Warning: This article contains clichés and stereotypes.
Being a housewife in Sydney’s Eastern Beaches is awesome. There’s a stunning vista everywhere you look from The Gap to Maroubra. A quality, barista-made coffee is never further than twenty paces away. On top of all that it’s a cultural melting pot with a great diversity of upwardly-mobile, middle class types.
Here are some of the characters I encounter in my community every day.
Fit Mum
Fit Mum says her investment in the local gym is about health and mental clarity but I call bull dust. It’s about the bikini.
Fit Mum is easily identified at the school gate, clad in head-to-toe lyrca. This is not an affectation. She’s just come from early morning boot camp and is on her way to pilates. She’ll probably be in the same lycra at 3pm as she’s combining the school pick-up with a power walk.
Conversations with Fit Mum centre on 12-week body transformations, half-marathons and paleo diets.
Be warned that if you invite her to a BBQ she will only ever bring a salad – most likely one that involves kale and quinoa.
Uber Mum
Intelligent and well educated, Uber Mum has tossed her own career to care for her family. Typically it’s a choice she and her high flying husband can afford to make. She channels all her energy and drive into housewifery.
Uber Mum’s entire life looks like a Pinterest board. Her children’s lunch boxes are always stocked with nutritious, home-made treats. Birthday parties are like something from a glossy magazine. She clocks-up serious hours at school fundraisers and always volunteers for classroom reading.
A visit to Uber Mum’s home is an enjoyable (but slightly shaming) experience. Fresh baked goods are served-up with Nespresso coffee. The plump lounge cushions co-ordinate perfectly with the décor and the floors are a crumb-free zone.
It’s easy to ridicule the Uber Mum for being a 1950s throw-back but she’s genuinely lovely and her cakes are just too good. This is the Mum you want to invite to your BBQ because she’ll bring a calorific dessert. She’ll tell you all about how she just whipped it up in her Thermomix.
Hipster Mum
Hipster Mum is easy to spot. Just look for birkenstocks, peasant tops, retro sunglasses and straw fedoras. The ultimate giveaway is however, her bearded, bespectacled husband.
Hipster Mum works in a creative field often freelancing from home. Her chit-chat revolves around music festivals and art exhibitions. She believes kids should be exposed to a range of cultural activities. Screen time is often severely limited if not completely banned.
Ironically, Hipster Mum and Dad often work in web design and game development. Barbie dolls and toy guns are the devils work. Instead, children are encouraged to work in community gardens.
Hipster Mum’s diet is completely organic – including the red wine. She is a great BBQ guest if you enjoy discussing avant-garde art and social justice. Besides, the organic red wine she brings along is usually superb.
Expat Mum
This character’s big-wigged executive husband is on secondment Down Under. She’s a little more polished than your average, daggy Aussie mum. Thanks to the generosity of the big bank or engineering firm employing her husband she can afford to ‘frock up’.
The expat family uses its substantial living allowance to rent a fabulously-appointed apartment with ocean views.
Her catch-cry is, “What’s the point of coming to Australia if you can’t live by the beach. If we had to live in Penrith, we may as well have stayed in England.”
Expat Mum probably won’t come to your BBQ. She hangs out exclusively with other expats. It’s what’s known as the ‘expat community’.
Power Mum
Power Mum did not let the small inconvenience of having children de-rail her career. She is easy to identify with her immaculate tailoring, neat hair and designer heels.
Nevertheless, she is seldom spotted at the school gate, delegating pick-up and drop-off duties to an au pair or house husband.
Her conversations centres on PPIs and strategic meetings rather than the banalities of school lunches. To make matters worse she’s a husband talker and men are actually interested in what she has to say. Everything about her makes the other mums (and dads) feel like complete failures.
If you don’t mind feeling inadequate whilst you hear about her career success she makes a fabulous dinner party guest. Power Mum brings along tasty treats sourced from an upmarket deli (because she can pay to outsource) and a top-of-the-range bottle of wine.
Read more from Mumabulous on her blog
