Ahhh, I have a stigma.... Get it off! Get it off!
I was reading an article about recent sales figures for various cars, SUVs and mini-vans. Not surprisingly, SUV sales have hit the proverbial skids due to, as the article so obviously pointed out, SUVs get terrible gas mileage and the price of gas is quite high. Fuel efficient cars sales have increased due to the inverse. Now, here is where the article and I part ways. The article stated that mini-van sales have dropped precipitously due to the "stigma associated with being a soccer mom". Excuse me. Hey! What?! Stigma? Now usually I associate having a "stigma" with something much more dire than being a soccer mom, perhaps more like being a serial murder, an arsonist or at the very least permanently swearing off bathing. The author wrote of a "soccer mom" like we are some kind of faceless suburban automaton, certainly nothing to aspire to. Again, I say "Hey!".
Yes, I am a "soccer mom" presuming that really just means that I have children and I'm involved enough in their lives to drive them various places (yes, soccer practice is one of those places). That is really as far as a description one should be able to deduce from those two words. "Soccer mom" doesn't describe my dreams, political beliefs, religious inclinations, sense of humor or anything else about me. People don't point and run the other way when I arrive in my ubiquitous mini-van so I'm assuming my stigma can't be that bad. And honestly if there was a "cooler" vehicle that could carry 3 kids, their stuff, my stuff, a dog (her stuff) and a DH (he doesn't really travel with much stuff...maybe because I already have all other the stuff), I would be all about it. I'm not sure what is driving such hostility towards "soccer moms" by the author of this article or who gave the author this information. I would suggest the sales drop of mini-vans is the same root cause as the SUVs; they really get pretty awful gas mileage. Ours gets an average of less than 20mpg which I'm sure could be improved with some fairly minor design or engineering changes.
So other than getting my ire up at being lumped under a label, what else have I been up to. I saw some sock project bags on a web site -- cute little drawstring bags for carrying sock projects or other small knitting projects. And I thought, I can do that. So I did. Here they are:
Speaking of design flaws, obviously the one in the upper right was my first attempt as the drawstring is coming from the middle of the bag not the sides. Oh, I lined them too so my needles won't poke through. Cool, ay?
And before I head off for vacation, I leave you with a picture of a sign that makes me laugh every time I drive I90 in or out of Buffalo near the airport. It's the name of a business and a great insult. (I know, it doesn't take much to make me laugh.)
Yes, I am a "soccer mom" presuming that really just means that I have children and I'm involved enough in their lives to drive them various places (yes, soccer practice is one of those places). That is really as far as a description one should be able to deduce from those two words. "Soccer mom" doesn't describe my dreams, political beliefs, religious inclinations, sense of humor or anything else about me. People don't point and run the other way when I arrive in my ubiquitous mini-van so I'm assuming my stigma can't be that bad. And honestly if there was a "cooler" vehicle that could carry 3 kids, their stuff, my stuff, a dog (her stuff) and a DH (he doesn't really travel with much stuff...maybe because I already have all other the stuff), I would be all about it. I'm not sure what is driving such hostility towards "soccer moms" by the author of this article or who gave the author this information. I would suggest the sales drop of mini-vans is the same root cause as the SUVs; they really get pretty awful gas mileage. Ours gets an average of less than 20mpg which I'm sure could be improved with some fairly minor design or engineering changes.
So other than getting my ire up at being lumped under a label, what else have I been up to. I saw some sock project bags on a web site -- cute little drawstring bags for carrying sock projects or other small knitting projects. And I thought, I can do that. So I did. Here they are:
Speaking of design flaws, obviously the one in the upper right was my first attempt as the drawstring is coming from the middle of the bag not the sides. Oh, I lined them too so my needles won't poke through. Cool, ay?
And before I head off for vacation, I leave you with a picture of a sign that makes me laugh every time I drive I90 in or out of Buffalo near the airport. It's the name of a business and a great insult. (I know, it doesn't take much to make me laugh.)
Actually, despite your professed confusion, I think you pretty much nailed most of the aspects of that stigma associated with 'soccer mom'miness. Stereotypes? Sure. Not necessarily accurate? Sure. But every bit of it (minivan=assumed political affiliation+assumption of flavorlessness+presumption of an unthinking religiosity)is presently the reality in most American perceptions.
Also:
#1) Much of driving America is still very intently chasing that elusive and ill-defined notion of "cool" the same way they did in the high schools of the late Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties and the early Nineties. They chase it desperately, the same way junkies chase the proverbial dragon.
Minivans became very everything-you-said when SUVs became tres chic. Because "cool" is by necessity exclusionist and ineffable, it doesn't make much sense most of the time. So though it violates logic to infer anything besides "matron with athletics-inclined progeny" from the words "soccer mom," we must all remember that 'cool' obeys no rules at all.
You're a bad person because you drive a van. This is because SUVs are 'cool.' Vans are not. That's all.
#2) In actuality, it's those suburban, TV-addled automatons (who, not too long ago, were themselves DRIVING minivans for the same reason they now choose SUVs ((having just recently, in that earlier case, abandoned stationwagons))) who have slapped the stigma back on you for being , like, so 1998.
The stigma is now on minivannists so that there can be an 'anticool' against which 'cool' SUVers may define themselves. High-top sneakers couldn't be 'cool' without low-tops becoming sort of lame. See also: metal-rimmed glasses/plastic-rimmed glasses; etc.
And just wait: soon the stationwagon will make the same stupid-people-who-think-they-understand-irony sort of comeback that the mesh hat and the muttonchop did.
#3)When considered, the fact that it's actually the bland, proto-fascist, suburban, two-time-Bush-voting, Angelina-Jolie-fascinated twits who have caused all of that stigma to be improperly associated with minivan drivers is actually kinda ironic (as correctly defined). All of those things which you above associated with 'soccer mom'miness (which former minivanners/ soccer moms worked hard to get associated with present minivanners) are more or less precise descriptors of the van-slandering, SUV-driving morons of today themselves. What's ironic is that they don't get this next bit.
#4) In fact, the reason everyone associates all of those bland, flavorless, cable knit, Republican, racist, WASP-y qualities with the minivan is precisely BECAUSE of the people who USED to drive them. The same people who now drive SUVs in their unending, insipid pursuit of cool; those people who rush out weekly and pay ten bucks a head to see some uninspired cinema-length remake of an uninspired sitcom; those folks who actually ARE all those van-associated things which, when perceived as applied to you, caused you to take such umbrage.
Reply to this