Many Such Takes: Bikini Mom, CEO Seduced My Wife, Easy Parenting, Nosy Nurses, Polyamory-phobia

The most unhinged discourse of the week, always free

Welcome to Many Such Takes! I stay up to date with the latest and most chaotic Twitter discourse so you don’t have to. If you see yourself featured here and you don’t like it, simply send me a Substack message and I will happily remove, no matter who you are or what you said.

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Polyamory-Phobia

Some discourse is just perfect. You just know if anyone feeds into it, it’s going to take over your feed all week. Well, a Twitter user decided to try this one out:

This probably originated from a now-deleted thread where someone asked “hot polyamorous people” to post selfies, which resulted in this hit QT:

Look, I’m not saying polyamorous people are ugly (there are some pretty hot ones if you’re looking around tpot) but your average polyamorous person—the quirk chungus Reddit ones, if you will—do tend to be geeky. And while geeky doesn’t equal “ugly” (I hate to call anyone ugly!) it typically doesn’t equal “conventionally hot.” See my below cartoon:

Overwhelmingly though, the idea that mocking polyamorous people’s looks was secretly homophobia or transphobia felt very…2020. It’s giving “this you?” It’s giving snitch-tagging employers. It’s giving CHAZ. We don’t want that shit here.

People refused to take the bait (except to declare that they were not taking the bait.) Leave that crap in 2020, we’re doing this now:

CEO Seduced my Wife

Recently, I’ve fallen for a few very good troll tweets, so when I saw the below tweet, I actually thought it was another joke, especially combined with the weird uncanny-valley name “Ethan Evans”

But apparently it was real! And Ethan continued the discussion on LinkedIn, where apparently nobody made fun of him for it. As you can probably imagine, the same was not true on Twitter.

What’s even better is that just the previous day, he posted about his expertise in “managing up.” Step one: don’t let the boss clap your wife’s cheeks.

In all seriousness, this situation is pretty sad and I feel bad for Ethan and his wife, assuming this is the full story. I hope they worked things out. But given that Ethan worked as a VP at Amazon, it’s very funny to imagine that the lothario CEO was Jeff Bezos, the praises of whom Ethan was singing in June 2024:

I mean…wouldn’t you?

Nosy Nurses

On August 18, Twitter user Utterly_Jean (I would say from a cursory view of her profile- a relatively crunchy mom account?) posted that she was irritated by the constant check-ins from nurses after giving birth:

What ensued was an argument that served as a proxy war between Crunchy Mamas (tm) and The Science (tm). I actually didn’t know who to side with. I don’t consider myself crunchy, but they made a decent point that visitors at the hospital can be intrusive (there is no reason to check on you to ask for newborn photos when you’re trying to sleep.)

Then a 14K like QT continued the conversation:

This erupted into a debate about whether nurses are Mean Girls or not. There’s been a longstanding stereotype that all the girls who bullied you became nurses (the most popular girl in my high school did become a nurse, but she was actually kind of nice.)

Easy Parenting

Look, I don’t want to slam anyone involved in this because I try to assume good intent, but I never understood moms who felt the need to post about how being a mom is so much easier for them than it is for other people and how they “can’t relate” to the struggle. There are LOTS of things I find easy. Because I find these things easy, I just don’t really notice if other people struggle with them, or I feel bad for those people. It would never occur to me to be like, “I don’t understand people who have writer’s block, I always have something to write about! I post a Substack article almost every day—why are these people struggling so much?”

This Twitter user (who I’ve censored because I don’t think she deserves a pile-on) apparently doesn’t abide by this rule:

Oh, there it is! The assumption that working moms are selfishly refusing to give up working and things would be so much easier if they stayed home (except I’ve also been told being a SAHM is the hardest job in the world. I’m confused.)

Look, this person could be perfectly nice (and maybe she’s genuinely gifted in the mothering area and truly is better than everyone else, who knows?) I just truly can’t relate to why some moms feel the need to post about how they can’t relate to moms who are struggling. I never struggle with thinking I’m better than everyone, I just can’t relate! Lucy Huber had her take as well:

This take sums up my view exactly:

Every time discourse like this happens, there’s always a rebuttal in which the OP says that they were merely gushing about how much they love motherhood and other people decided to be slimy and rude out of jealousy, as if the entire original thread wasn’t not-so-subtly mocking moms who struggle and explicitly referring to them as selfish:

I wish gentle parenting redirected with Twitter mom feuds. Hey everyone, let’s play with some beige wooden blocks!

Many Such Takes Deep Dive: Hot Bikini Mom:

Best Tweets of the Week

• This funny child (Sorry to post this user twice in one issue, I just love this tweet and the previous take):

• This perfect description of what Twitter is like for moms these days:

• This handy chart for color coordinating in outfits

• This great bit (let him cook!)