cite their need to distinguish the book from the blog, both to attract buyers for their book as well as to bring new readers to their online forums. However, these authors also believed that their content was missing from the bookshelves and that people would buy these books even if they were already members of the blogging community. Publishing these blogs as books illustrates the demand for access to information about maternity like that presented online, and the material included in the books serves to transform and question ways of interpreting motherhood. Both Quevedo and García-Zarza address these issues in their books, though from different perspectives and tones. First we address Eva Que- vedo’s humorous take on motherhood; then we delve into Isabel García-Zarza’s more pointed critiques of traditional Spanish ideas of what it means to be a mother. Three significant issues are confronted in these blog-books: the pressures of being a mother in Spain today, the need to share these pressures with others, and the desire to subvert traditional perspectives of motherhood.

Eva Quevedo: Humor in Parenting

Eva Quevedo, before children, worked as a publicist, which she calls both her “profesión y vocación” in her biography in her blog. She explains that she began to publish her blog in June 2010 after a particularly trying weekend with her children and discovered the joy of sharing her experiences with others (“Lautora”). Quevedo’s book is divided into small chapters (previous blog posts), each one preceded by an illustration by graphic artist Ata Lassalle. The book chro

275 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 nicles everyday episodes from the life of Eva Quevedo, including stories about running out of mascara, sick children on days of important meetings, visits to the emergency room, and other stories of parenting. Quevedo herself explains that the book is “A todo el que tenga sentido del humor, a todas las madres y a todo aquel que tenga una :) Para que sepa lo duro que es para una mujer cambiar de vida de forma tan radical” (“Re: Gracias por responder”). While Quevedo writes in a comic, self-effacing tone, several major themes recur throughout: fear of not fitting the maternal mold; changing family dynamics; and loss of self. All of these themes point to the fact that there is a need for women to voice their experiences of maternity for a wider audience in order to acknowledge the difficulties in transitioning to motherhood and to break down out- dated stereotypes of mothering. Fear of meeting the maternal mold appears throughout many of the vignettes Quevedo nar- rates, especially through her tales of failures at work and as a caretaker. Quevedo addresses these worries about meeting expectations for mothering through tales told in her tone of self-re- flective irony. In her chapter “Manifiesto libertario”, she talks about her decision to leave her job in order to become a “madre profesional” (42). The responses of those around her astound her; from her friend’s incredulous “Quién lo iba a decir, Quevedo convertida en madre profesional” to “aquellos comentarios de tonito porculero tendentes a juzgar todo lo que una hace con su vida”, Quevedo reflects that everyone must make the decision that is right for her family and circumstances (42, 43). But first, she poses the different possibilities available. First, she gives the example of continuing to work as before: “Si te dejas los ovarios desperdigados por esas salas de reuniones de Dios hasta altas horas de la noche y llegas a casa cuando ya no hay nadie a quien bañar, ni acostar, ni cantar, malo, porque demostrarás ser una malamadre sin corazón” (43). Then there is the attempt to find work/life balance: Si por el contrario decides parar tu carrera durante un tiempo para poder recogerles del colegio cada día y llevarles al pediatra si procede, sin que tus compañeros de despacho te lancen miradas asesinas o RRHH ponga precio a tu cabeza, peor, porque entonces serás una malamujer sin vergüenza ninguna que pisotea y se mofa la memoria de cuantas luchadoras la precedieron y ganaron dere- chos para su uso y disfrute. (43-44) Either way, she tells her audience, someone will judge you for your choice. Any attempt to balance work and childcare ends with a terrible outcome: you are either a bad mother or a bad woman. There is no way, according to this chapter, to balance worklife and homelife. While the chapter may overstate the problems women face when trying to find this balance, Quevedo’s claims strike a nerve in those who read them. Why must women face these choices? Why is it the place of women to find work/life balance? Quevedo’s narratives begin to breakdown the cons trictive discursive practices around motherhood. The imposition of societal norms on mothers causes some women to embrace the idea of imperfect mothers while others strive to reach perfection. Quevedo recounts a visit to the emergency room with her children in the chapter titled “Fase de entrenamiento I: El hospital”, and she starts with the idea that this visit is necessary “para adquirir el carnet de madre imperfecta y psicótica” (152). She tells the story of all of the tests run on her child (x-rays and MRI), and she wants to shout at the doctor “soooy bueeena madreeee se lo juroooo” (153). She ends the vignette explaining the importance of writing “estas historietas sanadoras” as a way to express her difficulties with mothering (154). She explains that: [n]ormas hay muchas, corrientes ideológicas más, aunque en

276 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 realidad da igual a qué filosofía maternal estés adscrita. Lo importante es seguir a rajatabla unas indicaciones, u otras, para aplacar en algo el profundo miedo y la inseguridad que produce no saber si estás haciendo las cosas bien. (211) The fear of doing it right, of following the rules in order to be a successful mother permeates the writings of Quevedo. Marsha Marotta explains that “If children do not sleep in their own beds, run wild in the grocery store, appear in public dirty and unkempt, for example, mothers will receive solicited as well as unsolicited advice to discipline themselves to engage in practices that will change their children’s behaviors and appearances” (24). “Good” mothers don’t have these problems; “good” mothers don’t question hegemonic norms. Quevedo, however, suggests that women berate themselves constantly for not meeting expectations, calling themselves, “Malamadre… malamadre… malamadre… Si no te lo dice la gente te lo dices tú” (392). This cons tant pressure to perform a certain style of mothering, to get it all right, pervades the book, even though the tone of the book is generally humorous. While humor makes difficult topics easy to face, these topics still need to be brought to the forefront. For Quevedo, the change in family dynamics caused by motherhood poses a challenge. Change is constant, but the change faced by couples as they become parents creates new struggles in defining familial roles. Quevedo addresses this question frequently throughout her book and blog. She brings up the lack of equality between men and women when it comes to caring for children. In her chapter “Para papás”, Quevedo humorously recounts the inability of fathers to hear children cry, to check on them in bed, or to bring them a glass of water. She tells her readers, “Pero, ay, amigas, cuán engañadas nos tuvieron en esa fase preniños” when men tried to “impresionar y hacerte caer en sus redes” (72). When children arrive, however, this balance of duties changes, according to Quevedo. After a chapter of examples of men failing to fulfill basic duties of childcare, she ends with the question “¿Equilibrado? Seguro que no, pero…¿en esta vida qué lo es?” (73). There is some forgiveness in her tone, and she suggests that women could also change their expectations, but the reality is that family dynamics change when children are introduced into the equation. In her chapter called “Madre de seguridad”, Quevedo describes a mother as “un agente de seguridad ruso, fortote, rudo y calculador, adiestrado para detectar los más descabellados e inverosímiles peligros”, someone who can foresee any possible dangerous situation before it occurs (268). The feeling of hyper-awareness surrounding the protection of children permeates this section of the text, and Quevedo speaks not only about how a woman’s position within family structure changes, but also how a woman creates a new self when she becomes a mother.

Isabel García-Zarza: Subverting the Motherhood Narrative

Isabel García-Zarza, journalist by profession and currently working for Yo dona de El mundo, is the mother of three children. Throughout her own blog-book, Diario de una madre imperfecta, Isabel García-Zarza discusses the fear of being what she terms a “madre desnaturalizada,” similar to Eva Quevedo’s preferred term “malamadre”. This begins during her pregnancy when she finds that the model of motherhood she has been exposed to all of her life does not fit her experiences, and subsequently fears that this makes her monstrous. In fact, she opens her book with an anecdote about talking with a friend who had recently given birth and who told her that her first thought upon seeing her child was not adoration but “¿Por qué tengo que querer yo a este niño al que no conozco de nada y que no para de llorar?” (García-Zarza 9). García-Zarza is

277 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 at first shocked by this sentiment, but finds that after giving birth herself her friend’s reaction is closer to her own than the idealized version of selfless, all-encompassing motherhood she had grown up believing. She adds, “Y, como ella, me sentí casi un monstruo por pensarlo” (9). These fears of being unnatural surface throughout her book, which is divided up into a series of short, humorous one to five page entries on different topics (adapted from her original blog posts). The narrative has been rearranged in print form to follow her chronologically from pregnancy and on through the birth of each of her three children, and in each subsection, she discusses her experiences with issues such as breastfeeding or navigating public transportation with children, often focusing on the ways that her personal experiences have challenged or subverted traditional narratives of motherhood. This was an intentional decision on García-Zarza’s part; as she notes in the introduction to her book, “Todos hemos crecido rodeados de mitos, convenciona lismos y prejuicios. Por eso cuesta darse cuenta de que cada experiencia de la maternidad – y de la paternidad, claro está – es completamente diferente. No hay dos iguales. Ni siquiera para la misma persona” (11). Her blog, then, was explicitly envisioned as a way to challenge these myths and prejudices as well as to vent about her feelings and to reach out to other mothers who might be feeling the same way, and the subsequent book was published with the same intention. One of the main topics that García-Zarza broaches as she tries to challenge the idea of the “perfect mother” are the difficulties and sense of isolation during early motherhood. She begins by questioning why it is that there is never any public discussion of the postpartum period, lamenting that she was completely unprepared for the pain and difficulty of the early weeks after giving birth. “Por tu cabeza pasan innumerables imágenes de famosas reales y plebeyas posando a la puerta del hospital, muy sonrientes con sus churumbeles. Ésas son prácticamente las únicas referencias que tenemos del posparto y no pueden ser más engañosas,” García-Zarza observes (32-33). In the absence of familial support – her friends and family did not discuss the postpartum period with her – she turned to the blog as an alternative source of support, venting about the expectation that mothers must “mostrarte radiante y dichosa de ser madre, porque todo ha salido bien y además el niño está sanísimo y riquísimo, pero en realidad te sien tes hundida en la miseria, atrapada en un túnel del que no ves la salida” (33). Unprepared for the difficult postpartum period and inundated with images of mothers who bounce back and are instantly content and proud, she felt alone in not enjoying motherhood or adjusting to these changes. In turn, the mommyblog became a major source of support for these and other struggles in her life, helping her to feel “...acompañada. Y me causó un gran alivio saber que no era yo el único bicho raro que pensaba de esta manera” (14). The book is designed to shine a light on these little-discussed areas of motherhood and to help other mothers reading it feel less alone than she did when her experiences failed to line up with what she was expected to feel or think. García-Zarza continues this line of criticism by discussing her experiences with breastfee ding in depth – in particular her frustration with the insistence that all loving mothers must breastfeed their children, but the refusal to acknowledge how difficult, painful, and time-consuming it can be. She states that she found breastfeeding agonizing and that it left her feeling exhausted and trapped, but “la presión del entorno pesa mucho sobre ella… ¿Es una madre tan atroz como para dejar de darle a su hijo la leche materna (lo mejor, lo mejor) sólo para dormir una noche entera?” (38). The feelings of guilt over not enjoying or being able to live up to what a mother ‘should’ do for her children caused her a great deal of stress and feelings of inadequacy. This was compounded fact that breastfeeding made it difficult for her to leave the home for long periods of time, as she needed to be present to feed her kids at all times, and so she was often trapped inside, in pain, and generally feeling out of place. The blog was an opportunity to vent

278 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 about these stresses and to reach out to other mothers who might have had similar experiences when the people in their own lives – either because of physical isolation or out of a reluctance to discuss ‘scandalous’ topics – were unable to provide the support network they needed. Motherhood represents a profound change to the daily life and identity of women. A theme that resurfaces throughout García-Zarza’s entries is the fear that motherhood will result in a loss of self, both personally and professionally. Like Quevedo, García-Zarza is frank about the challenges that motherhood often poses to relationships, both platonic and romantic: “Los niños crean fricciones en el seno de la pareja. Este es un hecho innegable, empíricamente comproba- do, que debería incluirse en el temario de las clases de preparación al parto” (48). She frequently jokes about the difficulties that changing sleep cycles and a colicky baby can cause for young couples, along with the “enorme esfuerzo físico y psíquico” it takes to maintain friendships with childless couples while balancing the new duties required to care for an infant (92). However, she also reflects more seriously on the uneven division of labor by gender in many Spanish households, relating a story about a friend who had been forced into the position of full-time carer while her husband took no responsibility for their child: “Él estaba «tranquila» y «estu- pendamente», mientras que ella bregaba con las fieras” (117). She talks about Spain's abysmal statistics on division of gendered labor and how depressed it made her, noting that even despite her attempts to divide labor evenly with her husband there were areas – such as preparing the children for school – where she was expected to take on everything alone.4 Unlike Quevedo, she has a much less forgiving attitude towards men who do not contribute in the household, but is willing to acknowledge that she cannot yet see what the avenue for change would be – and that she fears alienating friends and family by singling anyone out too specifically for criticism (118). In addition to acknowledging changes within the household and in relationships with friends and family, García-Zarza also reflects on anxieties about a more personal loss of self: the fear that her identity will be subsumed under the title of “mother” in all of her relationships. As she puts it: Es cierto que cuando una tiene hijos, al asumir ese nuevo papel se desdibuja su personalidad…. Pero por mucho que el embara- zo...obligue durante nueve meses a la madre a estar fusionada a su bebé...ambos son y seguirán siendo tras el parto, o tras el destete, dos seres humanos completamente independientes, dotados cada uno de su propia entidad y personalidad. (107-8) Although pregnancy and breastfeeding involve a physical connection with the child, often mother and child are treated as a single unit even beyond this point. Not only are the mother’s needs overwritten by the child’s, but the identity of the woman as an individual is lost in the label of “mother”. She is expected to act and think in accordance with that label rather than as a separate person and her own wishes and desires are equated with her child’s. As a result of this tendency, García-Zarza feels compelled to set down rules for friends and family, such as that only her own children are allowed to address her as “mamá” or that gifts for her children are not gifts for her, pushing back against motherhood as an all-encompassing identity and demanding that she be recognized as having interests and wishes that are separate from her role as a mother is expected to act and think in accordance with that label rather than as a separate person and her own wishes and desires are equated with her child’s. One interesting difference from Quevedo’s situation is that García-Zarza is a working mother,

4 Please see Table 1 for statistics about the unequal work between men and women in the home. Statistics provided by Instituto Nacional de Estadística.

279 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 and she frequently discusses the threat that motherhood often poses to professional success and to her own sense of identity as a career-woman. She is acutely aware that “estadísticamente, resulta muy poco probable que una madre de familia numerosa ascienda en su trabajo,” and in a chapter on the glass ceiling pessimistically states that motherhood reduces “las posibilidades de hacer algo importante [en la vida profesional]” (66, 135). García-Zarza addresses the issue of being a working mother from a number of different perspectives, including her changing personal feelings about working, her struggles with advancement in the workplace, and society’s attitude towards working mothers. First, she notes that – contrary to expectations – she found a great deal of comfort in being able to have a life separate from her first child that gave her a break from being a ‘full-time mother,’ although she is conscious that others will see this as a sign that she is heartless. “Habrá quien me llame madre desnaturalizada por haberme sentido dichosa en vez de desgarrada por la separación, lo admito,” she writes, “pero no siento ningún remordimiento por ello” (56). Later, with the birth of her third child, her feelings on the subject begin to change. While García-Zarza initially wants to stay at her job and is grateful for a respite from her hectic personal life, as she gives birth to her third child she starts wishing that she could spend more time at home, especially to experience her daughter’s early childhood. How- ever, her family’s financial situation prevents it; they cannot survive on one salary alone. This is an important factor to consider: while it is true that stay-at-home mothers often face their own obstacles and prejudices for choosing to maintain traditional gender roles, not everyone has the luxury of making that choice, and, as García-Zarza notes, working when you have children carries its own stigma and guilt for mothers in Spain. She writes at length about her feelings of guilt and sense that she’ll be blamed for anything that goes wrong with the children because she wasn’t there for them all the time: “Y empezarán a corroerte – ¡bienvenida al club! – las dudas y el sentimiento de culpa por estar haciéndolo todo mal en todas partes” (133). At the same time, she feels that she has been forced to sacrifice her personal ambitions, both by a society that doesn’t consider mothers (particularly of large fami lies) as candidates for high-level jobs, and because those jobs don’t make accommodations for mothers, leading her to turn down a great career opportunity shortly after giving birth because she couldn’t afford to work longer hours with an infant in the house. As she puts it, “notaba cómo yo misma me agarraba con las dos manos al techo de cristal y me golpeaba con él la cabeza” (136). She notes as well that even with both parents working there is not an even division of labor in the home, so that mothers are often forced to essentially work two jobs: one official and the other unofficial as they take charge of childcare and housekeeping. Working as a mother, García-Zarza concludes, “es como nadar contracorriente” (132). While she has some hope for the future -- she notes optimistically that the then-Minister of Defense, Carme Chacón, took the job while pregnant and may have some impact on how people view working mothers -- García-Zarza is often pessimistic about the trials of being a working mother. She is made to feel guilty for almost every aspect of working outside the home: for enjoying having a break from her children, for being unable to advance in the workplace, and even for wishing at times that she could quit. There is no doubt that having children has an enormous impact on the professional lives of mothers, and her reflections on her own experiences often shine a light on prejudices and preconceptions about working mothers in Spain. Just as García-Zarza opens her book with an anecdote about a friend confessing a scanda lous sentiment about motherhood to her own shock, she closes it on a similar note. She recalls telling a friend that she sometimes wishes she could have some time alone to sit in silence away from her children and focus on herself:

280 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 El otro día, una amiga se indignó conmigo porque cometí el peca- do capital de confesar abiertamente que de vez en cuando anhelo, sueño, con quedarme media hora sola en casa, aunque sea para escuchar el silencio. […] Y dicha amiga (y ahora ex amiga) se pre- guntaba para qué tenemos hijos las desalmadas que luego desea- mos librarnos de ellos un rato. Y que incluso osamos pagar a al guien para que nos eche una mano en esa inefable tarea. (187) García-Zarza uses her blog, and now her book, as a way to discuss these ‘taboo’ impulses and feelings that do not fall in line with the ideal of motherhood as an all-consuming identity that women must devote themselves to and enjoy at all times. While she does often discuss positive aspects of motherhood or moments that she enjoys, she also has an interest in opening up a more honest dialogue about motherhood that allows room to publically discuss negative aspects. It is precisely judgmental attitudes like those expressed by her former friend that led her to seek refuge in the blog, and although she has received some negative feedback there she notes that for the most part it has been a cathartic and supportive experience, with mothers taking comfort from sharing one another’s experiences.

El Club de las Malasmadres: Where Do We Go from Here?

The mommyblog forms a community of equals who can take comfort in knowing that they are not the only ones who are not “perfect mothers” all the time. One of the key goals of mommyblogs, in addition to providing personal relief for mothers, is to allow for honest, public discussions of motherhood that acknowledge both the good and the bad. In a sense, mommybloggers are trying to break motherhood out of the private sphere; to open up a conversation about mothering that acknowledges the fears and struggles of mothers alongside the sunnier version of motherhood that is usually promulgated. In their books as well as their blogs, both Que- vedo and García-Zarza attempt to forefront aspects of motherhood that are not often openly discussed or are even demonized. Both bloggers strive to deconstruct the meaning of a good mother, shifting focus from traditional values of mothers and instead focusing on the experien- tial aspect of mothering. The definition of good mother may vary based on culture and location, but the idea exists that there is a way to be a good mother. According to Marsha Marotta in her chapter “Mother- Space: Disciplining through the Material and Discursive”: Mothers internalize representations of the ‘good’ mother in pre- scriptive texts as well as images in popular culture. They learn what to eat, how to dress, how to manage their time, how to behave as pregnant women and mothers, and where to spend their time. They learn to see that they can make themselves ‘good’ mothers by heeding ‘experts’ who, in a relationship of power, act on their bo dies and thoughts in a way that shapes their behaviors and practices. (25) Women fall into the trap of trying to perform their motherhood in order to fit the mold of mothering portrayed to them, which in Spain is a traditional, Catholic perspective of maternity. According to Marotta, MotherSpace is both a physical space and a discursive space. She explains the importance of discursive space for mothers, which she defines as completing “the function of material or built space, making them inhabitable, alive, constructing them and their

281 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 uses through messages that emerge from language, ideology, and interpretation” (15). In society, “[m]aterial space limits movements and behaviors of mothers, but the discursive construction of space is required to complete the function of control of mothers” (18). These spaces limit women in their embodiment of motherhood while also shaping women’s expectations of motherhood. Therein lies the danger of these discursive practices: these discourses have “the status and function of truth”, explains Marotta, and “aim to normalize desires and practices which make them crucial to the regulation of not just how but where mothers spend their time” (19). The purpose of mommyblogs then is to disrupt the patriarchal discourse about mothers and replace it with one written by and for women. In 2014, Spanish mommyblogger Laura Baena founded an online community called El Club de Malas Madres.5 In an interview with Amaya Larrañeta, she explains: Es que no existía en Internet una plataforma en la que decir que se es una mala madre, que no puedes más con esta vida, sin apostillar siempre acto seguido lo mucho que amas a tu hijo. Una noche de madrugada se me ocurrió crear una red social de malas madres. Como respuesta al nuevo modelo social, que rompe con la idea de la madre tradicional. Las madres ahora también somos profesio- nales y tenemos inquietudes que igual antes no se tenían. Y ocurre que como madres nos sentimos juzgadas por la familia, las amigas y la sociedad. Lo que crea complejos, culpas y frustraciones. Pedí a las madres, para fomentar un diálogo, que me contaran sus méri- tos de mala madre. This movement of Malasmadres has caused an impact even on the governmental level, where Baena has 287,000 signatures to ask the government to require change at the level of small business to support flexible schedules (Álvarez). Through these movements of women, we see the tangible impact that non-traditional as well as traditional media can have on mothering. Mommyblogs are having an impact on how people in Spain look at and talk about motherhood. In some cases, this happens at the individual level, helping mothers who otherwise feel isolated find an inclusive online community, and in others it involves explicit political action to better the standing of mothers in society, as with the legislative reform proposed by the Club de las Malamadres. The two blogs and resulting books that we examined in this paper represent the increasing demand for an open and honest discussion about what it means to be a mother today in Spain -- the good, the bad, and the ugly ("maternidad contada 'sin pelos en la lengua'", as García-Zarza puts it in the subheading for her blog-book). Blogging as a platform creates a space to hear new voices and to build new communities. While mommyblogs present personal, anecdotal experiences of mothering, they also bring to the forefront concerns and questions about how women mother. Within the space of the online community, followers who support (or criticize) the blog can engage with the bloggers’ ideas. Despite losing this interaction, Que- vedo and García-Zarza sought to publish their blogs as books, not only to find a wider audience but also to appeal to those who prefer traditional print media. These blog-books, although in a traditional print edition, still serve many of the purposes of a mommyblog in that they present short vignettes about the life of the blogger, address issues that are common among mothers but are rarely talked about, and provide a discursive space for ideals of motherhood to be ques- tioned. While the community aspect of blogging--the interaction between the blogger and her

5 Her blog is called “La niña sin nombre”. She is also widely followed on Twitter and Facebook.

282 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 respondents--is missing in traditional media, a blog-book nonetheless provides an outlet for women to learn that they are not the only ones struggling to figure out how their identity as mother corresponds to their previous versions of themselves.

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285 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 2, No. 2 (2017): 269-286 Appendix

Table 1 Personas que realizan actividades de trabajo no remunerado

Instituto Nacional de Estadística

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