How an American mom is now part of my (French mom's) life
Instagram people are a bit different. They really are with us. For one thing, they live inside our phones, so they're here all the time. For another, because of the way the Meta platform algorithm works, when you scroll through the app, you get an endless feed of close friends, strangers with whom you have much in common, ads and, of course, public figures. All these people are part of our daily lives, creating a strange mirror effect that erases the media as an intermediary: they reveal their own private and sometimes mundane moments as we sit in our living rooms, in bed or even in the bathroom.
These recurring characters can quickly create a kind of artificial familiarity. This is how, the other night, while brushing my teeth, I told my partner, almost as if I were talking about a coworker or a friend, "Hey, Isabelle Bertolami is pregnant!" He asked how old her eldest was and where she would give birth. In short, a typical parent conversation, except for one small detail: neither of us has ever met Isabelle Bertolami. She's an American living in Aix-en-Provence with her husband and daughter, documenting her family life for her 242,000 followers.
The American myth of the French mom
Bertolami is what we call an Instagram American mom: mothers who praise the French parenting model, without too much concern with avoiding generalizations or ensuring accuracy. It's a way of feeding the American myth of the French mom: the mother who is both gentle and strict, attentive but not indulgent with a tyrannical child, fulfilled in her career, always impeccably dressed and manicured (she writes, typing with chipped nails).
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