You Can Sit With Us When it comes to becoming a mom, we’ve decided Drake got it wrong: let’s make alllll the new friends. Lindsay Stuart, Edil Cuepo, and Alexis BaradCutler share the importance of a supportive community and how our mom friends are the people who help us get through the everyday grind of parenting By Cris Pearlstein
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aving worked in fashion magazines for over a decade I’m not easily starstruck, mostly because when you work with celebrities you quickly learn they are human beings, just like anyone else. But I don’t work in that industry anymore so now I get excited about a different type of person: moms. These days nothing gets me more starstruck than a cool mom with something to say, who is honest and open about her experience as a mother. Being assigned this story was my version of being backstage at the Oscars. The three women on this cover have a lot in common: they all have multiple kids, they are all New Yorkers, and they were all moved to create something to fill a void they saw in their lives. Alexis Barad-Cutler founded Not Safe For Mom Group, a social platform that describes itself as “a mom group for the uninhibited” where you can “ask anything, say everything, and be anonymous” because she was censored as a parenting writer. Lindsay Stuart, a former makeup artist and HSN host, opened Glam Expressway, a fun boutique she felt was missing in her DUMBO neighborhood. And Edil Cuepo, who, in an effort to gain external validation for her choice to quit her job when her daughter was born, started Rockaway Baby, a website and community that honors, celebrates, and features the stories of SAHM’s everywhere. These moms not only have a lot in common with each other, but they have a lot in common with all of us. As new moms they all struggled to find connection, just like they all struggled throughout the pandemic to be everything to everyone. They each rely heavily on their communities to support them, their friends to keep them sane, and their own instincts to mother in the way that feels right to them. Does any of this sound familiar? Of course it does. These things are not unique to them, they are unique to mothers. It proves we are all more the same than we are different. We’re all in this together.
IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME: create the thing missing in your life. ALEXIS: “About 10 years ago I was writing about motherhood for a lot of different outlets, and I was
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known for talking about the stuff that no one else would. A lot of people thanked me for saying what they were thinking but wouldn’t say out loud. It was really satisfying to use some of the more traumatic events of becoming a new mother, which at the time had made me feel very alone, as an opportunity to connect with other women and help them feel better about what they were experiencing. I wrote a piece about looking for a babysitter online, likening it to online dating—the outlet, a super-cool mom-focused website, took it down after a wave of comments proved the story to be controversial. I was angry. I began experimenting on Instagram and I secretly created a page called Not Safe For Mom Group that felt like an extension of the kind of writing I was doing. When that outlet censored me I just felt like all of this we’re here for you, mama stuff we were being sold was a lie, and I felt it was especially unfair to the young moms who were coming up. I then decided to go live with my Instagram page—I wanted it to be a repository for moms to let things out, a place where we would not be silenced, and where we can say what’s on our minds without being told it’s controversial. When you’re a mom, you’re still just a regular person, and you may have thoughts that aren’t always maternal and nurturing. You can be a mom and be loud and angry also.” LINDSAY: “I always loved fashion in high school and university (I was voted best dressed!) but I never claimed to be a fashion expert. I just always felt like I could recognize what women like, how they want to look, and how they want to feel. As a makeup artist I was trained in color theory so that definitely helped, and being on live TV with HSN taught me how to talk to different people. I always felt like all the stores in DUMBO were so high-end and not relatable for me as a mother with four children. As moms we’re spending money on activities and extracurricular stuff for the kids, we’re putting them first, and we’re not necessarily chasing down the next designer thing that’s on trend. So in 2017 I opened my store—we sell a mix of fun, statement pieces. We have a little something for everyone.” EDIL: “My website all started from the shame I