Mayim Bialik (photo Khurak.net)

When I asked the question, “Are Celebrity Moms Too Perfect?” on my Los Angeles private schools blog, it was a reasonable question based on recent—and very controversial-- statements made by two celebrity moms made about parenting. One of these moms, Mayim Bialik is the Today Show’s mom blogger and a former actress on Blossom and The Big Bang Theory. She has a parenting book coming out soon. The other mom, Supermodel Gisele, needs no introduction. By asking that question on my blog, I had no idea about the controversy that was about to unfold.

When the online contretemps with Mayim Bialik went viral about nine months ago, I’d been blogging a year and a half. Up until this dust up, I got a few critical or negative comments here and there, but mostly support from my blog readers. That was, until I got tangled up with Mayim and her rich hippie friends. Then, all hell broke loose.

It started innocently enough. My friend and guest blogger, Jenny Heitz, wrote a very funny piece about “Perfect Mommy Syndrome” at Los Angeles private elementary schools for my blog. Trust me, this trend exists—and it’s hilarious to see. As Jenny described one stereotypical perfect mommy, “The Beauty Queen is very well put together. She’s the one in the fur vest and teetering heels and huge diamonds at school at three in the afternoon.”

At the top of my blog post, I used a photo of Mayim Bialik. For those of you who don’t know, she is a strong supporter of “attachment parenting,” an extremely radical form of parenting that requires enormous self-sacrifice on the part of both parents. Attachment parenting is promoted by Dr. Sears, an author and leading proponent of this type of parenting which, according to its followers, creates a close and unique attachment between mother and child starting at birth. In other words, attachment of your baby to you at all times is essential. On my blog, Jenny wrote that attachment parenting makes you a “prisoner of your infant.” Attachment parenting is all the rage among affluent, urban, crunchy parents and of course, some outspoken Hollywood moms.  

Mayim Bialik has given interviews to People magazine among other publications about how she uses attachment parenting with her two young kids. She told People Magazine she gave birth to her second child at home, while her three-year-old watched, eating homemade granola. She makes all her own eco-friendly cleaning products, is a certified lactation consultant, rarely puts her kids down (she or her husband, the only caretakers, always try to hold them), homeschools her kids, uses only cloth diapers, breastfed on demand until her kids were almost 3 years-old, potty trained them using something called “elimination communication”—a diaper free method of potty training using signals between you and the child, and on and on … Sounds perfect to me. I’m exhausted just listing all of her parenting techniques. Can you imagine what her house must have looked like after a day of “elimination communication?” On my blog, I also quoted supermodel Gisele, who created quite a furor when she advocated a mandatory worldwide breastfeeding law.

When Mayim’s supporters found out about my blog, the sh*t hit the fan. Mayim responded with her own blog post on a site called The Holistic Mom’s Network, for which she is the spokesperson. She defended her parenting choices and said she’s not a perfect mom. Suddenly, my blog was being hit almost nonstop with the nastiest, meanest, personal-attack comments aimed at my guest blogger, Jenny and me. The comments were all from members of the Holistic Mom’s Network, mostly anonymous. A few of the comments were too vile for me to publish (I moderate all comments). In the blogging world, I think these people are called “trolls.”

Mayim Bialik (middle) and Holistic Moms Network (photo: Holistic Moms/Bing.Com) 

I only found out that Mayim had posted a response to my blog when one of her followers left a comment mentioning it. I clicked onto Holistic Mom’s Network and read her response. It was perfectly professional, but those Holistic Mom’s couldn’t contain their rage. Interestingly, this was coming from those who call themselves Holistic Moms and embrace world peace and progressive parenting.

I felt I had no choice but to respond to the personal attacks. So, I wrote a blog post about my hippie, organic, doctor-less, vegan, homeschooling, no TV, no sugar, childhood in uber-cruncy Topanga, California. The response from Holistic Mom’s Network? Silence. I waited. Nothing. They had no idea who they were attacking. They didn’t know I had lived the life they want their children to live.

I left a comment on the Holistic Mom’s Network saying I found it interesting that as soon as their membership learned about my upbringing they fell silent. The founder of Holistic Moms wrote a comment on her site denying the comments came from her members. However, I use Google Blogger and I can see where traffic is coming from. The comments were from her site.

Then, it got crazier. My spat with Mayim went viral. E! Online did a story about the controversy and linked to my blog. But, the tides turned on Mayim. E Online! readers attacked Mayim and Gisele without mercy. I stayed out of it and didn’t comment on E Online! Then, Mediabistro/Fishbowl LA picked up the story about the controversy and mentioned my blog. 

I’d unwittingly found myself in a blog spat with a celebrity mom, who has many more readers and followers than I will probably ever have. What I learned is that if you blog about a celebrity, even a D-list actress, be aware she may attack you through her surrogates, while remaining perfectly sweet and reasonable.That’s okay. It’s caused me have a thicker skin. Apparently I need it if I’m going to blog about private schools and perfect moms in Los Angeles!

I just read that Mayim is writing a book on Attachment Parenting. Let’s add this to the long list of ways celebrity moms make regular moms feel badly about ourselves. After all, won’t this be yet another “self-help” book filled with ways that we, as moms, can understand everything we’re not doing for our kids?

Oh, and I’m still waiting to hear from Gisele.