Tina Fey On Motherhood
When it comes to story fodder, nothing is off limits for Tina Fey.
In the comedy icon’s bestselling 2011 memoir, Bossypants, Fey discussed her excessive body hair, near-fatal post-nuptial cruise ship disaster, and struggles with institutionalized misogyny, all the while managing to induce belly laughs at the turn of every page.
Botched suicide bomber missions? OD’ing strippers? Impossible standards of beauty? Tina Fey finds a punchline in the strangest of places.
Her characteristic offside wit has earned Fey eight Primetime Emmys, six Writer’s Guild awards, and the Mark Twain Prize for comedy, among many other accolades. In honor of Mother’s Day 2015, let’s explore the many mothering tips Tina Fey has bestowed on us as only she can.
Breastfeeding
Tina Fey is a heavy proponent of breastfeeding. As she herself said in Bossypants, “The breast is best.”
“You owe it to your baby to get them that breast milk,” Fey said, pointing out pumping as a viable alternative for mothers who “choose to not love their baby enough to breastfeed.”
Besides her struggles with actually getting her baby to feed (for resistant tots, Fey recommends the “Bret Michaels” maneuver of pinning your baby to the ground and inserting your nipple into its mouth), running out of Entourage episodes to watch while pumping was the most difficult part of breastfeeding for Tina Fey.
Life Choices
Every mother wants to instill in her child the wisdom to navigate the obstacles that await them. In “A Mother’s Prayer for Her Daughter,” the comedienne outlines those obstacles one by one, each one drawing guttural chuckles.
On tattoos, she says the following.
“May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie The Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.”
On predatory suitors, as follows.
“May she be beautiful but not damaged, for it is the damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye and not the beauty.”
On her life vocation, as follows.
“Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.”
On choosing a life partner, as follows.
“May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.”
Fighting The Effects Of Gravity
It’s an issue every mother must face, and Tina Fey is by no means exempt from the laws of gravity. But for Fey, nature’s pull is just God’s way of sealing your inevitable fate, of becoming your own mother.
“One day in the next ten years, my back roll will meet up with my front pouch forever obscuring my high waist and I will officially be my mother.”
Missing Your Baby
New mothers will surely relate to this one. When the maternity leave is over, it can be devastating to not be able to see your baby every minute of every day. But not to worry: Tina Fey has a solution for that: Cry.
“This work thing was not going away. There was no prolonged stretch of time in sight when it would just be my baby and me. I sobbed in my office for 10 minutes. The same ten minutes magazines urge me to use for situps and tricep dips.”
Speaking to the L.A. Times after she hosted the Mother’s Day, 2011, episode of SNL, Tina offered yet another pearl of wisdom not included in Bossypants. “Don’t make the mistakes that I made,” she warned, “specifically getting drunk on rose wine and having unprotected sex on a roller coaster at Epcot Japan.”
She further described the experience of being a new mother to the Huffington Post: “You’re just like a human napkin for kids, like, they just wipe their face on you and stuff.”
[Photo Credit: The Spy]
