Skip to main content

YouTube screengrab

Clad in Uggs and swinging burp cloths, Fiat's rapping mommy is out of the gates in 2013.

"The Motherhood," a three-minute-plus advertisement for the car company's 500L is getting much love on YouTube, where it's managed to rack up nearly two million views since being posted in mid-December.

The video features a British mother opining about modern motherhood while her children bust a move in the playroom. She covers a lot of ground:

Breastfeeding - "I express like the best from these holes in my chest, wear my nursing bra, like a bulletproof vest"

Mommy weight gain - "I'm living it large, and by large I mean bigger"

Mommy fashion - "Swap my sexy handbag for a snot-stained sack"

The infantilized parent - "Gave up on real food, eat leftover fish fingers"

Parental oversharing - "I'm flooding up your timeline with my baby news"

Work-life balance - "Work versus home is a mental combination with my elbows deep, in infant defecation."

She concludes: "I'm a school-run-taker, fairy-cake-baker, dealmaker, orgasm-faker, rattle-shaker, cheesegrater, nighttime waker / I'm a placater, peacemaker."

Most commenters – mothers and fathers – are getting a kick out of the cheeky spot. "Having recently become part of the target market, I confess that this appeals to me greatly," wrote Adweek's Rebecca Cullers.

Mommyish's Eve Vawter, meanwhile, wasn't feeling it.

"I know car companies try and appeal to parents and the image parents have in their heads about what type of parent they are, a minivan-driving parent or a parent who wants to zip around in a sportscar ... but isn't the joke about the parents who are still trying to be 'cool' and 'with it' and 'hip' sort of played out?" Vawter wrote. "It's 2013, can we have some new commercials geared towards parents that aren't so obvious about the challenges we face raising tiny humans into bigger humans and don't make it seem like we are utterly miserable in the process?"

According to the caption on Fiat's YouTube video, the car "is dedicated to all those women who have to be all things to all people and live it large on a daily basis." Over at Digital Spy, the company's marketing director offered up this gross marketing speak:

"We wanted to connect with our target audience, starting with dynamic young moms, in a way that demonstrated our understanding of the challenges they face balancing motherhood with their desire to keep hold of their pre-children identity. We hope that by dramatising the reality of becoming a new mom in this way, we will raise a knowing smile from moms everywhere, and we are sure that they will recognize how the Fiat 500L can bring a touch of on-trend glamour into their lives."

"On-trend glamour?" Most commenters pointed out the tiny car would hardly fit mum, dad and three children, let alone all their baby accoutrements.

Still, the spot is a welcome, self-deprecating reprieve from the neurosis that characterized our motherhood dialogues in 2012, from Time's baiting "Are You Mom Enough" to Anne-Marie Slaughter's opus on women and work-life balance in The Atlantic.

Bring on the fish fingers.

Editor's note: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the Motherhood video was posted on Dec. 31. This version has been corrected.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe