I am disappointed with you, Reese Witherspoon. Deeply.
This here photo is full of lies.
Why would Reese lie to us? I mean other than for the hefty fee she commanded for this staged and contrived photo. Why’d she go through all the effort of putting on make-up and jewelry and pushing the cuticles back on her right index finger and making her son consent to having his picture taken and published in a trashy magazine?
WHY, REESE, WHY?
I trusted you, Reese, for the occasional book club pick and I loved Big Little Lies! I think it’s so cute when you stand next to Nicole Kidman and you look all awkward and awestruck. Now that’s real! But this…this is acting. Like old people in a life insurance commercial acting! NOT GOOD.
Who did you think you were fooling? The target audience for Us Weekly is old-ass bitches with kids. ME! I’M the target! And you do not fool me one bit, lady.
Look, Reese, I, like all mothers of school-age children in America, have done the whole homeschooling thing. SPOILER: It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked! Pretty sure my experience was much more common than the one you’re trying to shill. If stars were really just like us, there would be several things different in this photo:
- NO SMILES! Not a goddamn smile was to be found in the four months of homeschooling and certainly not a simultaneous smile between parent and student. There is NO reason to smile when you’re teaching your first grader how to use an open number line to calculate how much licorice Kevin needs to buy in order to have more than Moira. The question should be, why do you need to have more licorice than Moira, Kevin? If you wanted this photo be more realistic, you should be crying behind the veil of your overgrown bangs and Tennessee should be writing Mommy is poop on the dry erase board you paid an extra $28 to have overnighted to decorate your kitchen classroom.
- DO NOT LOOK PUT TOGETHER! Girl, are you wearing a bra? Because nope. That’s not how we roll in homeschool. We bounce. We jiggle. We let the ladies run free like a herd of wild mares. If your kid’s Zoom class isn’t always in critical danger of getting a faceful of your lady bubbles, you get an F in homeschool. F for FAAAAAAAAAAKKKEEEE! No one has time to put on make up, accessorize, and outfit themselves in a clean, dainty Lily Pulitzer sweater. Why are you bothering? Hang loose in the rancid PJs you wore to bed the last three nights and worked out in yesterday. Also, why is your kid wearing a shirt? With a collar? No. My son’s homeschool uniform was underwear and Nutella.
- DON’T CLEAN YOUR HOUSE! Is that a couch and ottoman that doubles as a coffee table? Where are the dirty socks, Lunchables boxes, and La Croix can that’s been sitting on the coffee table for three days? Why isn’t there a pile of clean towels that came out the dryer thirteen days ago, but still haven’t been folded? Where are all the AMAZON BOXES? Oh, I get it! That must be one of those fancy Zoom backgrounds! Chicago skyline, hallway from The Shining, CLEAN LIVING ROOM. Homeschool moms are not sharing pictures of the interior of their homes even if we were getting paid for them. Okay, well maybe if the price was right..
- EAT REAL MOM FOOD! What in the shit are you eating, Reese? Is that a chewed out tomato husk and small hunk of cheese? Also wrong, wrong, wrong. Whomever styled this photo has clearly never seen a full-time working parent/teacher in quarantine eat a meal. FOOD DOES NOT GET CONSUMED AT A TABLE! Homeschool moms eat standing up! And we haven’t eaten a vegetable in 114 days. Homeschool moms eat their meals out of a bag. Cheetos, microwave popcorn, shredded cheese would all be more realistic options.
- DOWNGRADE THE ACADEMICS PLEASE! So, Tennessee doesn’t go to a public school I’m guessing. Perhaps that’s why he’s learning geography from a charming, colorful placemat from your neighborhood pub and cute accessories that look like they came from one of those monthly subscriptions for curious kids. Meanwhile, my son learned summer-themed vocabulary words from a worksheet printed on the back of our homeowners insurance policy and reruns of Below Deck.
- GET BUSY! The burst on this photo says, THEY WORK FROM HOME! Is Reese a teacher? Because teaching is work, especially when it’s not your day job. Let’s see Tennessee doing Fortnite dances in the background of a Zoom call. Let’s see Reese trying to answer email while grading a spelling test. Let’s see her be consumed with Mom Guilt because she spent most of the day asking her kid to be quieter and stop hogging all the internet bandwidth and just ask Alexa what a pronoun is BECAUSE MOMMY DOESN’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT! (Thank you, Alexa, btw.) I’m making a wild assumption here, but Reese probably has 10,000 square feet of living space and that includes a dedicated office space. Her house is also probably pretty well-equipped to occupy a kid who has to do 13 minutes of geography so his mom can sell a cute photo to show how hard she’s working. I have an office too. It’s also our guest room, my closet, storage, Quinn’s favorite spot to watch YouTube, and the room where our dog comes to fart.
Alexa! What is a possessive noun?
