Many Such Takes: Mom Breaks, Bridgerton Ball, Folic Acid, and More

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. For previous issues of Many Such Takes, see this tab on my main page. Many Such Takes will always be free, so please become a free subscriber to see more every Sunday!

CHH Highlights of the Week

Before I get into Many Such Takes, allow me to plug some of the cool CHH spottings that happened this week!

• I was a guest speaker on Feminine Chaos, an amazing podcast by smart and hilarious women

• I was highlighted in the Many Such Cases newsletter (not to be confused with Many Such Takes) and you should all follow that one too!

• I published my full guide for finding your fashion aesthetic (especially after age 30)

Mom Breaks

This week brought us one of the classic engagement bait post genre: guy surrounded by weapons, asking you to share an unpopular opinion.

These posts always feel weird to me because it feels like you kind of have immunity when you post in response to them—after all, you’re already admitting your take is going to be controversial. It feels redundant for someone to yell at you for posting your gun-guy or sword-guy take. Like “I think dogs should vote.” Okay whatever. But this is Mom Twitter, so naturally things are going to get out of hand, and they did, with this take (username censored so she doesn’t get piled on):

This post doesn’t mention the type of break, and it’s important to note that the woman who posted it has one child who is four month old. At that point, you’re still in the honeymoon phase and it’s pretty normal to want to spend all your time with your baby (when my first was this age, I’d put him down for his nap and then just scroll on my phone to look at photos of him.) There was some chemical reaction in my brain that made me lose interest in basically all my hobbies for about six months or so. When I had my second child, I lost all interest in playing video games. She’s a year old and I still haven’t regained it (that’s probably for the best, as I have basically no time to play them.) But I have regained my interest in writing (lucky for you guys! Just imagine a world with no CHH!!)

Of course, some moms do like “me time” right away. This has nothing to do with being a good or bad mom and (in my opinion, anyway) it’s all about how easily you get touched out or overstimulated, and how much you like to be alone in general. Some people like time alone without their spouse and as long as it’s a reasonable amount of time nobody questions their love for their partner. I’m an extrovert and I absolutely hate being alone for long stretches of time, so it makes sense that I don’t want more than a few hours away from my kids at a time. It doesn’t make me a better mom; it’s just my personality.

But of course, we can’t have this type of nuance on Twitter. The reactions fell into two camps: people eager to tell OP that she should “just wait” because she’s going to be miserable once her kid gets older or she has more, and people siding with OP and doubling down to say that moms who do need breaks don’t love their kids.

This prompted this update from OP, which suddenly conflated "a break” with “a weekend away” which I think is a huge distinction. I go nuts if I don’t get at least an hour to myself every day to write my next article, or sew something. But I would actually have a panic attack if I had to take a weekend away from my kids. Huge difference!! (Also, I actually think it’s fine to have a weekend away. My parents occasionally traveled without us and we had a lot of fun watching movies and eating TV dinners with our nanny.)

We finally got a sane take here, but it wasn’t countered with much sanity unfortunately:

Side note: I kind of unironically love OP’s repeated use of the redheaded emoji (as sa big fan of the pale brunette emoji myself.)

Twitter user OctoAbbi had similar sentiments about the honeymoon phase, and was promptly accused of hating her children by a male user who did not appear to have children:

Classic Mom Twitter. I’m sure we’ll do this again in a few months. On a completely different note, this mom’s innocently funny story about her three-year-old telling her to stop singing culminating in an accusation of demon possession:

Bridgerton Ball

Remember Willy’s Chocolate Experience, the Glasgow Willy Wonka inspired scam that lured hapless guests to a “Willy Wonka experience” using this foolproof AI image?

Who doesn’t love exarserdray lollipops and cartchy tuns?? In case you don’t remember (or never heard about it) this experience turned out to be nightmare fuel, think Fyre Festival but Willy Wonka themed. It was held in a dingy warehouse, didn’t include anything advertised, but bafflingly did include a non-canonical masked character called “The Unknown” who materialized from behind a mirror.

Anyway, the same thing happened this week, except it was a Bridgerton-themed ball in Detroit.

The linked thread has the full story, and there’s a lot going on there, but the funniest part was probably the inexplicable lone stripper for entertainment (OP was corrected and told that this person is a “pole artist,” not a stripper. This is probably true, as she isn’t taking off her clothes, but it’s neither here nor there because I also don’t think a pole artist is particularly Bridgerton-coded.)

The story has since hit BuzzFeed, which also details the fact that the attendees were fed raw chicken.

Folic Acid

I exist on the periphery of right wing Twitter as the token lib, eager to share my learnings. This week, I learned that apparently folic acid has gone woke. To sum things up:

I’m partially responsible for this- I wrote about car seat guidelines and how difficult they are for parents to adhere to while having multiple kids yesterday. But I’m quick to admit I’m a little kooky.

Anyway, what the hell is going on with folic acid? It all started with this tweet about folic acid free hamburger buns:

In case you aren’t aware of the background here: folic acid is an important vitamin that’s frequently added to grains (ie: enriched flour) because it has important health benefits, especially for pregnant women and their babies. Prenatal vitamins are typically loaded with folic acid because a folic acid deficiency during pregnancy can result in neural tube defects, which are often fatal (and even when they aren’t fatal, can still be devastating.)

The “trad” opposition to added folic acid is that it’s an artificial vitamin, not that it’s inherently bad. The idea is that they should be absorbing enough folic acid from other sources, like food. I actually think this is fine on a personal level, if you’re able to actually eat enough food that’s rich in folic acid. That said, folic acid should probably still be added to things like cereal and flour because lots of people don’t have access to (or knowledge of) foods naturally rich in folic acid. I also don’t know of any downsides to consuming “artificial” folic acid. Or any other vitamin, really. But perhaps I’m just brainwashed by Big Folic Acid.

Apparently the folic acid concern can be traced back to MTHFR genetic variations. This is when it gets too medical and sciencey for me to pretend to know what I’m talking about:

This take seems reasonable enough:

Best Tweets of the Week

I love this take by

Infinite Scroll

writer Jeremiah Johnson, because it perfectly encapsulates how unfunny things have gotten (except him- he’s funny and you should follow him.)

There’s also this interesting take on why you should be Catholic after the unsettling discovery of Russel Brand baptizing someone in tightie-whities (this is some “I didn’t have that on my 2020 bingo card” shit. Get that crap out of 2024!)

If you liked this issue of Many Such Takes, you might like…