Podcast Episode 286: Momlife: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Mary Catherine Starr: I feel like this is like a microcosm of everything about motherhood, like we can say, I don’t feel that this isn’t something that defines me about being good mother. But then the fact is, we grew up in a culture that tells us what makes a good mother. And so everything that we do, we are seeing in this lens of, am I good or am I bad?

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn joined here by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Well, hello, hello, everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: We have such a great episode for you today. It is with Mary Catherine Starr and you might know her better as mom life comics on Instagram, but Oh Brie, like we were just going through so many of our comics on this interview and like asking her the inside questions and she hits on some. So much stuff that just like jabs you in the heart almost as a woman.

Brie Tucker: Right? Like, I really enjoy myself a good animation that can just speak volumes and her work is really awesome. I actually hadn’t seen it before you had mentioned. Having, her on the podcast and I’m like, whoa, first of all, I missed the boat. She’s got like over 300, 000 subscribers on her Instagram.

So I’m like, all right, I missed that boat. But like you said, her stuff is just amazing. I especially feel like we did some pretty good voice acting on the weaponized incompetence graphic. Yeah, yeah, pretty good.

JoAnn Crohn: it is such a fun time. we know you’re going to enjoy this. And, , Mary Catherine Starr, she’s the artist behind the Instagram account, momlifecomics, and a graphic designer, yoga teacher. Feminist and mom of two. She also has a comic memoir coming out called mama needs a minute. And you can expect that in early 2025, she’s passionate about helping moms feel less alone and navigating the challenges of motherhood marriage and being a woman in our patriarchal society.

She totally speaks my language, marries the mom to a seven year old daughter and a four year old son. And we hope you enjoy our interview with Mary Catherine.

So are you in your like art room right now?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, this, I mean, obviously you can see it’s a total mess. This is my, like, office art studio. Yeah, it’s chaos. But fine.

JoAnn Crohn: How long does it take you to draw one of your

Mary Catherine Starr: A long time. I mean, it just depends on, you know, how complicated it is. But, , if it’s like a carousel with a lot, it can take hours and hours. And, you know, if it’s something smaller, it’s not. But yeah, a lot goes into them. And then, you know how Instagram, the algorithm is, like, sometimes no one even sees it.

And you’re like, cool.

JoAnn Crohn: you’re like, great, thank you so much!

Brie Tucker: you’re like,

Mary Catherine Starr: Thanks, Instagram. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: glad that my artwork is making it

Mary Catherine Starr: Yes, yes, and yeah, but you never know what hits, so you just keep going, right?

Brie Tucker: Yep.

JoAnn Crohn: how did you first start doing this?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, um, well, so I’ve, I had, I was a blogger like back in the day when everyone had blogs. Okay, cool, so we got that in common. Yeah, so I started out, blogging. I did that for like 10 years.

And so I think I always include that because I think that was kind of my first foray into like exploring, sharing my life and my personal stories online, you know? So by the time I started making comics, which was in January 2022, I’d spent like 10 years kind of telling about my personal life, explaining what’s going on, talking about my husband, talking about my marriage, talking about, you know, stress and, and all of that.

So, making comics felt like, you know, I’m a graphic designer. I’ve always been an artist. And before I was kind of more of fine arts and then, you know, I was teaching yoga and, you know, worked various corporate jobs and, focusing on blogging. So it was all those kind of things that then eventually came together and I started my own graphic design business and, worked on my blog, graphic design, yoga teacher.

That was kind of my, career journey. And then, had two kids, so I have a seven, now seven year old and four year old, almost

eight

JoAnn Crohn: change everything. Absolutely

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, they do. so my blog kind of like slowly petered off after I had kids, even though I was like, So, so religious about it before. , but I still kind of had, you know, my personal Instagram feed that was associated with my blog.

So in January, 2022, which just, you know, or January, 2020, sorry, right before the pandemic, , is when I started, I, I just started making these little comics and they were really just, I think I made, you know, one or two just as like a fun thing to play with and to share to my personal Instagram. and you know, I had, I don’t know, 1, 500 followers there, you know, it’s just like very small personal.

And, I started noticing pretty quickly that those were out of everything I shared, which, you know, I was sharing, I’m a yoga teacher, so I was sharing yoga stuff and, you know, it was, it had kind of that blogger esque feel to my Instagram feed at that time. I started noticing that the comics were really, getting some traction.

People were sharing lots of comments. , at that point, you know, a lot of my. yoga students who had been with me since my like yoga blogging days were my followers and they were a lot of mom aged women. So, you know, it was kind of like, as I started making these little comics about motherhood for my personal feed, , they were kind of like the same life stage.

A lot of my very small little online community was, you know, going through. So started noticing those got traction. So I kept doing them. I was, they were fun. Then the pandemic hit, then they became my creative outlet as I was stuck at home, you know? And I, obviously everything slowed down for everybody.

I was still working from home with the kids, , running my business, but you know, that slowed. So I had more time to do the comics and just kind of explore. It really was like, um, A therapeutic outlet, kind of like a, you know, a little, a new, a new creative, way to express kind of my frustrations with early motherhood during a pandemic, all the things that we all have talked about so much now.

Yeah, so, I started making them, they started to catch on in. I guess I always have to jot down my timeline a year later. So it’s

Brie Tucker: 2020 has messed up everybody’s sense of time, don’t you guys think? Like, I,

JoAnn Crohn: much

Brie Tucker: yeah, I still feel like that was

JoAnn Crohn: in one.

Brie Tucker: right, I’m, well, and I also have like this weird time warp where I still feel like 2020 was like last year.

Mary Catherine Starr: yeah, it is really weird. And I think depending on when your kids were young too, it like compounds that or changes that, or, you know, whatever stage your kids were in, it’s also like, I don’t know, it’s all a blur, but it was just the really hard years. There’s like five really hard years. I’m like, the pandemic was chocked right in the middle of it.

but yeah, so I guess it was then July, 2021. So I’ve been. Making these comics for about a year and sharing with my personal feed a little bit more than that. I finally was like, you know, these are really, what I was seeing was people, those were really making the rounds, but I wasn’t really getting new followers because it was like people would click over and it would just be like pictures of me and my family and there would be a comic here or there.

So I decided, you know, I wonder what would happen if I like made a feed that was just these comics, like would that, help me kind of reach more people and, and be, you know, kind of a new way to explore telling my story and online. so I made a feed, Mom Life Comics, and obviously kind of what, what I was hoping would happen, happened is that they, you know, it started growing much quicker than my little personal, feed had.

so I did that until, Well, I had about 15, 000 followers in January 2022, which is like two years after I started making the comics. , and that was mom life comics. And then one of my comics went viral. So that’s kind of, you know, the beginning of what is now the journey I’m on with the comics, which is, you know, kind of eclipsed a lot of the other stuff I do just because of the nature of, having a bigger community.

JoAnn Crohn: Exactly. Exactly. And like I, your comics make me laugh so much ’cause they’re so relatable. Uh, like frustrations that like I have in my daily life, like you capture so perfectly in it. Um, one of the ones like I was looking at too is the guy with the weapon, like the weaponized incompetence and the tools of weaponized in competence.

And that’s like something that we talk about on the podcast here too. about that.

Mary Catherine Starr: like that one, my, my husband gave me the idea for that. He’s like, you know, it would be so funny if you drew like a picture of me and I didn’t make it him. I made it an any man because I don’t, you know, I don’t want to always make it about him, but he was like, you made a picture of me doing all the things I say when I like want to not do something.

And I was like, That’s a great idea. Yeah. So, you know, he’s a part, very big part of all of this, both from an inspiration standpoint and like a kind of being okay with being the butt of the joke. and I think that’s really what, you know, in the earlier days of, of me making these, I think that is more what resonated is that, , a lot of them are really personal.

They’re like very personal stories, but they’re Yeah. What I’ve learned is that, you know, so many of us are dealing with these kind of, , dynamics in our home, despite really loving our husbands, , and so trying to figure out a way to, I mean, I, I never want it to be like, ha ha, this is funny and it’s totally fine.

I want to be like, This is funny, but also it’s not okay. We need to change it. So that’s kind of the, balance I’m trying to strike with my comics.

Brie Tucker: Okay, let’s see if I can grab some of the emotion from the Weaponized Incompetence, comic. Alright, let’s see if I can I’m gonna say a couple of the tools that the guy has and you guys tell me on a rating of like, you know, 1 to 10. Like, am I close to what it would sound like? Ready? Oh, but you’re so much better at it than I am. Eh? Eh? That one good?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yep, you got it.

Brie Tucker: How about, No, you didn’t tell me I needed to do that.

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah. My husband always just will say, I didn’t, you never told me that. I never heard that. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Brie Tucker: right, right, but I, but hey, I don’t even know where it goes. You know where it goes.

I swear!

JoAnn Crohn: here’s the one,

the one, I just don’t care about it as much as you do. Like I just, I just don’t care about

Brie Tucker: Ooooooh, that one stings!

JoAnn Crohn: like, I

don’t mind.

Mary Catherine Starr: me like rage inside.

JoAnn Crohn: I don’t mind if there’s like dishes piling up on the sink. it just doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me. Like it does

Mary Catherine Starr: Always. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: but it’s so much easier and quicker if you just do it.

Mary Catherine Starr: know I made this, but It’s still making me mad. I know! That’s what I It’s so funny though, like, you read these things, and these are things like my teenager says to me, and I get mad about that

JoAnn Crohn: too.

Brie Tucker: was gonna say! Can we add the weaponized, part of it? Like, it’s an everyman, but it’s also an everyteen. Like, yeah. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: It is an every teen thing. Yeah. It’s it’s like, Oh my gosh, Mary Catherine, you are not at the stage yet with your children, but get ready. It is coming. Teens are wonderful. I do have to say that right from the beginning, because they are wonderful and they have their qualities, but it’s like one of the most on talked about things when it comes to teens, it’s not rebellious, it’s like making you question your whole being kind of thing, like they’re the,

Mary Catherine Starr: with a toddler, so I gotta get it.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, but they’re the biggest gas lighters.

Like I constantly have to check myself and I’m like, did I say that? What what did I say?

Brie Tucker: and it’s, it’s funny. You said, Mary Catherine, right there, that, like, you get it from your toddler. You do, because we always say that teens are preschoolers, but with better vocabulary. It’s the

Mary Catherine Starr: I’ve heard that.

Brie Tucker: it’s that same thought process, just at a, higher vocab level. That’s all it is.

Mary Catherine Starr: my toddler will, he will absolutely gaslight all of us. he will throw himself on the ground and then say, you hit me. And like, or you pushed me

JoAnn Crohn: No, he does not,

Mary Catherine Starr: not even touch him. And he will act like he’s been, you know, pushed to the ground by a parent. And we both, my husband and I find ourselves looking at each other being like, you didn’t touch him.

Did you? No, you didn’t. Did you? Like, cause he does. He truly gaslights us into thinking that we’re just like knocking him around, you know, but he just throws himself. So yes, I know about the gaslighting. It’s tough. It’s really tough.

Brie Tucker: god.

Mary Catherine Starr: yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: so tough. It’s unbelievable. Like, I was just listening to an episode on Armchair Expert about narcissism and like, she actually says, she makes it a point. She’s like, okay, now with narcissism, we’re talking about people over the age of 25. And both me and my husband were like, that’s because everyone under there is a narcissist.

Mary Catherine Starr: so true. Yes. Yes.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s unbelievable.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, it does make me feel better. It does make me feel better to hear that again. Like I have to hear that part because I’m constantly like, are my kids super, super selfish? Nope. Nope. They are just a team.

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: just a team. Exactly. Exactly. well, Mary Katherine, one of the things I also love about your comics is the way you really highlight the differences between male expectations in society and female expectations. And I want to get into that right after this.

Something you do so well in your comics is you really attack this patriarchy that we have But in a really fun and accessible way, Things that like help us see exactly the differences Between how men think of things and how women think of things And what I wanted to talk to you about is this comic you have about what if dad spoke about hiring household help?

JoAnn Crohn: You The way moms do, and in the comic, if you have not, we will, we’re

Brie Tucker: yeah, there’s a

JoAnn Crohn: to Mary Catherine’s Instagram in the show notes, but in the comic, you have these dads or men talking about hiring a cleaner. And in each of these scenes, it’s saying something along the lines of, I don’t like paying someone to do something that I can do, and I was wondering, .

What the story is behind that and what, like, the connection is to you in that.

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah. Well, so, you know, personally, I, have really been working so hard since becoming a mom. Well, probably ever since I, you know, started living with somebody else, but, to kind of pull myself worth away from like how clean the house is. I do not believe that the cleanliness of a house reflects on the woman in the household.

I do not believe that.

JoAnn Crohn: Yes!

Mary Catherine Starr: and yet because of growing up in our society and in the home I grew up in, I think. In my bones, I believe I’m a failure if my house is clean. And so like what my intellect tells me versus what I feel when our house is really messy is just like, I’m constantly stuck in a push and pull between that.

And so this comment came from that place where I am always trying to figure out in our house, like, obviously we all know once you have kids, your house is just always a disaster, no matter how much you clean, no matter how much you work on it. And. I’m okay with that until I feel like someone else is going to see it, right?

I mean, obviously some clutter drives me crazy, you know, but like, I don’t think I’m a bad mother because I have a dirty house until someone stops by and then I am horrified and I feel like, I can’t believe they saw that. They must, what do they think of me? And I hate that. I hate that I feel that way.

And my husband feels none of that, zero, nothing,

Brie Tucker: Can I just can like they make it they need to focus. okay Pharmaceutical land you guys need to work on a pill that can like take and give us the guilt level of our of males

Mary Catherine Starr: Yes, and give them some of our guilt. They need some, I mean, because he, he truly, like, no part of him thinks that the house reflects on him as a person. And so, even though I know that it doesn’t reflect on me, I really struggle with it. So I’m constantly trying to like, how can I outsource, you know, because I’m overwhelmed, as we all know.

We’re all overwhelmed. We’re all burnt out. So I’m always trying to figure out, like, , who can I hire? How can I outsource this thing so that I don’t have to do this part of the house, whether that’s, Hiring a house cleaner, which is like a whole nother conversation of, guilt and, and should the money go here and, you know, all of that privilege and so much there to unpack, but, just on the surface, like any sort of outsourcing of anything that , I feel in our society has been called like a female job around the house.

Even though I don’t believe it actually is, anything that I outsource in that way, I have all this internal struggle about it. am I a failure because I can’t do this. I feel guilty. I feel embarrassed, you know, and my husband has none of that. So that’s kind of what started this comic because I was I was actually looking for someone to Pay to fold our laundry, which I have succeeded in doing and she has been a

JoAnn Crohn: There’s services for the Yes.

Mary Catherine Starr: Yes, and I love her.

I call her our laundry goddess She comes to our house once a week and she just folds laundry for two hours and it’s so much fun

Brie Tucker: Wait, she just folds it? You don’t have her do like the washing

Mary Catherine Starr: I don’t want her to no, that’s not the part I need. I don’t care about washing I work from home. I can throw stuff in.

Brie Tucker: way! I am the

same

Mary Catherine Starr: just comes and folds. She puts it away She’s in charge of like switching out the seasonal stuff for the kids.

She’s just like a laundry Guru, she’s amazing. And, but you know, I have so much guilt around that, but like, why is it my job to do the household laundry? It’s not, so I’m not going to do it. So I’m going to outsource it. And then, that’s created all this guilt. So blah, blah, blah. All of that is what kind of got me thinking about this comic.

Like, what if men felt even of what we feel? And then, you know, the dialogues are pretty easy. Like everything that I’ve heard any of my friends say or anyone online say to me, I just flipped it to a man saying it, you know, and that’s. Not hard.

JoAnn Crohn: no, it’s, it’s so interesting. The guilt that we feel around this. And like, I felt the same thing about hiring a house cleaner and I’ve had a house cleaner for many, many years. And I admit to myself, like, I hate cleaning, hate it like with a passion and we wouldn’t do it. And the first time I hired a house cleaner and like they were finished for the day and I went upstairs and my house smelled.

Amazing. And my current house cleaners, actually, they make like little roses and flowers with the ends of the paper towels and the

Brie Tucker: we’re going to need a picture of that on Instagram,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s just like gorgeous. They do such a better job than I ever could. And I think like from watching that happen, it’s made me appreciate that. Hey, like this money is actually being.

Given to like a really good thing, because we get so much guilt as women around money like all the time,

Brie Tucker: any money on ourselves, right? Like, and, and like we, like you just said, both of you just said, you’re not spending on yourself, like on cleaning the house, but yet you feel like you are because it’s like, well, I, I guess technically this is like my job to be doing this, even though, no, you’ve got a full time job.

Mary Catherine Starr: And it’s, it’s just, it’s, it makes me so angry. like at myself because I, you know, I try to have a lot of grace about it. I’m like, I don’t believe this. I can say without a doubt in my mind, I do not believe that a house reflects on a woman. And yet here I am, you know? And so it’s just, I feel like this is like a microcosm of.

Everything about motherhood, like we can say, I don’t feel that this isn’t something that defines me about being good mother. But then the fact is, we grew up in a culture that tells us what makes a good mother. And so everything that we do, we are seeing in this lens of, am I good or am I bad?

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah.

Mary Catherine Starr: Usually, I find myself lacking, you know, and why is that? Because I’ve been told that moms have to do everything and do it all perfectly. So I, you know, like the house is just one example of, I think, every single thing that we come up against as a mom, and like every facet of mothering. And

so,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s insidious too. Like it gets in your brain, how you’re talking right now, but you know it intellectually, but you feel it in your heart, it is so pervasive in society that and you know, this from being like public on Instagram and you get like all of these horrible comments from people that tell you that you’re like worst fears about yourself and you see them and you’re like, Oh, intellectually, that’s not true.

But then you feel yourself

Brie Tucker: Yeah. You feel it.

JoAnn Crohn: Doing it.

Yeah. I mean, I, there was this viral thing that went, I said something about Harrison Bukker, um, which was a very,

Brie Tucker: her comic on that too. I’m like,

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. and of course all of the white men came out of the woodwork and started like, Harassing me about it and how, like, you don’t think women should stay home or like lazy or, you know, all those things.

And you hear them and you’re like, Oh, they’re just dumb. But then I will see myself around the house. And I’m, I found myself the other night doing one of my husband’s jobs because I’m like, Oh, I just want to help him out. I just want to make sure. And I’m like, what am I doing?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah.

Yes.

JoAnn Crohn: to me?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah. I mean, it, it, it’s absolutely, I mean, I truly think it’s so hard to even begin to separate, we’ve been taught versus what we actually believe. And I’m constantly trying to like examine that. And it’s, it’s really hard. It’s really hard. It’s like a lifelong journey.

Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: Something else that you tackle in your comics is body image with men and women. And, I want to get into that right after this, something else you really tackle is this body image, between men and women. And I loved, one that you post recently, especially cause we’re in the middle of summer.

It’s swimsuit season and how like men’s bodies are always like glorified in some extent. Like it’s dad bod. Look at him. He’s out there having fun. And then you have mom out here kind of hiding under all of her coverups or Being judged and saying like, Oh, she shouldn’t be wearing that. She shouldn’t be wearing that.

yeah,

Brie Tucker: there was, I was telling JoAnn about this. I don’t know if you saw this too, Mary Catherine, but there was this tick tock that went around for a little while ago. It’s gotta be at least a month old, if not longer now where this woman was saying like, If you’re over a certain age or if you are over a certain size, you should not be wearing crop tops.

I’m sorry. I’m going to say it right. And it’s like, nobody, nobody would ever say that there is a certain thing that like you’re pointing out there. Like nobody would ever say there’s a certain thing that a man shouldn’t wear, but Oh, let’s police women and make them feel

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, one more thing that’s wrong with them. Yeah, yeah. One more thing they’re failing at is now their bodies too, you know, and it’s not just, it’s not just your, you know, the shape of your body or your weight. It’s also your, body hair. It’s also your skin tone. It’s also your hair. It’s also, you know, your teeth.

I mean, it’s all of it, you know, your wrinkles, anything. I mean, I just, you know, our eyebrow shape. I mean, every single thing about us, what’s wrong, you know, what is wrong, everything. yeah, I mean, I have so much I want to say about body image that I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface in terms of my comics, because that’s I mean, it’s another area that I’m super passionate about.

Before becoming a mom, I was, like, very focused on, on that. so, I’m gonna do more with that, because I just think it’s another double standard that’s, like, obviously everywhere.

JoAnn Crohn: Well, it’s interesting because like our kids are actually growing up in a slightly different environment than we did. Like, early nineties is like late, nineties. Really? I graduated in 99 from high school. But the body image then was like, you really had to be thin. It was like the Mandy Moore aesthetic on MTV spring break.

now like I’m seeing more acceptable images of bodies come out so much so that like my daughter was, And like she and I have very similar bodies where we’re not stick thin, like they’re very healthy. They’re great. But it’s a body. I also would not have been confident to wear a two piece about when I was a teenager.

Now I am, my daughter has no qualms about it. She’s like, Oh, I like those suits and they’re wonderful. And I love that. That is her perception of bodies now, because

Mary Catherine Starr: that. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: didn’t have that. I didn’t have that. So I, there is hope coming with Gen Z with body

Mary Catherine Starr: hope so.

Yeah, I’m

glad to hear that.

JoAnn Crohn: what else do you want to say about body image?

Like you said, you’ve just begun to scratch the surface.

Mary Catherine Starr: Well, I think that kind of the next frontier as I am about to be 40 soon later this year and like, as I start to age, for me, I’ve been thinking a lot about aging and the expectations around how women age and how men age, silver Fox versus like going gray and letting yourself go, you know, looking old versus looking, I forget what people call men right now, but you know, like, I just feel like, you know, the George Clooney’s first, yeah, distinguished.

Thank you. Yes. or like salt and pepper, you know, he’s, and so that’s another, I mean, I think it’s all very related for me, but, yeah, I think the aging is the next place I want to talk about, but I, I’m always coming back to, body shape

Brie Tucker: There’s something about turning 40 that makes you go in that route. That makes you start questioning, and I think it’s for, I don’t know if it’s for men as much as it is for women because,

JoAnn Crohn: They have their midlife crises, things that they’ve like, it’s just different. We have our body image stuff. We have like our household responsibilities. Men really have. qualms about like, if they’re strong enough, if they’re big enough, if they’re protectors, like if a guy is tinier than other men, he does feel it, versus if a woman is larger than other women.

That’s what she feels. so they have their own hangups and everything. I wanted to bring it back to the aging comment though. because aging among women, like it’s not a natural thing that’s discussed because you look at people like, I was just watching Atlas yesterday on Netflix, which is the new JLo movie and JLo’s in her mid fifties and she looks phenomenal.

Brie Tucker: if I look like that when I am at the, I, yeah, I just, I want to look like her.

JoAnn Crohn: she has to do to achieve that is unreal. No caffeine, no sugar,

Brie Tucker: Oh, I’m out

JoAnn Crohn: daily intense workouts. Like every, yeah,

Mary Catherine Starr: And I think too, I mean, I’m seeing so much more. I love it because I see online, I think there’s a lot more women, who are being really, uh, Transparent about what they do to stay looking young, you know So many more people are coming out saying like I do botox or I do this or you know I get these treatments once every two months or whatever it is and I appreciate that.

I appreciate people saying, you know like this is how I Stay looking young and vibrant and you know, but I also feel like also problematic, right? Like I want the honesty. I want the transparency. It’s not problematic if you choose to do that That’s fine. But the fact that we all see Feel that we need to look young is the problem there So not that I think any woman can make any choice they want about their body and how they look and that’s fabulous I don’t care what you do But I think the fact that we all feel this pressure so whether we’re Doing something about it or not.

you know, I think we’re all feeling this societal, Young is good wrinkles are bad aging as As a woman means you lose all value and you start to be ignored by society, yeah, I mean I just think that I still have a lot to explore there, but I’ve just been noticing that in my peers and some of the people I follow, and I’m like, hmm,

Brie Tucker: Yeah, no, it’s a really good point. Like, do what makes you feel happy and what brings you joy, not because you feel like you have to, to be valued. That’s that, that’s that tricky part there,

Mary Catherine Starr: And again, what, part of that is it makes me happy versus I’m doing it because I think I have to to look good in the eyes of others, you know, and I think that’s a really hard line again coming back to the same thing about the house cleaning like It’s really hard to separate what you actually believe what makes you feel confident versus what makes you feel confident because Otherwise you’ll feel bad about yourself because you’re told this is how you’re supposed to be.

Yeah

JoAnn Crohn: think that’s really the key and it’s interesting about the, you mentioned how people are more open about what they do to their body. There’s an author that I follow and I love her books like so much, but she was getting ready to go out on a book tour for a really big book and she made it public, like how, what she did to her face before the book tour.

And it was like a lot of injections in the face and I’m like, no, like you don’t have to do that. Please don’t do that. And she says to freshen up For her book tour and for all of her pictures. And it really comes down to the thing of, okay, how will I not be ignored by other people? How will people not make this about the way I look and concentrate instead on what I produce?

Because. I think that’s always the subject with women. Like if you don’t look like you’re wide awake and you’re like put together, oh my gosh, the subject will automatically go to your looks. And then Leonardo DiCaprio is out here like. What happened, Leo? Come on, why isn’t anyone talking about that? And why is he like, he’s like, Oh, he’s such an amazing actor.

And no one’s saying Leo, let himself go. Where if Leo was a woman, you know, that that would have been the conversation. That one makes me so mad

because he was a hottie.

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, I mean, I think, but you bring up a good point. Like, it’s not that men don’t get the scrutiny. It’s that the type of scrutiny and the amount of scrutiny they get and the judgment on like their character based on their appearance, like people will might, maybe they’d say, Oh, he’s let himself go, but no one really cares.

Whereas if a woman, like a woman can be like erased from society of over time, if she does, isn’t seen as like caring about how she looks, and isn’t constantly trying to kind of keep up. So, yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s, you know,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s

exhausting. It’s you’re totally right though, because Leo’s income is not at all affected. In fact, he probably got another Oscar because he’s so brave to go out in the world like that, you know?

Mary Catherine Starr: Yeah, he looks so rugged, and yeah, he’s been through a tough life, and isn’t that so valued?

Brie Tucker: Rugged, it would be the description. And, run over would be the description if it were a woman. Like,

run down, run down, not run over, run down. Yay!

JoAnn Crohn: one miss makes me upset. Well, I so love the work you do. Mary Catherine, what do you have coming up for you that you’re really excited about?

Mary Catherine Starr: Well, like any mom, I, doing a project that would take other people maybe like a year has taken me like two or three and I’ve been working on a book, early, well, I guess like mid 2022 is when I started this process and my book will be coming out in March of 2025. So it’s still far away, but I am getting close.

So obviously, , long time for anybody listening before it’s actually out, but I’m still in the throes of that. And that’s really what I’m focused on. But. otherwise, I just, I’m excited, you know, now that I’m wrapping up finally my book, I’m excited to kind of refocus on making new comics and tackling some of these new subjects because I’ve been so busy that I’ve, I’ve been having to like repost a lot of old comics and so I’m excited to kind of explore some new, some new stuff and then the next couple months.

Brie Tucker: I love

JoAnn Crohn: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Well, I, I love all your comics. I look forward to each and every one that you post and thank you so much for joining us here today and we’ll

Mary Catherine Starr: you Thank you. It was so great to be on.

JoAnn Crohn: I wanted to sing the patriarchy song during this interview that we learned from Amelia Nagoski. And if you don’t know that, that episode, you got to listen to that episode. We are going to put it in the show notes for you. Like Amelia Nagoski is the author of the book. Burnt Out has a song about patriarchy.

It’s like white supremacist. Like it’s such a good one. I think they would really like it. And they live in the same town. Mary Catherine and Amelia

Brie Tucker: They’re both in Cape Cod. Well, I mean, it’s not like it’s a little town nobody’s heard of. I mean.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah,

Brie Tucker: I would say if nothing else, at least if you like seafood, you know about Cape Cod. We’ll say

JoAnn Crohn: they would totally jive. I think I’m going to actually write an email of introduction to both of them because they would totally jive.

Brie Tucker: together. You would just love each other’s company. It’s fantastic. I feel like

JoAnn Crohn: Mary Catherine could like write comics for a lot of the things in burnout. Like it’s unbelievable how well they correlate. They really do making connections in real time.

You’re hearing the ideas. I’m going to do it. I’m

Brie Tucker: I, well, it’s funny. I was going to say, like, I think a lot of times, like, we’ll be interviewing somebody and we think to ourselves, like, Oh, they’d be really good friends with so and so. I tend to blurt it out when I’m like, it would be us. You’d be really good friends with most of our guests. Like, I don’t know.

I would say like 99. 9 percent of them, I’m like, we should be friends in real life. I know that you live across the country or in a different country, but we should still be friends.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. I, I, I get it. If, if we can’t see them in real life, I mean, Cape Cod is probably a good five,

Brie Tucker: I know I have not been there. I think that we need to go visit our new friends in Cape Cod. Like

JoAnn Crohn: I have been there. My cousin got married in Cape Cod. She got married in Mashpee. Shout out to Mashpee. and I was wondering what, I need to, I should have asked them what towns they were in Cape Cod.

Because it is quite the big place.

Brie Tucker: Is that like saying like Phoenix, like I thought Cape Cod itself was a city.

JoAnn Crohn: no! Cape Cod is like, it’s an area. It’s like the little, like, Those of you who cannot see my hand expressions, I’m doing this little like crescent with my hand for Brie on Massachusetts. It’s like the little crescent on Massachusetts

Brie Tucker: can you believe, like, I’m, I’m from the East coast. My whole family is from Maryland and I have never been in New England. Not once in my

JoAnn Crohn: oh man. Oh man. Cape Cod is where Plymouth is. You could go see Plymouth Rock,

Brie Tucker: Eh. It was cold when they landed. I really don’t care. It was, uh, no. I don’t,

JoAnn Crohn: not impressive. You’re like, expecting this big rock. Like, think like, I was expecting like, Goonies size rock.

Brie Tucker: I’ve heard that!

JoAnn Crohn: off, off Astoria, in Oregon, actually, it’s a, it’s south, it’s called Cannon Beach, is where the Goonies rocks are, in Oregon.

You expect that. And, no, it’s like, the size of my chair. There’s rock and it’s in the water and you like, go up to this fence and you look down and there’s 1620 right there on the rock and you’re like, this is it? Like, it is it? Yeah.

Brie Tucker: really? They, they like, they made a big deal about that? I don’t think they did. I don’t

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. So it’s really interesting. and now I’m getting scared that people will listen to this episode and I totally got Cape Cod wrong. Like, no, it is a peninsula in Massachusetts. It is a peninsula. That is the word I was looking for when I was doing my little crescent shapes. Peninsula.

Brie Tucker: know, and the other thing, too, that was hilarious about this whole thing was that honestly, like, when we had our breaks, we just kept chatting on and on and on. Like, I think we could do like another couple of episodes with Mary Catherine alone. Like, it was just, just talking about the whole thing with the cleaning.

And the stress that we put on with all of that and,

JoAnn Crohn: It’s a lot.

Brie Tucker: and the ridiculousness of, if men were to be having these mainstream conversations that we have about our guilt, and I still want that pill. I still want the guilt pill, the one that like, that can like, freaky Friday, our guilt levels, like, let them let, men feel what we feel.

And then we get to feel what they feel.

JoAnn Crohn: But then if you don’t remember to take the pill, there will be repercussions. Because here’s my situation right now, Brie, I’ve been on anti anxiety meds for like two years, and I cannot take my med with my stomach meds because I have all issues, and so I frequently don’t remember if I’ve taken my med or not, and I’m in that situation today and it has, Such a half life, the met I’m on that, like, I get brain zaps if I don’t take it.

And so I’m feeling a little weird right now, but there’s no brains app. So I’m like, did I, did I take it? So I’m wondering like with the guilt pill, I’m like, if you don’t take the guilt pill, will there be repercussions? Like, are we going to have a chemical dependency here with no guilt? Like

Brie Tucker: Freaky Friday. It’s a one day thing like

JoAnn Crohn: a one day thing.

Okay.

Brie Tucker: or actually I guess Freaky Friday is like a week, isn’t it? Like you have to trade back by next Friday. So Yeah, that would be my only fear to be stuck without like well I don’t know if I’d be a fear that actually might be a good thing being able to like permanently Offload the guilt you feel for crap.

It’s not your job.

JoAnn Crohn: Yep,

Brie Tucker: but that’s our goal.

JoAnn Crohn: she gave me an idea for an Instagram reel. My, my most recent Instagram reel and guys, we’re recording this on May 30th. So you’re gonna have to really go back, really go back on Instagram to find this.

Brie Tucker: I’ll

put a link to it in the show notes.

JoAnn Crohn: it says being a good mom does not mean you have a clean house.

Or something like that.

And then I jump over the words. Because it’s Instagram

Brie Tucker: Cause that’s your new favorite like feature right now. It’s

JoAnn Crohn: It is my favorite, favorite thing to do on Instagram Reels. It looks so cool. I could go like back and forth of like, ha ha, ha ha. I’m like, I love

Brie Tucker: I love it. I love it. So yeah, so we’re going to have, I’ll have a link to that. There is a link to that in the show notes. There’s also a link to Mary Catherine’s, Instagram for, Mom Life Comics.

. And I I’m hoping we get to have her back when she writes her book. I want to see her book. She was saying that’s going to be mainly, a lot of the graphics. And I’m excited about that.

JoAnn Crohn: That’ll be exciting. And until next time, remember, the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.