Which White Suburban Mom Are You?

Submission 42,586

About

Which Suburban White Mom Are You? is an image macro featuring photographs of various middle-aged women depicted as different suburban white mother stereotypes. The picture was originally featured on Tumblr as a "Tag Yourself" post, inviting viewers to pick a character they identified with most. After widely circulated online in mid April 2016, two of the women pictured in the image came forward noting their photographs had been used without their permission.

Origin

According to BuzzFeed,^[1] a Tumblr user posted the original set of images in February 2016, featuring pictures of six different women with three identifying characteristics each (shown below). The original post has since been deleted.

Spread

In mid April 2016, the images were tweeted by user @lmaoliawyd,^[6] who subsequently deleted the tweet. On April 18th, 2016, Twitter users @girlposts^[2] and @meanplastic tweeted the images, garnering upwards of 25,900 and 7,300 likes respectively over the next week. The following day, blogger Shannon Gurnee published an article titled "The Day My Picture Went Viral…Without My Permission," which criticized the meme for using her picture instead of stock photos.^[3]

Meanwhile, BuzzFeed^[1] published an article about the image series, which included a statement from blogger Shannon A. White noting that she was upset with the image being used without her permission.

"I am a blogger, a Presbyterian Pastor currently leading a large congregation, an author of books, a national speaker, and a former TV News reporter. I have one child -- not 50. While many young girls and women may say, ‘wow I want to be her,’ not one of the responses has been to want to be Jillian. Why is that? The tongue-in-cheek meme of a woman having 50 children, and most certainly needing and deserving a nap. If that’s the case, should be honored. Women who have multiple children should not be made fun of as something women do not want to aspire to."

Also on April 19th, BuzzFeed^[5] posted an online quiz to determine "Which of These Stereotypically Suburban Moms Are You?" On April 21st, The Daily Mail^[7] published an article about the images. On April 22nd, BuzzFeed^[4] published a follow-up article titled "The Story Behind The Meme That Invited Us All To Mock Moms," which criticized the meme for being disrespectful to mothers. That day, Cheezburger^[8] posted the original image.