Chicken Soup for the “Yummy Mommy”

I just learned that my childhood church is running a modern day soup kitchen. Where you buy soup, and the profits are forwarded on to members of the community who are less fortunate. Wonderful, great idea, good on ya, etc.

Here’s what I don’t love. Their new Soup Club. Here, I was, thinking it would be along the lines of a Wine Club. You pay a monthly fee and you receive a bunch of soup. Boy was I wrong. It’s a Yummy Mommy Soup Club.

You are kidding me.

Just when you thought the world has sexualized everything that was to sexualize, the minister’s wife manages to make soup into another reason to hate yourself. Nice work.

The idea is that you sign up for a month of soup, replace one of your meals a day with their miracle charity soup and you’ll instantly be a Yummy Mommy. The premise of their soup club is the fucked up notion that to be yummy you must be thin. Well, fuck that noise. I have a hard time believing that being a “Yummy Mommy” has anything to do with microwaving a bowl of soup to go with my “half piece of melba toast.”

The Yummy Mommy Soup Club once again perpetuates the idea that to be attractive, to be yummy, to look good enough to devour, you must be thin and in control of your appetite, your waistline, your weight, etc. All notions that I have no patience for.

What is it, if I’m not thin I’m not “yummy?” I won’t fit into your mouth? To be honest I have never understood this whole relationship between desire and the word “yummy.” I thought women have been objectified enough.

While I can’t quite put my finger on what bothers me the most about the Yummy Mommy Soup Club, I think it’s the fact that I thought we had moved past this kind of sexist bullshit. If to be “Yummy” you have to lose weight, what is that telling our children — hell, ourselves! — about self confidence and health? Furthermore, where’s the Yummy Daddy Soup Club? Surely, given this type of sexist thinking Daddy has a beer belly to get rid of. Right? Maybe it’s in the works.

According to their website, the Yummy Mommy Soup Club is a cleanse, intended to help you lose your winter “padding” and get you in shape for swimsuit season. Just so I have this right: to look good in a swimsuit I have to be thin?

Oh, okay. Cool.

I guess I’ll just forget everything Amy Poehler ever taught me, because well, you have a soup cleanse that will make me look better in a bikini than some confidence and self acceptance ever will.

Considering the flack the church as a whole receives for being oppressive towards women and generally sex negative, the Yummy Mommy Soup Club sure has taken things in the wrong direction.

Let’s stop — why do I even need to be saying this? — talking about women as food.