"No obstacles are insurmountable when God commands and we obey"
- - Heber J. Grant
March 7, 2013
Things I Learned From Pinterest
by Hannah Bird

It’s no secret that the news these days is a little depressing. Listening to news reports explaining why we are paying people to steal from us is not exactly uplifting. Chronicling which tribe/country/gang wants to kill which other tribe/country/gang gets old. And apparently politicians have now been found to be consistently untruthful. It gets old.

That is why I have turned to Pinterest.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest is an online compiler of every aspirational picture on the internet. It’s like getting every lifestyle magazine in the world refreshed every twenty minutes for free. It’s also chock full of good news. Great news in fact. Did you know that by soaking your teeth in enamel destroying lemon juice you can whiten them? It’s a great idea. Also you can re-wire anything easily at home and make a lamp. Anything. Basically, the garbage you are throwing away each week is a trash can full of lamps that you are just too lazy to assemble. No one on Pinterest ever throws anything away. Either they turn it into a craft or they use it as part of an educational toy for ridiculously photogenic children. Those kids are going to be a million times smarter than the poor kids whose moms just throw stuff away.

More awesome things that I learned on Pinterest:

The average wedding takes between six and nine years to plan. Anyone involved in the wedding must devote the entire planning time exclusively to that couple. Everyone wears matching outfits constantly. In order to qualify for marriage, you must live near a railroad track. No exceptions. Also, people who are not actually from the country think that drinking from Mason jars makes them country. They also think that straw is not itchy and will make great wedding decor. Each bride gets to pick 12 dresses to be worn through the actual month-long ceremony. My best guess is that this is all funded through some type of lottery or cross-promotional effort sponsored by the canning jar cartel.

If you do not photograph every second of your pregnancy, your child will be impounded at birth. You may take some shots yourself. However, the vast majority of these pictures need to be done by a professional. Don’t freak out. Anyone with a more expensive camera than yours and the ability to add a watermark counts as a professional. You may choose between overdone funny pictures or overdone emotional pictures. Either way, you must have at least one picture of the expectant couple throwing gang signs over the belly. (What gang chose a heart for it’s sign? So weird). The parents will require that the following parties be thrown for them – an announcement party where they tell people they are expecting, an ultrasound party where the parents show off bad ultrasounds and people pretend that the child is cute and does not look at all like the wad of gum they just spit out, a reveal party where the parents reveal the gender of the baby, a baby shower, a book shower, and a new mom shower. Any gift brought to any of these showers is required by law to be formed into some sort of novelty cake. Perhaps due to the expense of the multiple parties, the expectant father is not able to wear a shirt in any of the pregnancy photos.

Once the baby is born, things get more challenging. Cribs have been outlawed and so your newborn must sleep in buckets, purses, hammocks, baseball gloves, baskets, flower pots, helmets, crates, tires, chairs, or pretty much anything that is not on fire. You will get bonus mom points if any of these things is suspended from a tree or ceiling for the picture. Also diapers are illegal so just plan on your stuff getting peed on.

Repurposing is popular. It is so popular that there is no need for the object to be done with its first purpose before you skip to the “re”. If you happen to find an antique dresser with lovely details, it will not function again as a dresser if you use it as is. You need to paint it. And decoupage it. And make at least one surface a chalkboard. And change all the knobs. Then and only then can it be used as a dresser. Likewise books can only be read once and are then useless. The only way to employ them in the future is to tear them up and make flowers, wreaths, scrapbook pages, or decoupage them on 19th century furniture. An antique tablecloth should under no circumstances be placed on a table and should be cut immediately into a bunting that you will hate in two years.

The leading cause of obesity is the lack of motivation quotes paired with highly photo-shopped and selectively lit pictures of some woman’s abdomen. You are not fat because you ate too much or because you are sick. You are fat because you are not familiar with motivational quotes. By sharing quotes about not quitting and pictures of belly buttons, we are addressing the obesity crisis head on. I can only extrapolate from this that if we would give people more images of unattainable bodies in advertising and media we would all be running marathons. In much the same way the 1980s kitty hanging from a branch “Hang in There” poster ended the tragedy of kitten suicides, we can quote our way to health.

Speaking of which:

There was once a woman named Marilyn Monroe. She was the smartest woman who ever lived. She had an amazingly healthy view of herself and the world. She lived to promote self acceptance despite the fact that she was fat. She knew absolutely everything about human relationships and how to make them successful. If more women would be like Marilyn the world would be a much better place. Also, she had some sort of disease that made her twist her face and body into weird positions all the time. But she still knew everything about everything.

Any wise thing that was not said by Marilyn Monroe was said by Oscar Wilde, Audrey Hepburn, Ziggy Marley, Winnie the Pooh, Mark Twain or was found written on a wall somewhere. Oscar Wilde quotes referencing cars are no less authentic just because in his era they were referred to as automobiles. Some quotes are so profound that they were said by more than one of these famous quotees. That does not mean you need to source your quote better, it means that the quote is extra good and needs multiple fonts to fully express its wonder.

In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln/Mother Teresa, “Pinterest is important because it is a window not on the world that is, but on the world as we would have it. If we were actually doing something other than pinning on Pinterest.”


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About Hannah Bird

I am me. I live at my house with my husband and kids. Mostly because I have found that people get really touchy if you try to live at their house. Even after you explain that their towels are fluffier and none of the cheddar in their fridge is green.

I teach Relief Society and most of the sisters in the ward are still nice enough to come.

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