- Wait, do you see my under outfit?
Oh my God.
Who is she?
That doesn't even look like me. (laughs)
Oh, I forgot to put deodorant on, guys.
Hold on.
(lighthearted music) (camera clicking)
- Too much, too much. - Ah!
Instagram moms.
They're beautiful.
They're positive.
Their lives are absolutely perfect.
But.
That's not me. (laughs)
But I wanna know what it takes to be an Instagram mom
and I want a sneak peek into that life.
So I'm gonna try something.
For one week, I'm going to be the ultimate Instagram mom.
I'm gonna have to figure everything out.
The hair, the makeup, the smiling children,
how do you even make those?
Do they come out like that?
I don't understand but I'm gonna give it a try.
So wish me luck.
I think first, we should establish what an Instagram mom is.
If you saw one, you would know
exactly what I'm talking about.
She posts perfect pictures.
Id say my Instagram is a trash fire.
It's very cluttered.
Just very much my real life.
When I had my oldest son, I was 22.
Single mom.
A complete mess.
And just had such a hard time
transitioning into parenthood.
And I'm looking at all these moms on my phone
just dressed to the nines
and perfect with this perfect lives
and it made me feel like crap about myself.
And it took me years and years
to overcome that feeling of being inadequate.
So this is gonna be really, really, really hard for me.
I actually found out that a lot of
these accounts achieve these consistently
perfect posts by block shooting. (laughs)
There will be one Saturday morning photo shoot.
They'll get, you know, enough photos
for the next one to two weeks.
And it's usually taken by a professional photographer.
So I met with Jon, BuzzFeed's Professional Photographer.
- They kinda do look like stock photos.
- Yeah. - They do.
- Right?
- Like stock piled photos.
- It makes it seem-- - It's not even real...
- Yeah. - Like it's not even that day.
(Jon laughs) - No.
- There's two sides to it.
I think there are real moms out there that have
Instagram accounts that are showing their real life
and they are actually giving tips
to moms and stuff like that.
Then there's like the whole fabricated perfect life mom.
I can't really get down with that.
I feel like we might have to do more
planning on this natural shoot
than I do on like a real photo shoot.
- So the crew shows up for the photo shoot.
My house is a mess because
I don't know, I live in it.
I live with two children.
I'll clean when they move out.
I'm getting my makeup done.
'Cause there's no way that these people do their own makeup
that well for these Instagram photo shoots.
The entire day, I just bribed my kids with treats.
I could not get my kids to do this any other way.
You know when your kid gives you that, "Oh."
It was a lot of that.
- Mama, this is boring.
- This is boring.
I don't wanna do this. (groaning)
(Wyatt crying)
- Okay, buddy. (groaning)
Do you need socks?
This is exhausting.
Anyone who gets their kids to actually
put up with this,
is a better mom than I am.
Does this look normal?
- [Jon] No.
But on camera it does.
- Oh, okay.
I can't look serious in a picture.
It's so uncomfortable for me.
I feel like an idiot.
- All the time? - There are people
trying to walk their dogs down the sidewalk
and I'm here like, (laughing)
I'd say the majority of the shots
are me having a really hard time posing.
I don't know how to do it.
And I look like I'm trying to poop
if I make any other expression besides smiling,
it literally looks like constipation.
We ended with 2,000 photos.
The next task is to determine which ones
I'm actually going to post.
These are so good.
Oh my God.
Just me, I read.
Oh, what's over there?
Oh, I can't tell if I like them or I hate them.
Like they're really good pictures.
It doesn't look like me in it.
I look like I'm a life coach.
I'm here with Jon again.
He's retouching some of the photos.
In the meantime, this is what I look like now.
This is what Jon's making me look like.
Oh my God.
I need this for life.
- She looks fine from the beginning.
So I'm really not doing much, you know.
I guess I am, actually.
(Jon laughs) - You made me look tan.
So let's go through the photos we posted.
What's really funny 'cause when
you scroll on my Instagram now,
you can see it's normal, normal, normal
and then it comes to a screeching halt
and all of a sudden, it's like perfect!
Kicking things off with the Saturday morning coffee pic.
Outfit number one.
This is like fall mornings at home.
Can I just have time to like
throw this on and have some coffee?
This is a photo I saw on a lot of accounts.
And I just wanted to see what it felt like.
Smells so good. (Jon laughs)
It felt like nothing.
I don't actually have any coffee. (laughs)
You know, I...
It looks beautiful.
But if you zoom out, my kids are
actually on the couch playing tablets
so that they'll be quiet
and I can actually sit and get that shot.
Which one goes first?
- [Man] The one that you're looking at the camera.
- [Hannah] No, oh, you're bad at Instagram.
- No, no. - They like when
you look away.
I couldn't decide between three.
So I posted all three because I've noticed there a lot
of carousels happening on Instagram mom accounts.
In one of them, I'm touching my hair
because I guess, you're supposed
to do that when you're happy.
It's a ridiculous photo.
Now it's time to write a caption.
What's something like
perfect people enjoy in the morning?
I don't wanna post this.
It's done.
It's a caption so long that you need to click more.
(retching)
So caption day one is comin' in hot.
I decided to go big or go home.
(lighthearted music) Saturday mornings.
The warm sunshine peeking through my French doors,
the joyous giggles of my boys
reading their morning books,
and my husband whistling softly
to himself while he makes me an omelet.
It's times like these that remind me
to stop and smell the coffee.
#MomLife.
So this caption.
(groaning)
It's just like, the opposite of my mornings.
No sunshine.
Kids fighting.
I'm making the omelets.
Or usually it's cereal.
And my coffee's cold in another room
and I don't know where it is.
Day two.
We have a classic waking up bed photo.
I woke up with makeup and hair done
because, you know, sometimes when
you're an Instagram mom, it just like happens in your sleep
and you wake up with your hair and makeup done.
I can't find any matching PJs.
- [Jackson] But me and Wyatt...
- Why do I even bother making the bed?
So at this point in the shoot, the kids were done.
They did not wanna hold still.
They didn't wanna be a part of this.
Okay, Jackson.
You're being a little crazy.
And so I'm not gonna be able
to get you a slushy if you're being crazy.
- slushy, slushy.
- Would you like a treat?
(Hannah mumbling)
- I don't like this shoot.
- You don't like this shoot.
Me neither.
There were slim pickens for a usable photos here.
This was a gnarly part of the shoot.
I'm coming up with today's post.
I'm trying to think of some captions.
I lurked around Instagram a little bit to get some inspo.
And I saw this phrase, "basking in the bliss."
And I really liked that.
I think that's something I'll keep in my back pocket.
But this is the best part is that
I'm posting these perfect photos today
with this blissful caption and really,
I just, I'm way overdue to wash my hair
and I'm still in my pajamas,
and I've already yelled at my kids twice today so.
So this caption's a little shorter because
you know, I wanna do a mix.
Basking in the bliss of waking up with my littles.
#sundayfunday
#letthembelittle
Just let 'em do their thing.
Don't force them to sit in this photoshoot
that they don't wanna be in.
Now, we realized after the shoot
that we didn't get any food pictures
and I really wasn't willing to
sit and slave over a dish to take a photo.
So we have the brilliant idea
of using a stock photo for my food picture of the week.
You know, something that my kids
would take one look at and throw in the trash.
Here's the caption.
Monday lunch.
Keeping things fun while making sure the kids are nourished.
I've noticed the word nourished and nourish
is like huge across these accounts too.
They love fun faces on their food!
What are your favorite ways to keep mealtime exciting?
#wellnessmom
It was so apparent that I didn't actually make that.
Day four.
How do we feel?
- It's very Bohemian. - Dropping the kids off
- Yeah. - at school.
- And going to Coachella afterwards
or whatever. - Yeah.
Might stop at Coachella.
Might go to high tea.
- Do you have like one of those hats?
Like wicker type hats?
- [Hannah] Oh.
Like this?
- [Jon] Yeah, there you go.
- I got this in Mexico. (Jon laughs)
- [Jon] Perfect.
- I actually loved these photos.
And that's what makes me sad about
posting them in this week.
To have to put some stupid caption under it.
(groaning) It just drove me nuts.
- I don't wanna any photo.
- Well.
You gotta take one.
There were lot of slushy bribes at this point.
Do the first slushy.
Think about the slushys you get to drink.
There were literally a hundred outtakes
of this photo that we could not use
because one kid's looking away
or one is closing his eyes
or I'm not looking the right direction.
It's hard to coordinate three people.
And so the only reason I got these photos
is because a photographer took them
and he's just snapping, snapping, snapping.
Caption.
I read this quote the other day,
"At some point your parents picked you up,
"put you down, and never picked you up again."
And I made a promise to myself that even
when I'm old and gray, when my boys are men
and living on their own, and even if it's creepy,
I will never stop picking them up.
#outfitoftheday (laughs)
Oh, day five. (laughs)
I'm so awkward.
It just kind of happened on the fly while we were shooting
and it was actually Jon's idea
to take one of my crystals
and get a really sultry photo with it.
So we went outside and we're getting this photo
and in the meantime, to my left,
there's the trash truck
picking up everybody's trash on my street.
The photo itself looks...
It looks good.
And of the entire photo set,
this was the only one that works
because I made a poop face in all the other ones.
(groaning)
This caption.
Nobody tells you how vulnerable motherhood makes you.
It is so rewarding, but equally stressful!
I've found that I need to meditate,
spend time with my crystals, and manifest
with mantras every morning to be the best mom I can be.
#manifestationmama
#wellness
And people really, really liked it.
This photo did the best out of the entire week.
This one photo of just me did better
out of every photo with my kids.
It's not a complete lie.
I do love my crystals.
I don't really do mantras.
I kinda just work hard.
Day six.
I originally was just supposed to have a drink in my hand
and me in my workout clothes.
But then, they both wanted drinks on the couch too.
- Oh, I want tea.
- Come close, we all have our drinks.
And so, it's kind of a weird picture
'cause it's a little disjointed
and it doesn't make a lot of sense.
But whatever.
We got that picture at the expense of my entire house.
This couch doesn't go here.
It's separated from the ottoman.
Nothing is where it actually is in my house.
- [Jon] It doesn't look like a mess at all.
We can lie about - Oh my gosh.
(Wyatt mumbles) - (laughs) what we're doin'.
- I'm so clean!
I'm really proud of this caption.
Do you ever wake up and marvel at how blessed you are?
That's how I felt this morning.
Grateful to wake up to one more day with my kids.
Grateful for our morning yoga together.
Grateful for their always smiling faces.
Real talk,
sometimes my kids cry and disagree,
and I'm not always perfect.
Sometimes I just wear workout clothes, like today.
But at the end of the day, we're still so very blessed.
#realtalk
#downtoearth
#honestmotherhood
Oh, maybe I went a little overboard on that one. (laughs)
Day seven.
I was really looking forward to this post
because it's a really iconic Instagram moment.
Ready, one, two, three.
(camera clicks)
- [Jon] One more time, who can jump the highest?
- One, two, three.
(camera clicks)
- [Jon] I think Jackson won.
- Not only are there hundreds of outtakes
because we could coordinate our jump very well
but Jackson at one point just left.
He was done.
He liked walked away and didn't want to do it anymore.
Can you do this just for me, please?
Then we're almost done.
Just to hold you over.
Here you go.
So here's the caption.
Jumping into the weekend like.
Salsa dancer emoji.
Who else can't resist a quick photo shoot
with their littles before school?
#momlifebelike
Yeah.
Just a casual photo in the morning.
You know, I'm not still in
my pajamas when they go to school.
We're all dressed like that.
Now that this week is over,
I have some thoughts.
I feel really weird about it.
I do love the photos I got.
I love them.
They're photos I will cherish.
But I wasn't able to post genuinely about these photos.
I was not saying that this was taken by a professional.
I wasn't saying that this was all from one photo shoot.
I wasn't being real with my followers.
Would I do this again?
No.
That's a promise I made to myself.
I will never pretend that I'm something I'm not.
A huge reason for making this video is because
when I was 22, frantically thrown into motherhood,
I wish that I had seen something like this
to just make me feel like I was doing okay
and make me feel like I was enough.
I always say I'm the world's okayest mom
because being okay is enough.
You can just be okay and that's enough.
You don't have to be perfect.
- [Man] Outro take two, marker.
- So that's all I got for today.
I'm Hannah and in the spirit of being real,
here's a little behind the scenes peek of this show.
It's not always as it seems, right?
Ah no, if you guys have any thoughts on this video,
leave 'em in the comments.
Or if you have ideas for future episodes,
leave that in the comments as well.
And that's it for this little mini season, guys.
It's been real.
'Til next time.
Say bye.
(laughs)
(lighthearted music)