Back when Sex and the City was in its heyday, people used to occasionally stop me on the street to say “Ohymygod, do you know who you look just like? MIRANDA!” It happened regularly–once or twice a week. And if I went to a party where somebody saw a resemblance, word would get around and I’d hear it all night.

I don’t always see it myself, but once in a while somebody takes a photo of me with a Miranda-like quality. Unfortunately, those pictures don’t tend to be very flattering ones of me. The side of my face that looks most like Miranda is my “bad” side, which is weird, because I think Miranda is quite pretty, but not my personal version of Miranda. I’m like the uglier version of Miranda, but just on one side of my face.

During the SV Moms Group contributor party at BlogHer, we got to have makeovers and then a professional photo shoot at Sak’s. My makeup guy was fantastic. He knew exactly how much eye makeup to put on (not much) to keep my eyes from appearing to sink back into my head, and showed me a trick for applying eyeliner to the underside of my top lid to “open” up my eye. It worked, and I was duly impressed. He also raved over my skin, calling it “peaches and cream” when I’d always thought of it more as “veiny and white, like an old lady’s leg”. When you’re putting makeup on me, flattery and skill will get you everywhere…no wonder I bought the Armani foundation he was shilling, even though I a) rarely wear foundation and b) never spend more than $10 on it when I do.

Anyway, my photographer was great, too, but I realized too late that the angle I was sitting in for most of the pictures displayed my “bad” side, or more specifically, my “bad Miranda” side. Check it out…

Good side (but I was goofing off, so I can’t really use this as a headshot…)

Bad Miranda.

Good side

Bad Miranda.

Actually, I think I see a pattern here–pictures of me goofing off are flattering; pictures of me barely smiling are all Bad Miranda. The problem is that the Bad Miranda shots seem more appropriate for professional use than the ones of me goofing around. Which leads me to wonder, does Cynthia Nixon also have a Bad Miranda side, but as a professional performer she’s learned how to get around it? Maybe I should write and ask her for advice…

A few months ago, I received an invitation from a PR person to take my family on a trip to a popular Midwestern family destination. I wasn’t sure how the PR firm had found me; they mentioned liking my blog, but I assumed that they had also seen that I have written about midwestern travel and lifestyle for magazines like Midwest Living, Michigan BLUE and AAA Living and the e-mail was worded similarly to other press trips I’ve been invited on.

When we got to the destination, I picked up my meal vouchers and press pass, and that’s where I saw it: below my name, on the line that would usually read “Freelance Travel Writer” or list the name of the publication I was writing for, it said “MOMMY BLOGGER.”

I cringed, then felt indignant. Mommy blogger? That’s what I am? Not a published writer, not a blogger who happens to cover motherhood in addition to other topics. Just…mommy blogger. For one thing, I don’t even LIKE the word “mommy”…it’s always felt kind of smarmy and whiny to me, and it’s more of an affectionate title used by young children than a descriptive term. Used in conjunction with “blogger”–and written on the line that would usually indicate my credentials–it felt almost like an insult.

I know that Mommy Blogger seems to be the title of choice for many moms who blog. At BlogHer, after all, there was an entire track of MommyBlogging panels; and a lot of women use the title proudly or at least readily. And maybe some use it ironically, sort of like re-claiming the word “bitch” or “queer”…a way to take a title that somebody might try to use to diminish us as a whole, and instead find power in it.

I can understand that, I guess, but I still don’t like it, because no matter how proudly we may use the title, the fact is that, at least to me, MommyBlogger still sounds kind of silly and trivial. While I know not everyone shares my distaste for the word “mommy”–and I definitely don’t stand in judgment of people who like that word–I don’t appreciate how it’s applied across the board to mothers who blog. And as much as I’d like to think they are, I don’t imagine that the non-bloggers people using and hearing the term are doing it as some kind of pro-mom-blogger political statement.

The sound of the title aside, I feel like my writing and blogging stands on its own without having to be linked with my maternal status–yes, I am a mother even when I write, but I come to the page as a complex individual, not just a “mommy”. Also, I spend my whole life being a mom; writing is something I do for myself, even when I am writing about my kids; and even though I don’t completely remove my “mom hat” when I write–I just kinda slide it over and make room for the “writer” hat–I write as a writer, not a mommy.

And what about those of us who blog, and are mothers, but don’t write solely about our kids, primarily about our kids, or at all about our kids? Would you call Guy Kawasaki, who also has four children, a “DaddyBlogger” if he mentioned his kids from time to time? Does the term “daddyblogger” regularly get used to describe men who, just like we mothers, write about their kids in addition to their lives and their jobs and their interests?

I’m not generally one to get my knickers in a knot over terminology. Though I can see why it might bother some, I really don’t care if somebody calls me “hon” or “girl”. But “mommyblogger” gets me fired up, maybe partly because it just seems to be used so unquestioningly. I wonder why we accept this term so readily and why there doesn’t seem to be more debate over it (maybe there already was and I missed it?)

I have yet to refer to myself as a “mommyblogger”, but more and more, other people are referring to me as one. I know it’s done with positive intent, but the fact is, I just don’t like it. I’m a mother who blogs. I’m a writer with children. I write about my husband sometimes, but you don’t call me a “Wifeblogger”, do you? The title of “mommy” is only appropriate in the context of my relationship with my kids. In other words, my sons can call me Mommy. The rest of the world, on the other hand? I’d rather they didn’t.

I have a post up over on Yahoo’s Shine! about my (finally, successful!) search for a non-clunky, smooth-riding double stroller.

Because posts even shorter than this one count as full-fledged entries. Follow me!

Two things for a Saturday night:

1) I am dying for a fish taco right now. I was a late fish taco convert; in fact, the first time I had fish tacos was just this last April, at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in NYC. I had never ordered them before, because I’m only a fan of fish under the right circumstances and to me, TACO just didn’t seem like the right setting for fish enjoyment. But I gave it a shot, and boy, was I glad I did. They were fan……TASTIC. Fresh, light, not too much “stuff” on ‘em, just the right amount of breading, mmmmm.

So tonight, I had a sudden hankering for fish tacos. You’d think, seeing as how I live in the third largest city in the US, that fish tacos would be lurking around every corner (okay, not sure I want my fish tacos “lurking”….) but some Googling led me to this Trib article lamenting the lack of authentic fish taco-ry around these parts, and describing what makes a good fish taco in excrutiatingly mouth-watering detail. Talk about frustration. The closest place that supposedly has an adequate specimen is a 20-minute drive, and we were hoping for takeout, as taking four kids out to dinner is not only prohibitively expensive, but usually not all that fun, either.

So then I told that jerk Toni about my hankering, she got the hankering too, and she immediately ran out to a restaurant in her little town and fish taco-ed it up. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

2) Toni and I have been salivating over the upcoming release of the X-Files 2 movie and went on YouTube in search of previews. And in addition, we found some terrifically corny fan vids, some of which–like this one–were so cheesy we had to click away out of embarrassment.

Oh wait, there’s a third thing. If you are an author or aspiring author and haven’t already seen it, you must check out this video. Hilarious. And I can so relate. I hope the author gets tons of sales from this video so he doesn’t have to worry about Twittering too much.