Dress like a Mum/Mom: Instagram Style Mums and the Fashionable Ideal

Abstract This paper explores whether the dominant fashion aesthetic is challenged or destabilized through the case study of Instagram style mums/moms. It considers how social media, such as Instagram, opens up new spaces for bodies to perform fashionability without the mediation of the fashion system. This space is potentially more “democratic,” allowing those located outside the fashion system to exhibit fashionability through personal style, presenting alternatives to the normative fashionable body. However, conversely, Instagram is also a space that is increasingly colonized by big brands and celebrity “influencers” whose accounts display similar aesthetics to mainstream fashion. By examining a range of mums/moms, not just celebrity or “micro-celebrity” accounts, the paper explores the creative display of style and explorations of their maternal body—outside the dominant fashionable ideal—to discuss how these women implicitly, sometimes explicitly, challenge the aesthetics of fashion. In articulating a “technique of the self,” this “mum style” opens space to navigate motherhood and fashionability at the same time. The aesthetic tropes of “mum style” are explored to unpack the contradictions and possibilities of this space.


Introduction
Social media has opened up new spaces for bodies to perform fashionability without the direct mediation of the fashion system-journalists, editors, stylists, photographers. Instagram, in particular, is a space that affords the opportunity for many to explore and share their personal style with followers. On the one hand, this space is potentially more "democratic" in allowing many voices and bodies located outside the fashion system to exhibit fashionability through personal style, implicitly or explicitly presenting alternatives to the normative fashionable body that is young, thin, white, gender-binary and able-bodied. Conversely, however, Instagram is also a space that is increasingly colonized by big brands and dominated by "influencers" whose accounts display similar aesthetics to mainstream fashion (Findlay and de Perthuis 2019).
We chose to focus in on one particular community-Instagram style mums. 1 This interest arose partly out of personal experience (we had been following some of these mums for a few years) and also due to a number of emerging developments. Firstly, there was a growing media interest in this community, especially in the UK where one of the authors lives, with many of them mums we were following receiving attention in the mainstream and fashion press and featuring in advertising campaigns. That these mums were the object of such public scrutiny seemed to point to changing attitudes around fashion, bodies and motherhood. Second, these mums articulate a claim to be fashionable which is implicitly and often explicitly calling attention to the narrowness of the dominant fashion body aesthetic (young and very thin, for example) at a time when fashion is being called out for its lack of diversity. This articulation of the "mum" image with the idea of being fashionable is set against wider debates about body positivity as a movement on social media sites that "involves the rejection of unattainable, narrowly-defined beauty ideals [ … ] to challenge societal messages regrading beauty" (Lazuka et al. 2020, 86). As they note, "the popularity of online communities dedicated to body positivity has grown, particularly on Instagram" (2020,86). Indeed, they concur, with us, that Instagram is offering "a more democratic approach to content generation compared to traditional media outlets [allowing] more diverse depictions of beauty" (2020, 85) Finally, it also seemed to us that these mums were a good place through which to explore questions of agency and creativity in social media and examine the degree to which they posed a challenge to the fashion industry. Some of these mums could be described as "mumfluencers" or "mumpreneurs" (Ekinsmyth 2013;Eikhof, Carter, and Summers 2013;Orgad 2019) who draw on their experiences of motherhood to develop social media profiles, sometimes commercially driven. This is especially true of "verified" accounts, with the elusive blue tick that lends credibility to their business. Other mums appear to have less obvious commercial investments and just want to share their style with followers. Some Instagram style mums regularly appear on "influencer" lists (for example, https://www.motherandbaby.co.uk/lifestyle-and-celebs/celebrity-mums/instagram-mums-follow-influencers) and in high profile brand collaborations. They might be described as new digital "cultural intermediators" (Bourdieu 1984) or "curators" (Jansson and Hracs 2018). We first introduce our methodology, considering some of the challenges of studying communities on Instagram. Then, in Part I, we then critically discuss social media and Instagram as spaces for alternatives to dominant fashion ideals. In Part II we examine two specific aspects of mum styles emerging from our data. First, how do these style mums speak of fashion and perform their personal style on Instagram (via what aesthetic tropes and performances)? Second, we explore their attempts to reconcile the "mum body" and "fashion" via posts that explore the embodied experience of becoming a mother and the impact this has on dress and fashion sense. We argue that fashionable ideals are both challenged and reproduced through different photographic conventions and accompanying texts.
Running through both themes is a recurring concern with "authenticity" and "realness" versus commodification. Since the appeal of these Instagram style mums is their depiction of "real" mum life through daily fashion, the more evidence there is of brand involvement (ads, gifts and "freebies" and competitions) the greater the threat to their authenticity, something that Duffy and Hund (2019) refer to as the "authenticity bind." Thus, we define and discuss authenticity below to note how this concern can be mapped onto overall differences in these style mums partly in terms of the size of followers. Higher numbers of followers and evidence of increased monetarization comes at the cost of many of our subjects' declared intent to push against and expand dominant fashionable ideals toward more inclusive ends. We suggest that, unsurprisingly, accounts that achieve the highest levels of monetarization tend to iron out these rebellious elements, with the top accounts more noticeably similar to the reigning fashionable ideals and thus less likely to challenge it. At the same time, the very act of being a mum who styles herself as being in fashion, challenges traditional limitations of conventional fashion aesthetics, as we shall discuss.

Methodology: instagram style mums
Who/what is an Instagram style mum? We selected those who pair "mum" with "style" or "fashion" and post outfits on a regular basis, identifying them by searching hashtags (mama style, mum or mom style, style mum or mom, fashion mom, fashion mama), and locating accounts featuring mum/mom, and/or fashion or style as part of their moniker: for example, @style_mum or @fashionmumof40. All feature motherhood and fashion as part of their "feed:" some mums only post outfits, others post fashion and family, while some post mainly family and lifestyle, but include some fashion and outfit posts. From dozens of possible mums, our sample of 28 reflects the range and diversity of the accounts. Having followed UK style mums for longer, our data and analysis features more UK mums.
Style mums' appeal lies in showcasing their (usually high street) daily outfit of the day (OOTD) in contrast to the more high-end or glamourous fashion editorial image. Moreover, the juxtaposition of "mum"/ "mom" with "fashionability"/"style" implicitly challenges dominant assumptions and ideals within fashion, such as the idea that the two have traditionally been mutually exclusive. Indeed, the mums we have chosen are significantly older than typical fashion models and celebrities, most are larger than the skinny sizes preferred in the industry and so as not to privilege only Caucasian/white mums we included mums with different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Yet, while these mums' claims to be fashionable sometimes (implicitly or explicitly) challenge dominant fashionable ideals, their standardized poses and personal style sometimes reproduces the homogenizing logic of the fashion image, citing familiar looks that are rarely cutting edge or singularly creative, but which sell. We contend that this paradox underscores a tension threading through the emerging social media fashion system: while Instagram seems a democratic space to challenge prevailing norms and create new spaces for self-expression, structural forces continue to gloss over difference or challenges to the status quo.
As discussed below, it is difficult to know how many style mums are on the platform or how representative our sample is since the algorithm curates what we can see. However, we are mindful of the need to gather a range of different style mums and for this reason we first ensured we didn't just analyze celebrities. Thus, our sample protocol uses marketing company Launchmetrics' categorization of four "tiers" of "influencers" according to number of followers: "celebrity" (over 1.5 million); "mega" (between 501k and 1.5 million); "macro" (between 101 and 500)k; and "micro" (between 10 and 100k). Table 1 shows the accounts we selected for analysis by categorization of follower numbers. Marketing Influencer Hub adds a fifth tier, "nano," to argue that this group is particularly valuable to brands 2 because of the greater "engagement" they tend to have with their followers. At the top end of our sample we included one UK "mega" mum, Clemmie, @motherofdaughters. Although her account was deleted in December 2019 after a bullying allegation, it had over 600 K followers at its peak (rising from only 10 K followers when we first started following four years ago). Despite this recent deletion, her account remains a focal point of discussion around mummy influencers in the UK. Similarly, in this category, we have included US mega influencer @SomethingNavy (Arielle Charnas), who had 1.3 million followers and a lucrative partnership with Nordstroms department store for comparison. Charnas also suffered a drastic change in status after her disastrous response to Table 1. Influencer hierarchy by follower numbers "Mega" mums 501 K-1.4 million USA -@ariellecharnos (something navy À 1.3 m) a UK -@motherofdaughters (now defunct account was 675 K) "Macro" mums (between 101 and 500k) US Miss James @bleubird (197 K) a UK Kat @doesmybumlookbig (236 K was 183 K) UK Zoe @dresslikeamum (139 K) UK Susie @susiejverrill (124 K) UK @candicebraithwaite (221-from 56.9 K) "Micro" mums (between 10 and 100k) UK @stylemesunday (89.6 K) UK @katie_ellison UK (86.2 K) UK Debbie @thefashionablepan (64 K) UK @hollieplus plus size mum (32.8 K) UK Emma @mothering.it UK (31.4 K) UK Joanna @the_mumdresscode (15.7 K) UK Elly @mummyyatesstyle (13.2 K) US @shelovestoglow (64.7 K) US @blondoutofwater (13.6 K) US @mysocaledlife Erica (24.2k) US @stylishlystella (49.5 K) US @theyusufs (64.4) US @tay.carns (13 K) US @momtrends (47.4 K) US @carmenreneeblog (54 K) US @alejandraovalle (27.5 K) "Nano" mums 10 K and under UK @thismummystyle UK (4.500 K) UK @_mummy_moi (4 K) UK @thismrslife (3.16 K) UK @style_fix_mamma (3.4 K) a UK @inthemumstyle (2.5 K) US @juliatorresd (9.18 K) Overall total UK ¼ 16 USA ¼ 12 Total ¼ 28 a Deleted their accounts during the period of observation.
Dress like a Mum/Mom the COVID 19 pandemic, which seems to have upended her career, at least for the time being (Johns 2020;Nardino 2020). We included both, as they illustrate how strongly these mums' online personas resonate with the public, soaring to new heights of fame and monetary gain, or falling quickly from public favor.
Our sample also includes five "macro" mums, UK Zoe @dresslikeamum (133 K), @susiejverrill (122k), US Miss James @bleubird (210 K), Kat @doesmybumlookbig and UK black mum, Candice Braithwaite. "Mega" and "macro" mums are partly or wholly "professional," working with brands and earning significant sums of money. These mums frequently work with the mainstream media working with brands. Notably, four out of five are all white and conventionally attractive and slim, although Clemmie, who was known for her forthright comments about how her "curvy" maternal body, doesn't conform to idealized fashion thinness. It is, however, interesting to note that that UK black mum @candicebraithwaite entered the higher echelons over the course of writing this paper (her following rose exponentially from nearly 59 K to 221 K in one year) and is several sizes larger than the typical fashion aesthetic. However, the relative lack of diversity at this level of "influencer" thus speaks directly to our concerns in this paper. The remaining 22 mums have between 3,000 and 75,000 followers, so fall within the "micro" and "nano" range.
There are a number of comparisons between commercial activities of these mums, although financial information is not readily available in the public domain. For context, when her account was active, Clemmie@motherofdaughters reportedly earned around £2,500 per post. 3 Along the same lines, Arielle Charnas' partnership with Nordstrom is said to have driven nearly $5 million in single day sales, making it the "retailer's most successful partnership ever" (Curotto 2018) while her popularity and high follower engagement purportedly earns her from $20 K to $100 K per post. 4 Of the top "micro" mums, Natalie @stylemesunday (with 83k followers), declared her earnings to be £100,000 (stated in a public webinar attended by us). In contrast, "nano" mums may only enjoy the occasional gift or small promotion with brands.
These differences in commercial activity are among a number we discuss in the paper. Other differences we discuss relate to demographics (age, race and body size compared to conventional fashion models) and these mum accounts are more diverse: all are over 30 (most are 40-something), eight are women of color (black, Asian or minority ethnic-"BAME"-in the UK, or black, indigenous people of color-"BIPOC"-in the U.S.), while six might be described as "curvy" or even "plus size" by industry standards.
The dynamic algorithms of social media bring many methodological challenges, not least accounts and posts disappearing (two mums closed down their accounts during our fieldwork). Further, Bishop (2018, 71) notes "algorithmic design" "has material consequences [ … ] and actively determines and limits what is seen and consumed by viewers, and carves narrow pathways to success for entrepreneurial young women on the platform." Bishop's concept of "algorithmic design" describes the major change instigated by Instagram in 2016 "from a reverse chronological presentation of posts to a curated feed that selects content deemed most 'meaningful' to each end user based on their usage history" (O'Meara 2019, 1) which received criticism from mums we have followed and they often complained when engagement goes down, attributing it to algorithmic changes which, as social media researchers have pointed out, "they cannot know, access, or direct" (O'Meara 2019, 2; see also Cotter 2018).
These algorithms affected our research as well, curating our feed. Since the algorithm is "black-boxed," we cannot know the limits of the "mum style" community and who/how many might be transgressing the normative ideals they reproduce. As Bishop (2018, 71) points out, YouTube "intentionally scaffolds videos consistent with the company's commercial goals and directly punishes noncommercially viable genres of content through relegation and obscuration." Along these same lines, our curated feed privileged normative heterosexual women, who make up the bulk of our sample, and biological mums, a point foregrounded in their focus on the maternal body and changes brought on by pregnancy and breast-feeding. We also found that the algorithm used the geographic location of the device, resulting in different samples being collected (one author lives in the US, one in the UK).

Part 1: social media platforms and Instagram
Traditional fashion media now compete with a welter of social media platforms that vie for valuable attention. These platforms challenge the hegemony of mainstream fashion, by-passing the conventional mediators (editors, journalists, stylists, photographers, etc.) allowing diverse constituents of users to upload aspects of their daily lives. Style-here referring to the personal translations of fashion trends from the fashion system-is readily shared by different communities and enables circulation of alternatives to the thin, white, young and able-bodied fashion model mediated and promoted by the institutions of the fashion industry.
These social media spaces are attracting increased attention from scholars who have highlighted the voluntary and speculative nature of this work, in the form of venture labor (Neff 2012); hope labor (Kuehn and Corrigan 2010); relational labor (Baym 2018); reputational labor (Gandini 2016); aspirational labor (Duffy 2016(Duffy , 2017; visibility labor (Abidin 2016 and cf); glamor labor (Wissinger 2015); and aesthetic labor (Warhurst et al 2007 and cf.;Elias, Gill, and Scharff 2014) to name a few.

Dress like a Mum/Mom
So far, however, social media analysis has predominantly focused on "lifestyle influencers" and "microcelebrities" (Abidin 2016;Abidin and Brown 2018;Marwick 2013;Senft 2008) along with the rise of "instafame" (Marwick 2015) and "entrepreneurial self-branding" (Duffy and Hund 2015) and post-feminist sensibilities (Caldeira 2020) to examine highly visible, young, and predominantly childless women. These critical analyses reveal how these women negotiate structural forces on these platforms to pursue entrepreneurial gain in order to "do what you love" on social media. Likewise, Duffy and Wissinger (2017), reveal how the political economy of these media formats often reproduce older inequalities, exacerbating the prevailing and increasingly precarious nature of media work (Duffy 2017).
We agree with these critiques: these spaces are not neutral or completely open. As Gillespie (2010, 349) notes, the use of the term "platform" (the preferred metaphor by providers) over older terms such as "network," "broadcast" or "channel" is a discursive construction, hiding the human labor of coding, editing, curating, and shaping the algorithm behind the scenes. This term enables providers to appear neutral and apolitical and suggests an open space for the free and easy interaction of users. The apparent neutrality works for providers because it is "specific enough to mean something, and vague enough to work across multiple venues for multiple audiences" (Gillespie 2010, 349).
Thus, while "platform" suggests unmediated space, not everyone has equal access to it. Scholars (Bishop 2018; analyzing "platformization" concur with Gillespie's critique of neutrality. Referring to YouTube, Bishop (2018, 70) argues the algorithm or "mechanical decision-making" creates "a discriminatory visibility hierarchy of vloggers, favoring middle class social actors who make highly gendered content aligned with advertisers." The structures of the algorithm work to create "a clear gendered bifurcation of content" that creates a "glass ceiling" (70) whereby men dominate the top 50. A recent survey by activist group Salty illustrates this algorithmic bias against women, trans and non-binary people with 118 respondents reporting "friction on the platform [ … .] content taken down, disabled profiles or pages and/or rejected ads" (Salty.com 2019, 6).
Debates about social media point to a continued tension between creativity and constraint. Homant and Sender point out that YouTube's "'low barriers to entry and lack of overbearing regulation on content allows for increased 'vernacular creativity'" (2019, 5388, citing Burgess and Green 2009). While the surplus labor of platform producers of course "becomes economic capital for YouTube, advertisers, and sponsors," at the same time, "some of it exists in excess of these forms of exchange to offer creative possibilities for producers and welcome iterations of nonnormative representations online" (2019, 5390). Whether such hierarchies, gendered pay gap, and a surplus of creative alternatives are demonstrably reproduced on Instagram itself requires further investigation; indeed, different platforms may have different logics, algorithms and affordances that may require comparative analysis.
Since "much of the research and policy debates center on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook," Instagram "remains ripe for scholarly analysis" (Duffy and Hund 2019, 4984). Likewise, Abidin (2016, 7) notes the importance of Instagram as a research site, since "recent industry reports suggest that 93% of influencer campaigns include Instagram, about twice as many as YouTube or Facebook" (Williams 2018, as quoted in O'Meara 2019, 3). Our paper responds to these calls for research on Instagram, specifically as a space with potential for greater diversity vis a vis the fashionable ideals that populates mainstream fashion imagery. Our data is drawn mainly from name, bio, and posts on the platform, although we note how Instagram has diversified to show "stories" (these disappear after 24 h) and Instagram TV (IGTV), and where appropriate we refer to these as well.

Dominant fashion aesthetics and Instagram
There is little doubt that a dominant fashion aesthetic exists in the mainstream fashion media which privileges some bodies and not others. Feminist theorists and activists (Bordo 1993;Wolf 1991;Orbach 1978;Entwistle and Wissinger 2012;Wissinger 2015) have long criticized the narrow confines of the beauty and fashion industries. The deaths of two young runway models in 2008 and 2009, blamed on the grueling pressure to remain very thin, have raised the profile of the inherently "unrealistic" and "oppressive" nature of the fashionable thin aesthetic. The lack of racial and ethnic diversity has also been critiqued (Peoples Wagner 2018;Segran 2018;Freeman 2018;Pham 2013;Haidarali 2012;Wissinger 2012); the preponderance of able-bodied models challenged (Burton and Melkumova-Reynolds 2019; Ellington and Lim 2017;Vainshtein 2012;Sothern 2007); the conventions of gender have been questioned by trans-gender activists (Bettcher 2014); as has the age of models (Darr and Mears 2017;Mears 2011aMears , 2011bWissinger 2015).
In his analysis of the fashionable thin ideal, Volonte (2019) also examines its persistence. Drawing on practice theory, he argues the skinny aesthetic is held in place through routine working practices and institutional structures-in particular, histories of sizing-that create "inertia" to change. Thus, the historical practices around technologies of sizing have privileged a slender body while social and institutional features standardize the female body in terms of certain features (see Peters 2019 and Czerniawski 2015, on sizing and "plus" size models; and also, Green 1997, on standardized sizing as a military innovation).
Second, Volonte argues this ideal is also materially instantiated in the bodies of models and practice of those who select, monitor, coordinate, style and shoot them for shows and magazine editorials. Mears (2011a) argued that players in the field hedge against uncertainty by means of Dress like a Mum/Mom imitation, thus keeping the slender ideal as status quo. She argued the homogeneity of the most valuable model "look" from season to season can be traced back to the communal construction of "buzz," and dense social relationships that determine a model's worth (Mears 2011b). Wissinger (2015) argued that coding the slender body as "fashionable" emerged within modernity's and industrialization's idealization of futuristic images, prompting demands for clear cut, graphic planes of light and shadow best met by an angular silhouette (Wissinger 2015, 112, and cf., see also Wilson 1987Wilson /2013. This lean ideal has subsequently been taken to extremes by developments in imaging technology, which call for models' physical embodiment to resemble photo-shopped and filtered personas in the flesh (Wissinger 2015).
Building on Volonte's argument, we suggest that applying Bourdieu's (1984Bourdieu's ( , 1993 field analysis emphasizes how fields of cultural practice tend to reproduce existing power relations and positions and circulate similar patterns of taste to reproduce the (fashionable) habitus (see also, Entwistle and Rocamora 2006). The enduring nature of fields and habitus suggest they are slow to change, further explaining why the fashion industry's aesthetic is so stubbornly entrenched. Diversity, when it appears, is presented as a radical alternative compared to the dominant aesthetic norms, with diverse bodies marked by their difference to the dominant aesthetic, thus maintaining it.
We place our study alongside others that have found alternatives to this dominant aesthetic circulating on digital and social media platforms not controlled or coordinated by a hegemonic elite. For example, queer beauty bloggers on YouTube exemplify "how the opportunities and demands of online spaces" can lead to "repurposing queer cultural repertoires as necessary and pleasurable queer excess" (Homant and Sender 2019, 5399). Early work on fashion blogging (Findlay and de Perthuis 2019;Findlay 2017;Brydges and Sj€ oholm 2019;Titton 2015;Pedroni 2015;McQuarrie, Miller, and Phillips 2013;Rocamora 2011Rocamora , 2012, initially identified how blogging provided a space for alternative fashion aesthetics in its first "wave" (Findlay 2017). OMD's Annual Influencer Report, 2019, indicated that Instagram is now the "top platform" for fashion compared to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In terms of its affordances, Instagram offers more diverse users (albeit only those with a smart phone) a deceptively easy and accessible means to share fashion and style, allowing Instagrammers to become stylist, model and photographer of their personal look. This ease and accessibility is arguably greater compared to blogging or editing a film for YouTube and more immediate: an image of an outfit or shopping purchase can be shared instantaneously (with little production knowledge or skill needed). Thus, despite documented barriers to entry (see, for instance, Duffy 2017), Instagram gives the appearance of a very accessible path to being in fashion (Duffy and Wissinger 2017).
One of the rare accounts of fashion aesthetics on Instagram (Findlay and de Perthuis 2019) offers textual analysis of the fashionable ideal on the platform by examining two popular influencers-Leonie Hanne of "Ohh Couture" and Asiyami "Gold" Wekulom, who have two million and over 200 K followers respectively. The authors argue that new social media mirror the dominant aesthetic when "fashion travels" outside the industry. Yet given their two examples-young, glamourous, tall, slim, women-this may not be surprising. Both women have a feed which resembles a fashion editorial, glamourous exotic trips (pre-COVID-19), beautiful clothes, pristine hotel rooms. Indeed, both work with brands precisely because they fit the dominant aesthetic and will have social media brand managers to negotiate deals in much the same way model and talent agents traditionally manage models and celebrities (Entwistle 2009;Mears 2011b;Wissinger 2015). Arguably, the filtering norms that traditionally curate the model "look" also apply to these two "influencers." While de Perthuis and Findlay acknowledge "alternative" fashion ideals exist on Instagram, their choice of these "influencers" within, not "beyond," the fashionable ideal, limits their analysis.
To find greater diversity on Instagram, we need to analyze a wider range of accounts that make visible alternative aesthetics. In the course of our online ethnography, we found many non-normative fashionable bodies on Instagram: "curvy" or "fat" fashion bodies (see @gabifresh, @tessholliday, for example); differently abled bodies (@paolaantonini, @viktoriamodesta), and mature fashion for 40þ, 50þ and 60þ fashion (@iconaccidental and @jennykeeoz). Indeed, Instagram seems a limitless space for alternatives. Noting how algorithmic flows do curtail these alternatives, we suggest that within these limits our case study nonetheless explores some dimensions of "alternative" fashion aesthetics and practices, to ask: how do style mums perform fashion and style on this platform? How alternative are these mums in terms of dominant fashionable ideals body as a result?
Part 2: dressing like a mum Our analysis explores how mums articulate and perform motherhood through fashion, focusing on "dress's performative quality" (Rocamora 2011, 41) and how they reconcile the (apparent) contradiction between "mum" with "fashion" and "style." We also examine how they articulate alternatives to prevalent fashionable ideals through references to the "maternal" body, acknowledged by these mums to be far from this dominant aesthetic. We note that motherhood is not a singular or unified experience, but fractured and inter-sectional. Our paper does not assume a unified experience of motherhood, but takes as its focus, the specific ways in which motherhood is articulated through fashion. Across both themes is the increasing commercialization of accounts which raises issues of "authenticity" and "realness" that have been noted by other scholars (Duffy 2017, Banet-Weiser 2012, Duffy and Dress like a Mum/Mom Hund 2019). Since the appeal of many of these mums is their apparent claim to document showcase "real" mum style, "authenticity" is an issue we explored throughout.
Performing "mum style" Instagram style mums articulate a desire to marry the two assumed incompatibilities of "mum" and "fashion" or "style." This perception is articulated often comically in the monikers and descriptors mums use. Highlighting this pairing with her moniker is Zoe @dresslikeamum while in the bio for the account, @the_mumdresscode's descriptor is, "A mum trying not to dress like a mum!" The contradiction is encapsulated in this quote from (now defunct) account @motherofdaughters of major UK style mum Clemmie Hopper in a post from December 2017 When I tell people I'm a mum of 4 they're usual (sic?) reaction is "you don't look like a mum and you don't dress like one either!" What does a mum even look and dress like? Mothers come in all shapes and sizes and from all different backgrounds. Motherhood shouldn't define you so be experimental with your clothes, be brave, embrace your figure. @boden_clothing #ad #womenwhowearitlikeamum (December 25, 2017). This post, linked to a Boden campaign, plays on the idea that mums don't "do" fashion and that "mum style" is an insult not a compliment. The associated hashtag was linked to an online campaign #womenwearitlikeamum, with a YouTube ad in 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ik77Xatej2o), 5 featuring influential UK Instagram mums and marking a watershed moment in the UK when these Instagram style mums gained commercial traction with some retailers. More recently, in 2019 and 2020, other UK brands like Marks and Spencer and Joules and Tu, also featured Instagram style mums in campaigns, while in June 2020 Kat, @doesmybumlook40, featured as a presenter in a new BBC style programme "You are what you wear." These inroads into the mainstream evidence the growing popularity of these style mums, especially their appeal to older women and mothers. A US marketing/talent management site, HYPR, explained their appeal: Mommy bloggers sit at the intersection of fashion, lifestyle, food, home, and health. They're inspiring to millions of moms-to-be and existing parents who want help on being the best homemakers possible. Plus, who can resist cute pictures of smiling, happy babies? (Hyprbrands 2020) Instagram, like blogging, provides space to document "identity construction through clothes" (Rocamora 2011, 410) often foregrounding the complex and contradictory articulation between "motherhood" and 16 "fashion." For example, Emma of @mothering.it (March 23, 2019, see Figure 1) comments on bringing motherhood and style together in a photograph of herself in a long dress with a split up the front as follows: It's funny isn't it, I don't see myself as stylish … in fact I lack confidence when it comes to "fashion" but since having my babies I've found myself feeling more comfortable in my skin. I don't follow a trend or a fashion. If I see something I like then I'll wear it.
[ … ] Saw this dress yesterday in @newlook don't think it was a style I could pull off, that I wouldn't look right. Anyway, I gave myself a talking to and thought to myself but I like the dress and I can make it mine. (emphasis added) It is interesting to note her comment that her experience of motherhood is the very reason for a newfound confidence in style. The experience of motherhood would appear to open a new relationship to the self and clothing. Moreover, pregnancy itself is time to enjoy a new relationship to the body and to clothing. In a post from January 18, 2020, while pregnant with her fourth child, she notes how she "wants to enjoy dressing my pregnancy for the last time -I want to feel beautiful during Dress like a Mum/Mom and after it. I actually never feel glowing or beautiful in myself when pregnant, but I'm making a conscious effort … not to lose 'me' during these months." These quotes underscore how mum identity is articulated through the performative nature of dress (Rocamora 2011), by narrating becoming or being a mum through style. Much like the style blogs Rocamora documented, Instagram provides space for the articulation of this (mum) self, producing a visual diary of the self in process, dressed, styled and "celebrated." It opens a space for display and narration of the maternal body typically ignored by traditional fashion media.
The overt "empowering" message evidenced above ("motherhood shouldn't define you;" "I gave myself a talking to") speaks of the need to "express" oneself through style. Sometimes the "empowerment" comes from sharing the desire for, and difficulty of, getting back into "pregame" (e.g., pre-baby) shape. In an October 3, 2019 post (see  These examples illustrate how Instagram opens a space to explore the many physical, psychological and emotional aspects of motherhood. From pregnancy onwards, mums articulate how they have had to adapt their personal style with respect to the maternal body, discussed further below. As with blogs, on Instagram these "personal stories are narrated supporting the practice of fashion as a technique of the self" (Rocamora 2011, 412) with fashion and motherhood intricately woven together to deal with recurring themes: how to dress pregnancy bumps, style clothes for easy breast feeding, dress for the school run, and how to "reclaim" your body and "find your style" after childbirth. These "techniques of the self" (Foucault 1988) articulated through "mum style" include a "mum uniform," usually purchased from high street shops. For example, @thefashionablepan noted, "Monday working and school run mum style. Love a blazer with a hoodie, Converse and jeans!" (January 13, 2020). Similarly, Cassie (@thismrslife), celebrated a particular jumpsuit as "[P]erfect for the school run this spring/summer" (March 30, 2019). US mum Nicole Feliciano of @Momtrends tagged her post of a new pink clearance rack moto jacket over a basic turtleneck and jeans with #momstyle, dubbing it an "easy Monday outfit" (January 2020). The idea of a "uniform," worn on repeat, pushes back against the normal fashionable trope of always having something new, or styling oneself in a constantly changing array of outfits, never repeating the same look. Also, anathema to the fashionable ethos is the apparently joyful, and quite common, copying and repetition of the same clothing or outfits within the community. The same garments feature on many mum accounts; for example, a polka dot jumpsuit from Marks and Spencer was featured on many different mum accounts in 2018. When sharing the exact same style, mums tag other mums who have worn the same thing, reflecting this shared taste and the mutual recognition of other mums, for example @_mummy_moi who says "saw this blazer on @thefashionablepanit was one of those 'she looks awesome'" (March 3, 2019). With respect to a particular bikini, US mum Erika @mysocaled life observed, If you're tired of seeing this bikini on Instagram well … you might as well stop using the app because there's a good reason everyone including myself keeps buying it. It's comfy and flattering and not to mention only $25. (Summer 2019) The comments section under each post provides further evidence of a shared community of style mums (a subject of our ongoing research) and points to practices that run counter to the norms of the fashionable ideal. Other mums familiar to us from our research acknowledged that they too love and wear the suit, chiming in as Amanda Sobkowiak @blondeoutofwater did, "Never could get tired of that bikini!" Sharing Dress like a Mum/Mom and imitation is typical to "mum style," yet runs counter to the normal goals of fashion styling. If the same outfit appeared on both the cover of Vogue and Harpers Bazaar, for instance, heads would roll, or at least a few interns would be strictly reprimanded. Similarly, when two fashion icons appear in the same outfit, it makes the news. 6 The common aesthetic trope for this display and commentary of mum style is the ubiquitous "selfie" displaying one's "outfit of the day" (OOTD) but these take many forms: bedroom or changing room mirror, reversing the camera to show one's "outfit from above," taken with a camera mounted on a tripod, or by a small child (see Figure 3 for some variations). These outfit posts frequently replicate standardized poses borrowed from fashion photography (hand on hip, leg elongated in front). However, aesthetic differences between our "nano," "micro," "macro" and "mega" mums are notable. The higher up the follower hierarchy, the more likely the photos resemble high fashion editorials and akin to the lush and glamourous settings of "celebrity" influencers (such as those examined by Findlay and de Perthuis 2019) while "nano" and some "micro" mums exhibit an aesthetic far different from standard fashion editorials.
Mums at the upper end of the spectrum showcase an "aspirational" lifestyle (high end fashion/designer clothing, beautiful interiors, exciting venues and events, exotic locations). When working with a brand, photographs are sometimes shot professionally, as is the case for some of @katie_ellison's posts which are a mix of fashion and travel, featuring shots of her clothes and family in her beautiful house and gifted luxury holidays. Yet, even these mums' fashion posts are different from the conventional fashion shot as they are firmly located within the context of their "mum life," not a one-off fashion editorial "story." Moreover, they wear more accessible fashion than in a conventional fashion editorial feature; for example, Kat @doesmybumlook40 works with designer brands, such as Labelmix in 2020, a high-end niche designer clothing brand (see in Figure 4, June 20, 2020) shot in her plush and spacious kitchen, but she mixes this with H&M and TJ Maxx in the same setting. This contrast is similarly evident in the many images featuring her wearing Stella McCartney while dog-walking. "Macro" US mum, James @bleubird, also works with and mixes both high street and prestigious brands (e.g., Madewell, the White Company), and her fashion images are staged around her family home (often with unmade bed in the backdrop). Similarly mixing things up are popular "micro" US mums like @theyusufs (pairing Anthropologie and H&M with Mara Hoffman), and @stylishlystella (mixing TJ Maxx with Gucci).
Not only are individual posts interesting to examine, but the entire look and feel of the "feed" is significant. Mums with large followings, under pressure to produce regular content, often feature recurring aesthetic tropes (stylized food shots, glamourous interiors) that depict an aspirational "lifestyle," and this routinize content is often in the same Examples of "outfit of the day." Dress like a Mum/Mom 21 color/filter to give an overall aesthetic homogeneity to the entire feed, (see, e.g., Figure 5, Katie @katie_ellison's candy-colored aesthetic). This uniformity and clearly defined aesthetic style gives these mums' feed the look and gloss of high fashion images, while the content presents clothing in a manner that is decidedly outside of the traditional fashion aesthetic.
We saw even more difference from the fashionable aesthetic norm in outfit posts further down the hierarchy of style mums. Here we found that selfies are usually taken against the backdrop of domestic life-suburban back yard, messy kitchens or bedrooms in contrast to fashion editorial shots shot in studios or exotic locations. Further, these mums are more likely to always wear high street purchase rather than expensive or designer clothes. A large part of the appeal of these images is authenticity (implicitly, often explicitly, invoked) and realness of family life. Plus-size American mom @carmenreneeblog, for instance, employs well known fashion tropes or themes, while focusing exclusively on fashion on a budget. In one holiday post (December 27, 2019) affordable fashion is shown in a "sweet family pic," as one commenter called it, which nonetheless evoked a glamourous feel, showing a perfectly lit Carmen in soft focus, dressed in a sequin tube skirt and tee, strolling through the woods with her husband and toddler. The accompanying text notes the skirt's holiday appropriate "sparkle and shine," while offering "a TON of affordable options" for buying it, supplied by helpful links to take

22
Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger shoppers directly to places to purchase. Here style is shown as "authentic" by the setting in domestic locations and by showcasing affordable clothes, carefully framed by text appearing to offer a democratic access to the look. Similarly, in her ad campaign for Pink Lily, Carmen shows a series of affordable jumpers in bedroom selfies (see Figure 6).
In this manner, Instagram entices mums to participate, as "non-professionals" or "prosumers" (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010) within the fashion system, as models, stylists, "influencers." While we found these practices to be more common at the upper levels of the hierarchy in our study, mums who only occasionally work with brands still tend to be governed by the forces emerging from a "homo-social intimacy between the persona of models and their audience of readers-cum-consumers" (Abidin and Brown 2018, 467). This kind of intimacy demands authenticity, by means of commodifying "real life" through revealing behind the scenes access to the production of the looks displayed on the feed. The mums we studied commodify their accounts in different ways: some "nano" mums make heavy use of hashtags, suggesting they're trying to grow their feed as an "influencer;" others aspire to work in fashion (as personal stylists for example), similar to other "mumpreneurs." Some feature real-time purchase with 'swipe up" features on their stories or work on an ad campaign with a budget brands. These "mumpreneurs"  Katie @katie_ellison candy-colored "feed." 24 Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger speak of epiphanies relating to their sense of self that result in new business ventures, post-partum-as personal stylists, or fashion brand consultants. For example, @mamalifelondon drew on her experience of motherhood to develop a range of statement t-shirts-"never off duty"-promoted on her account. Other mums use Instagram to extend existing fashion businesses; US mum, James @bleubird uses her feed to promote her online web magazine.
One US mom, who had previously worked in the industry (@momtrends April 23, 2018), seemed very happy with the transition from her full-time job at fashion design house to her work as a mum style Instagrammer, saying, And I adore this dreamy job I've created. Hard to believe that it has been 17 years since I left @ralphlauren but I'm so happy in this space where I can talk about fashion and style in my voice. I'm lucky to love what I do so much and to get to play with clothes every day. #momboss #mompreneur #stylemom #momblogger Despite these apparent success stories, however, we found that commercialization is fraught with risk, as scholars of social media (discussed earlier) have argued. If "realness"-as one version of "authenticity"-is Dress like a Mum/Mom key to these style mums' success, overt commodification potentially undermines it. A frequent complaint from followers, noted in comments, is that mum "influencers'" closer association with brands risks them "selling out." This tension between authenticity and commodification echoes that of the early "wave" of fashion blogging (Findlay 2015(Findlay , 2017. Strategies to deal with this is potential conflict are evident in many mums' feeds. One approach is to be up front about this "authenticity bind" (Duffy and Hund 2019) and acknowledge the problem, as in this "honest" admission by @mummyyatesstyle (January 28, 2019) under a photo of her with "Mama" sweatshirt Another strategy to manage this apparent contradiction is to seamlessly merge product with a comment on the family, as @mothering_it does when promoting a photographic service "I want to remember in case I forget[ … ] @hugglerphoto kindly #gifted us this beautiful canvas" (April 14, 2019).
As with the mums who mix high and low fashion on their feeds, another approach involves striking a careful balance within posts and stories, dispersing quasi-glamourous images with "real" depictions of motherhood. For instance, Kat, @doesmybumlookbig, often features prestigious campaigns alongside posts with funny stories of chaotic family life. US duo Nasteha & Nuni Yusuf intersperse shots of exotic travel destinations and fashionable (gifted) clothes with down to earth "momming" advice. They post beautifully styled photos of an al fresco breakfast on a sponsored trip to Venice (November 21, 2019) next to kids in Gap pajamas, or post themselves wearing a "casual" outfit during Covid-19 lockdown on April 3, 2020 in an ad for Talbots (see Figure 7). Zoe @dresslikeamum manages this tension between authenticity and commodification with separate accounts: a commercial account, @DLAM_by_zdp, features her work with brands and allows her main account to be largely uncommercial, with "real" fashion and beauty shown within the context of busy family life (including regular IGTV "crap" make-up demos, often with a toddler balanced on her knee) that showcase the "real" mum challenge to get ready in the morning.
It is notable that diversity also affects who gets to work with which brands. The top six mums in our sample (celebrity or macro as defined by follower numbers) are mostly slim, attractive (and photogenic), and white. These are the mums we found work most frequently with big brands, consistent with similar research (Findlay and de Perthuis 2019). However, our sample does suggest at least some willingness of brands to work with a more diverse look than that of the traditional fashionable ideal. All seven of these top mums ("mega" and "macro") are considerably older than the majority of models although there is evidence of a willingness of brands and mainstream media to work with more diverse mums. Popular black and mixed race mum Candice @candicebraithwaite has grown a very large following with regular appearances on a popular daytime TV show, while her lockdown style featured in Grazia magazine in April 2021, and Natalie @stylemesunday increasingly works with brands (Natalie for Marks and Spencer, Candice for Tu, Carmen for Pink Lily). In a webinar in June 2020, Natalie even shared her experience of working with agents who helped negotiate deals with brands, earning her a salary of 100k. Size diversity is also increasingly recognized as valuable, with UK plus size mum, Hollie @hollieplus, working extensively with many budget brands. All three mums are outspoken on diversity issues: Candice and Natalie post on the need for greater body diversity (Natalie is an "activist" on the platform), while Candice often speaks out on racism, though not necessarily in relation to brands. That these mums work with high profile brands, despite being noticeably outside the fashionable ideal, is evidence that this "mum style" and "mum body" is increasingly recognized. We suggest that further research tracking these mums, and others on Instagram is needed to see how much change is taking place in social media space like Instagram.

Dress like a Mum/Mom
We argue that "dressing like a mum" on Instagram opens a space to articulate motherhood through style. This "technique" of the (mum) style brings together motherhood and style not afforded by mainstream fashion media, rendering visible older, larger, more diverse mums not usually seen in fashion editorials. Some aspects of this phenomenon are noteworthy in challenging the fashion aesthetic, not least the fact that the "authentic" appeal of these style mums is nonetheless often harnessed by brands. We suggest that these displays exercise "symbolic creativity" (Willis, 1990) and encourage a playfulness with fashion that enables Instagram style mums to narrate their identities and "mum style" to push back against restrictive fashion norms implicitly, and often explicitly. Their style celebrates the maternal body, which contrasts sharply with the fashionable ideal body, as we now discuss.

The maternal body
While there is no universal embodied reality of motherhood, many posts speak of maternity through a language of shared experiences, in particular, referring to how maternity changes one's sense of self and style. While most mums refer to bodies as being a long way from the skinny fashion ideal we note a few mums who do not (for example Miss James @bleubird and @dresslikeamum); both are notably glamourous, slim, and beautiful, and closer to the conventions of fashion. However, for the majority, there is a recurring theme to "keep it real" and be "authentic," when discussing one's body. For example, Susie @susiejverrill in a post of taken shortly after giving birth, complete with breast feeding pads wryly notes, "Just a quick reminder, if you're up to your veiny boobs in motherhood, that even those who look like they're handling motherhood with ease, grace and comfortprobably looked like this the day after giving birth" (January 29, 2020). Reflecting positively on the changing effects of pregnancy, @katie_ellison (November 3, 2019) reposts a photo from when she was pregnant with her third child noting, "I absolutely loved being pregnant, esp. for the third time … I also am the most comfortable with my body in pregnancy, I loved having a bump [ … ] wear tight body con style dresses, which I would never wear now." In response to comments that she took a lot of "bump" photos, US mum Samantha @shelovestoglow exclaimed, "calling all pregnant mamas, take those bump pics! They're beautiful, special and precious. You will not regret it" (November 18, 2019). Also reflecting on pregnancy and dress, Ellie @thismummystyle on May 20, 2019 shared many photos of her pregnancy bump and thoughts on how to dress, noting "[D]ungarees -I'm a massive fan! I love them, they are so comfy, just not the most practical pregnancy wear when you need to pee every 10 mins" (see Figure 8). These style mums narrate how a new embodied awareness translates into new style choices. For example, UK mum @mamalifelondon referring to a photograph of her pregnant sister-in-law (on April 2, 2019) references her own maternal body, noting how she "never bothered with wearing maternity tops in my second pregnancy. Just buying the next size up worked perfectly for covering up my bump." Continuing, she says, "I definitely gave up with breast feeding tops after my first baby. Those tiny fabric flaps that you have to try to squeeze your nipples out of … Total nightmare!" Her relatively bold choice to eschew the fashion dictates of "maternity wear" grew out of the heightened self-knowledge and acceptance gained from the experience of pregnancy the first time around, a common process in the development of "mum style." A standard aesthetic trope shows the mum body in semi-naked selfies (often in bikinis or underwear) to reveal pregnancy bumps or the postpartum body with "mum-tum" "rolls" and "cellulite" and reflecting on the immediate and long-term impact of pregnancy and breast feeding (and sleepless nights) on their body. Hollie @hollieplus posts four images of herself wearing underwear an ad for Felicity Howard lingerie on January 19, 2020 (see Figure 9) and notes "I've kinda moved away from posting lingerie shots," but after being gifted the clothing, "I had to share it with you." The images (visually explicit) pointedly comment on how, "loving your body after having a baby is HARD GOING! I'm 18 months in from having my second and I am STILL struggling." She
Dress like a Mum/Mom refers to her "lower belly that's significantly lower than before motherhood because of standard nerve damage from having a C section." Yet, she depicts herself in lingerie, with said sagging stomach clearly on display, in a pose usually reserved for a lithe, young model with a flat stomach, e.g., hands on hips, back slightly arched, one knee canted out at a slight angle, exactly like a pose one would find in a swimsuit or lingerie catalogue.
Similarly ambivalent, UK mum @mothering.it (on May 4, 2019) posts to say she feels "so nervous about posting this bikini snap[ … ] I'm 5 months postpartum with my fourth child and this holiday I was no way "bikini ready" [ … ] pointing to "excess weight on my tummy [ … ] scars on my belly from recent surgery" but "we can turn those hang ups into a positive we can lose the insecurity and embrace very single flaw because that's what makes us unique." Such selfies call attention to bodily changes wrought by motherhood, and push against fashion inflected norms dictating hiding these flaws. Many condemn the shame surrounding the marked body. As US mum @juliatorresd observed (see Figure 10), Three pregnancies, two kids, a hernia, diastasis recti, and a tummy tuck. I finally tried on the first bikini in 6 years since I became a mom. I've been too over conscious about my scar to do Hollie @hollieplus in ad for Felicity Hayward lingerie reflecting on her body about which she does not feel confident, but is putting on display as an act of self love.
it. I still don't feel comfortable showing my full belly and I'm not ready for a bikini that's not high waisted YET, but it was good to let go of my fear and put one on. My body has forever changed but so did I the minute I became a mother. (July 24, 2019) These are familiar calls for body positive acceptance, under the guise of being "authentic" (and pushing back against fashionable norms). In their analysis, Lazuka et al. (2020Lazuka et al. ( , 1740 argue that "[B]ody positivity challenges the unrealistic standards of beauty [ … ] "by the promotion and acceptance of diverse body sizes and appearances" and this is evident in, for example, in this post, US mum Nicole @momtrends claims to unite mums to accept their bodies, while subtly promoting Vera Bradley brand swimsuits (and displaying a fit, muscular body sporting a bikini). She issues a call to arms: Moms and daughters, I'd love to hear your opinions about bikinis. What age is too young to wear them, and do they ever need to be retired? From middle-aged moms to newly minted teens, there's space for all of us at the pool and for us to wear what makes us feel fabulous. (April 23, 2019)

Figure 10
Julia @juliatorresd on confronting the mirror to "admire/accept your body."

Dress like a Mum/Mom
Here the contradictions of mum style intersect with ageist attitudes, subtly pushing back against the edict that bodies of a certain age should stay under wraps, or modestly displayed. She also calls on the for women to speak and support one another, with her "plea to be kind" not only to our bodies but to "other women" and #wearthesuit, as she hashtagged it. Interestingly, her relationship with this brand is not mentioned, though UK law demands total transparency for all ads by contrast to US?. Instead, the relationship is signaled by the subtle cue of the hashtag #verabradley. This sort of plea for women to display their bodies has been widely discussed in terms of postfeminist subjectivities, consumption and branding (Banet-Weiser 2018;McRobbie 2009).
Whether commodified or not, however, the Instagram mums we studied provided space to celebrate and accept the (often curvier) maternal body in overt opposition to the dominant cultural of slenderness and calls to "snap back into shape" after giving birth. Typical posts make strong appeal to "authenticity," revealing the "reality" of the maternal body with its softer curves and rounder figure. Many posts explicitly call out the fashion and beauty industries for their narrow, unachievable body aesthetic. With her large following (over 600 K) parttime UK midwife Clemmie, @motherofdaughers, strongly advocated for "real bodies" and "body positivity" when her account was active, offering a professional view on the maternal body, as well as a personal one as mother to four daughters. Under images of herself in bikini (since deleted) she had commented on her relationship with her teenage body and maternal body vis-a-vis the fashionable skinny aesthetic, noting how her 34DD "boobs, hips and curves" didn't conform to fashionable "waif-like" aesthetics in the early noughties. Motherhood, she argues, is a time to take "pride in feeding and nourishing my babies. I stopped caring what others might think of see when I wore swimwear." Similarly, the fashionable ideal was challenged by US mom Tay Carns [@taycarns] in a post tagged with #loveyourbody and the more political #beautystandardsarebullshit. With her curvier figure shot from the back, her strappy top showing her tattoos to full advantage, she held up a framed definition of the word calories and explained: Calories: say no to diet culture! Diet culture is a system of beliefs that: Worship thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you're irreparably broken just because you don't look like the impossibly thin "ideal." (November 17, 2019) Black UK mums Natalie @stylemesunday and Candice @candicebraithwaite, along with Hollie @hollieplus, challenge the body aesthetics of the fashion and beauty industries by overtly drawing attention to the narrowness of this skinny aesthetic, showcasing their "curvier" alternative. Mixed race mum Natalie describes herself as an activist, claiming she started posting six years ago to help "all women to feel good about themselves, supporting them to feel comfortable in their own skin by normalizing our bodies" (January 31, 2018). She uses her platform to call out oppressive standards. In Figure 11, she exclaims, F ÃÃ k your beauty standards! Every single person deserves the right to feel accepted and beautiful. Imagine what else you could be thinking about whilst your mind is preoccupied with the wobbly part of your arms or how big your thighs are looking lately." However, along with celebratory or body positive posts, some mums struggle more with the emotional difficulties of accepting the maternal body. Pregnant mum Ellie @thismummystyle (on May 13, 2019) notes she lacks confidence and that pregnancy is difficult because "I really struggle to come to terms with & embrace my (rapidly) expanding figure and spend too much time worrying about how I look or that I won't go back to how I used to be ever again." She goes on, "I spent my 20 s ashamed of what I looked like and I'm determined not to let my 30 s be the same. So here I am, 32 years old, mumtum & wobbly bits, BUT I'm focusing on my newfound confidence. Go for it gals." The positive inflection at the post's end gives a nod to the body positive tone, in an effort to stay in that vein of the conversation.
A similar tension is evident in Saskia @style_fix_mama posts, many of which feature her in underwear speaking about her larger body since having three kids. In lingerie and swimwear posts she both explicitly displays, and unsparingly comments on her maternal body: "I'm in no way

Figure 11
Natalie @stylemesunday calls out beauty standards.
Dress like a Mum/Mom perfect I have lumps and bumps everywhere, cellulite dropped down boobs but I just don't care anymore. I am grateful to my body for allowing me to have 3 beautiful children." (September 9, 2019). Her ambivalence about her maternal body, is clearly evident: "I am always going on about my weight, or something to do with my appearance, something I'm not happy with … I'm working so hard on myself at the moment" (May 7, 2019). The idea that revealing one's unfashionably large body runs counter to conventions is evidenced by the comments, in which followers call praise her, saying "well done" and thank her for her "honesty." A contradictory tension, noted by Rocamora (2011, 422) with reference to blogging, is also in evidence here: on the one hand, posting images of one's life/body reproduces "the mirror's panoptic logic and the related duty that weighs on them to work on their appearance" while it also opens up space for the articulation of a female voice on appearance, "by and for women, a space for the expression of other images of the fashionable" (2011,422). This stance echoes popular feminism's deflation of feminism's political bite (Elias, Gill, and Scharff 2014;Banet-Weiser 2018, McRobbie 2009) under the guise of "body positivity." As Banet-Weiser and Hearn argue, Instagram is a space where "exhortations to 'love your body'" are communicated through images of "conventionally beautiful, feminine, cis-gendered women" (2020, 2056). Thus, Instagram mums' display of their curvier/larger/ maternal body reproduces the idea that women are their bodies and that bodily appearance matters, while also potentially "empowering" mums to narrate their experience of the maternal body. However, that said, Instagram enables some mums to articulate frustrations with the narrow aesthetics of the fashionable ideal through display of their maternal bodies.

Conclusion
Instagram opens space for fashioned bodies to articulate a claim to personal style excluded within conventional fashion media. We have examined what constitutes "mum style" and argued that its creation by nonfashion professionals, its accessibility and its more inclusive body positive aesthetic implicitly, and often explicitly, challenges the power of the dominant fashionable ideal. By sharing their "mum style" with their followers these mums construct a "mum uniform" adapted to the demands of motherhood and display their maternal body which is made visible through style. In doing so, these mums celebrate a different fashionable body to the conventional aesthetic that one has to be young, thin, and white to be fashionable. The mums we have analyzed are generally larger, older and racially diverse. This "mum style," broadly speaking, is highstreet not high fashion, and is suited to the demands of the school run and domestic life wherein it is often displayed.
Switching the focus away from celebrity "influencers" to mums with much smaller followings revealed these explicit challenges to the ideal. Overt challenges to restrictive fashion norms were not a uniform or unified feature of all Instagram style mums, however. Mums in the upper end of the spectrum of "mega" and "micro" strata exhibited a "glamourous" and "aspirational" lifestyle (as other researchers have identified) likely to be commodified by big brands, and we found these mums tended to adhere to the dominant fashionable aesthetic in both pose, and appearance (pretty, glamourous, white and slim). Yet, even as they seemed to embody the fashionable ideal, the fact that they are mums seeking to be in fashion, embodied a contradiction that implicitly challenges the fashionable ideal typically embodied by young, slim childless/childlike models.
Lower down the follower hierarchy, we find more diverse mums whose accounts feature high street or budget brands in domestic settings (see, for example, see figure US Carmen @carmenreneeblog post for Pink Lily on January 22, 2020). Their practices centered on making the fashionable aesthetic more attainable-its appeal lying in its very "realness" perceived as "authentic" by followers. These mums occupied a contradictory position as well. We've noted how pressures of commodification risk accusations of "selling out" and their appeal of "realnees"is threatened with quite devastating consequences (in Clemmie's case).
Another fraught part aspect of "realness" involves the obvious display of the mum body, as mums use the platform to articulate their experience of the maternal body, navigating the transitions of motherhood, through pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the subsequent fat rolls or "mum tum," through style. In so doing, they established the kind of authenticity crucial to building up followers on Instagram, while also questioning fashion's censorship of the mum body.
We conclude with two reflections on the potential limits and strengths of our argument. First, we consciously chose a very mainstream community as our case study in Instagram fashion, to explore fashion as part of mums' daily dress. We are not arguing that these style mums pose a very radical challenge to the fashion system or the fashionable ideal; dressed largely in high street fashion and displaying conventions of acceptable normative femininity, they are far from "avant-garde." However, what might be considered a weakness of the paper is a potential strength. It is important to find alternatives and challenges within this mainstream practice, despite the pressures to standardize and normalize given the algorithmic forces of the platform, and look at how people exhibit what Paul Willis (1990) has called "symbolic creativity" as opposed to the creativity normally celebrated within the fashion industry (e.g., the individual "genius" of the auteur designer). Since this "common culture" is where the majority of us live and negotiate our lives, like Willis, we see value, in analyzing the everyday creative use of fashion to find seeds of possible resistance or change.

Dress like a Mum/Mom
A second point of reflection is that we recognize that the potential of the platform, as a relatively open space for fashionable display, is compromised in many ways. Indeed, the potential of Instagram as a radical or at least alternative space for fashionable aesthetics is fragile and increasingly likely to fall into lockstep with dominant fashion aesthetics as the platform gets colonized by fashion brands-even "nano" mums are now being approached by brands who recognize that their "engagement" with (small number of) followers is commodifiable. Indeed, the direction of travel is toward more, not less standardized looks, and even over the short time we've observed it (about three years), we can see increasing commercial ads and accounts, as the algorithm is manipulated in favor of commercial gains.
In sum, we suggest our case study of Instagram style mums is fruitful for exploring how this platform opens up spaces for fashionable display not afforded by the mainstream fashion media and how it enables alternative fashionable bodies-and particular communities of style-to push back against restrictive fashion norms and display their style. We propose further research on fashionable display on Instagram is needed to explore other kinds of bodies, aesthetics and communities enabled by the platform. More work is needed to identify pockets of resistance within mainstream fashion, to track how the evolving platforms of social media shape ideas of identity, femininity, and the social ramifications of embodied style in the 21st century.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).