What Motherhood Looks Like in ‘Florida!!!’

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I’m in Florida this week doing research for my book. It’s unusual for me to be traveling alone. I’m staying in the Tampa Bay area in an Airbnb that is a restored 1963 travel trailer, a twee millennial dream in glossy red and white. It’s the perfect size for one person, and it isn’t at all depressing to return to it exhausted after a day of talking to strangers and trying to remain presentable in the heat. While I sit outside having my coffee in the morning and my beer at night, I watch the geckos run around the yard and listen to a dog next door who gently howls and his owner who gently replies “shut up” over and over again. I feel abundantly at peace.

The trailer is in the host’s backyard, and there’s another, nearly identical trailer about 20 feet away. It’s not as cute as mine. We share an interesting indoor-outdoor bathroom situation, and I have my own private outdoor shower, which is nice. The Airbnb listing said that there may be guests staying in the other trailer, and there is a dude in there, but he’s definitely not a “guest.” I’m pretty sure he’s the host’s adult son, or maybe nephew. I know he’s in there by the glow of a screen shining through the curtains at night. There is a certain Boo Radley energy at play here, but my frame of mind is so positive that I am kindly disposed to him, too. I’m sure he’s been instructed by his mother/aunt to make himself scarce around the Airbnbers, but I’m assuming he’s cool.

A couple of days after I arrived, Taylor Swift released her new album, including a song (featuring Florence Welch) called “Florida!!!” She’s singing about Florida as a lawless place where you come to escape the patterns and rules that have previously defined you. “Florida is America’s id,” a friend warned me before I came down, and Taylor seems to think so too. I listened to the song a few times while driving around in my rental car. I think it’s one of the better tracks on the album.

I came down here to talk to Florida mothers about how they tell their family stories on social media. While there are plenty of priorities that families all over the country fundamentally share, I would struggle to define the political concerns of the Florida moms I’ve spoken to. There is much more nuance and variation than I am accustomed to in my northeastern bubble.

When I’m in a new place looking to chat with people I wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to meet, I usually join local Facebook mom groups and meetup.com groups for people new to a city. Mom groups on Facebook have a reputation for being judgy spaces, but that’s rarely been my experience. And you never know which direction a new group of strangers might send you off in.

My first night, I went to a meetup of women on the patio of a bar. Loud music pounded from the speakers — Smash Mouth, then Linkin Park. In any other gathering of women in their 30s and older, there would have been exchanges of tight smiles and some meaningful leaning in to hear one another. “Wow,” I can hear us saying, a little exasperated. “This music!” No one at this gathering seemed to notice. They just yelled to be heard. The group seemed immune to this kind of stimulus, inoculated by the chaos of their environment.

There is a subaudible hum of unpredictability here. The mythical Florida Man is embarrassing and annoying to a lot of Floridians I’ve met (“Mostly it’s just like anyplace else — there’s Target and the mall,” one mom remarked to me), but Florida Man gestures toward an eccentricity that reveals itself often in ways big and small. The usual identity scripts that those of us in the Northeast rely so heavily on (much too heavily on, one could argue) are of little use here. You really never know what beliefs someone holds, which can make conversation exciting and off-kilter.

Case in point: Half of the women yelling over the Smash Mouth told me (unprompted, I might add) that they hadn’t ever been vaccinated against COVID. All had different reasons why they didn’t do it. But I wouldn’t have wanted to guess any of their voting habits — I would have been shooting in the dark. They didn’t seem Trumpy, but I couldn’t imagine any of them being enthusiastic about Biden.

The following day, my contacts in a Facebook mom group led me to be invited to an event for a congressional candidate, Whitney Fox, who is running against a MAGA Republican incumbent, Anna Paulina Luna. It’s a rare national-level contest between two mothers in their 30s in a district that has voted both ways over the years. The woman hosting the event in her home, who works in financial planning, said in her introductory remarks that she never would have predicted that she would host a political event. What got her into politics, she said, was the specter of fetal-personhood legislation that would limit access to IVF treatment.

For a candidate like Whitney Fox, the support of otherwise politically ambivalent voters will be essential. Fox’s success will depend on building a coalition between women who are primarily worried about IVF availability and women with more progressive priorities like affordable housing or trans rights. The all-or-nothing mentality that many people I know indulge in is a rarefied position to hold, contingent on never having to compromise with people you don’t completely agree with. One mother I met has recently joined a dating app, and she’s added a disclaimer to her profile: She won’t disqualify a partner based on politics as long as he won’t disqualify her based on hers.

Meanwhile, the Floridian Swifties I’ve met are embracing the song. Although one fan I spoke to felt like maybe it unfairly characterized the state as a Bermuda Triangle of criminality, she admitted that everyday life here can be intense. By way of illustration, she explained to me that when her husband and his friends were in college, they’d go water-skiing on a local lake, and the first lap was always meant to scare the gators into the shallows so they could ski in peace.

Another mom I spoke to wondered if Taylor wrote the song anticipating that she could license it to the state’s tourism board. There’s been a full embrace on social media — even the dudes of Florida’s Barstool Sports affiliate endorsed it. Bipartisan support indeed.

I met a 29-year-old Swiftie at the political fundraiser whom I’ll call Stephanie. She was nervous when she first saw the song title. “I was holding my breath,” she said, anticipating a Florida Man caricature or a song warning people to stay out of her state. “I personally very much embrace the unique wackiness of Florida.” Even if Taylor is associating it with drugs and burying bodies in the swamp, if it’s in a spirit of celebration, she’s all for it.

I asked her if she wants to have kids, and she said she’s still on the fence. A child born now in Florida could be subject to more restrictions on their body, vaccines notwithstanding, than their parents had been. Stephanie hopes that any child of hers would grow up to be thoughtful and sensitive, the kind of person who asks questions. But if they were, she worries that they would ask her why she had decided to bring them into a world with so much crisis and division. “And if they asked me that,” she said, “I don’t know how I would be able to explain it to them.”

Kathryn Jezer-Morton , 2024-04-27 14:00:41

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