Instagram Perfect Pool Mom

About

Instagram Perfect Pool Mom refer viral Facebook post in which Facebook user Jen Flint recounted a time in which she witnessed a mother bringing her daughter to the pool to take semi-staged photos for social media. The story was posted in June 2019 and quickly went viral with many mothers reposting the story supporting Flint's intentional message to stay present with their children. Other people criticized the post for shaming the mother in the story.

Origin

On June 19th, 2019, Jen Flint posted a lengthy story to Facebook in which she recounts seeing a mother bring her daughter to the pool. They were in matching bathing suits and the mother was distracted by her phone and only interacted with her childen when she wanted to take pictures of her. Flint went on to say:

I sat there thinking about what I'd witnessed for awhile afterwards. I imagined the photos she took being perfectly edited and posted to social media with a caption like "Pool time with my girly! #Makingmemories".

The post gained over 202,000 reacts, 2,100 comments and 140,000 shares in four months (shown below).

Spread

On June 21st, 2019 Facebook^[1] user Carey Reist-Emm criticized Flint in the comments for shaming the woman in the story. The comment received over 200 reacts in five months (show below, left). Gretchen Diaz also commented with a story that shared the sentiment of the original post (shown below, right).

That day, Jen Flint posted "The ONLY take-away that I intended for you to get from my "pool post" is not to compare your whole self and your whole life to one perfect moment that you see on social media" (shown below). The post accumulated over 700 reacts and 100 shares in five months.

Soon after the initial post was made news outlets such as the Daily Mail^[2] and Neatorama^[3] shared the post. On October 29th, Bored Panda^[4] interviewed Jen Flint who explained:

“The main intention of my post was to help mothers (but really it applies to fathers and teens as well) to realize that what they see on social media isn’t always real and when they scroll through perfectly staged photos of women who are better fit, on exotic vacations, wearing expensive clothes and living in spotless homes, that they need to remember not to compare themselves to what they see.”

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References