Imagine you’ve ordered some Tupperware from a representative you found on the Internet. She’s on her way over to deliver your order, and you’re picturing some well-heeled, suburban-looking soccer-mom type. Maybe someone a little Stepford Wife-ish.
The doorbell rings. You open the door.
And there stands Jessica Seymour.
Her hair is Priscilla Presley “the Elvis years” black. Or it could be hot pink, depending on her mood. She has 10-plus tattoos, multiple piercings and she’s … well … not exactly June Cleaver.
But Seymour, 23, is a neighborhood mom. She and partner Joey Seeman are the proud parents of two-year-old Alex and newborn Violet. Seeman is equally unconventional-looking: For starters, he has what’s known in the tattoo world as “sleeves,” meaning his entire arms are inked.
The Tupperware gig is just one of Seymour’s many projects, all things she has taken up since becoming pregnant with Alex back in 2001.
These days, when she’s not tending to Alex and Violet, she’s maintaining Punkymoms.com, a Yahoo-based group she started about a month after Alex was born. Part of her inspiration for starting the group was the boredom and loneliness that set in after having her baby. Prior to her first pregnancy, she’d spent many of her nights out with friends at a local bar. The arrival of Alex, of course, changed that.
On Punkymoms.com, she explains the evolution of the site this way: “After I had [Alex] I realized that I was no longer on the same wavelength as the people who were once part of my daily life, because I now had responsibility. I had a baby! But I still had tattoos, piercings, and pink hair. None of my friends had children. The people I met in public assumed I was the babysitter or the big sister.”
Punkymoms aimed to attract Dallas moms and dads with “traditional parenting values that look different or have different religious beliefs, or anyone considered ‘alternative.’”
The moms get together for play dates and potlucks and parties at one another’s houses. The only requisite is that they be open to each other’s lifestyles. The introduction on the Yahoo group’s home page ends with, ‘Welcome! Come on in! And leave your judgments and your shoes at the door.”
“There are so many types of moms out there,” Seymour says. “The only thing we all have in common is we’re just open minded. We’re vegan, vegetarian, tattooed moms. We have Christian moms, non-Christian moms. And we’re all OK with everybody else.”
One mom who found a home with the group is neighborhood resident Davina Rhine. Rhine has a 2-year-old son, is an insurance agent and part-time college student. Though she might sound it, she’s not (as she puts it) very “mainstream.” She has tattoos, wears combat boots and is a politically active feminist.
“There’s a common stereotype I keep banging my head against,” says Rhine. “When I do try to interact with moms who aren’t like me, sometimes they automatically think I must be a wild, unkempt mother based on my having tattoos or combat boots. Or that I must be a bad parent because I don’t look polished or wealthy.”
In Punkymoms, she has found a place where she can be herself. And, she says, despite their tattoos or combat boots or political beliefs, they’re really not all that different from other moms.
“You always want what’s best for your kids,” she says. “Their interests are always at the forefront of my mind in the decisions I make.”
Rhine is just one of more than 70 members in the group. In fact, within six months of its inception, the response was so great that Seymour started the Punkymom.com website, which has evolved over time to include a forum for online parenting discussions, a column by one of the site’s members and more.
Today, the site gets between 600-700 hits a day, Seymour says. She’s also “franchised,” though she makes no money at it, helping interested moms in San Antonio, Austin and at least seven other states start similar, locally based groups through the site’s forum.
One of the site’s developments includes an online directory to a number of mother-owned and –operated businesses, selling everything from children’s clothing to sewing patterns to craft items.
“I want people to support the businesses that are listed on my Web site,” Seymour says, “because they’re parents who, if they didn’t do these at-home businesses, they’d have to get a job, and their kids would have to go to daycare.”
In fact, Seymour and Seeman, who is an illustrator, recently launched Bottle Rockets, a small kids clothing company that makes T-shirts and one pieces featuring Seeman’s artwork (he also did all the artwork for the website).
“Yeah, I do a lot,” she says, laughing. “But I’m a Capricorn. I just can’t, like, sit and not do anything. I have to be constructive.”
While she admits she sometimes misses the freedom she had before becoming a mom, she says being productive is something she has taken a liking to.
“When you hear ‘Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!’ that makes it all worth it,” she says. “Life has changed a lot, but I’m more goal-oriented now and more responsible and definitely a lot more fun. It’s just fun in a different way.”
For information about Punkymoms, visit punkymoms.com.
