All Hail The SMODS: The Single Moms Of Downtown

When Julia Fox went on High Low with EmRata, Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast, it didn’t take long for the two multi-hyphenates to begin discussing the ways in which their lives were eerily similar: They both have toddler sons, born two months apart. They’re both denizens of downtown Manhattan. Their baby daddies are, as Fox puts it, “New York goons.” They suffer from Mommy Brain™. They’re both concerned with raising their sons to not be horrible men, the kind of men who feel entitled to take and take. Fox and Ratajkowski marveled at how much they just seem inexplicably linked. “We’re tethered,” Ratajkowski says, her bright red lips breaking into a smile. (The podcast is also released on YouTube — she is a model, after all.)

But “tethered” is too feeble a word for the connection between the two models/authors/fashion influencers. These women deserve an acronym all their own: SMODs. That’s certainly what their Bravo show would be called: The Single Moms Of Downtown. They have kids, but they’re not about to live in Brooklyn. They push strollers down Bleecker St. in head-to-toe Dior (Ratajkowski) or sit their toddler atop their lap covered by a skin-tight black latex dress during New York fashion shows (Fox). Fox and Ratajkowski may be the most papped (as in paparazzi-ed, not smear-ed) of the SMODs, but their spiritual cousins are multiplying: There’s gap-toothed Fenty model Slick Woods, who, in 2018, walked the Savage x Fenty’s show in lingerie while in active labor. And of course there’s Katie Holmes, the MOTHER (in all senses) of the SMOD tribe, who for the last five years has been gallivanting about the Soho streets, dating hot restauranteurs, and setting social media ablaze by simply hailing a taxi in a perfect Khaite cashmere bra and cardigan set.

SMODs are easy to spot in the wild. They roam below 14th Street, midriffs often bared. They are influencers or to put a finer point on it, digital-age model-musician-memoirists. They have kids with names I don’t remember existing a decade ago, either: Saphir. Sly. Valentino. And they’re far from hidden away, they’re out on the town, European-style. Dinner at San Sabino Tuesday at 8 with a toddler? Oui, oui, madame! The traditional tell-tale signs of motherhood — stained sweats, a lopsided pony, under-eye circles — are nowhere to be found. Their red-cheeked babes appear next to Donatella Versace on Instagram. They’re featured players in their mama’s music videos (end credit: Valentino). They pop up in magazine photo spreads before they can even form the words “Steven Meisel.”

But there’s also an ineffable quality to SMOD-dom. A certain cool that extends beyond the great outfits and late night dinners with a toddler on one’s hip. We’re used to thinking of mothers — especially single mothers — as harried creatures who’ve sacrificed swaths of their career, friendships, and sex lives to the altar of parenthood. As a single mother myself, I’ve found myself canceling plans on my one free night to simply starfish on the couch. I’ve asked for extensions of deadlines, something I wouldn’t have fathomed doing pre-parenthood. A Zoom meeting getting pushed fifteen minutes closer to daycare pickup is my own personal Uncut Gems. While I love my daughter dearly, I pretty much feel like I’m failing— or a centimeter away from failing— in one area of my life at all times. So yeah, it feels like parenthood involves concessions. Case in point: I begin a lot of sentences these days with the phrase, “While I love my daughter dearly…”

“They're these boss divas. Newly single, fuck-their-exes girlies who are still beautiful and young and incredible.”

SMODs are different. It’s like motherhood hasn’t taken a bite out of their lives, it’s enhanced them. Having a kid doesn’t mean “settling down” or giving up life as they once knew it. There’s a pop of fizzy possibility around them. “They're these boss divas,” says Lindsey Weber, writer and co-host of Who? Weekly, a podcast on celebrity and tabloid culture. “Newly single, fuck-their-exes girlies who are still beautiful and young and incredible.” Katherine Elizabeth Mack, a professor at the University of Colorado and the author of The Case For Single Motherhood, nails the ethos of the SMOD— it’s essentially “Oh, and they happen to have a kid.” But she also notes that this kind of positive image is only possible because of their advantages, both social and economic. “Celebrity moms or rich single mothers get a free pass because they're not triggering any of the concerns that another kind of single mother would.” Mack continues. “A single mother who requires some kind of state support is still not going to be acceptable.”

SMODs have made motherhood work for them. Both Fox and Ratajkowski wrote bestsellers after having their kids. Katie Holmes wrote and directed a movie while solo-parenting Suri. And they’ve found ingenious ways to make the tabloid and social media ecosystem benefit them. Rather than getting surprise pap’d, they arrange their own paparazzi. Fox, in particular, has made an art of using street snaps to advance her status and influence as a fashion girl. Step 1: get a sponsorship. Step 2: wear said brand while taking your kid to the park. Step 3: notify, as Fox calls him “the paparazzi guy I use” to come get shots. On the podcast, Ratajkowski kvells over Fox’s hustle in this arena. Fox replied, “I just wanted to change the vibe.”

The vibe has definitely changed. Decades ago, Dan Quayle got his conservative briefs in a twist over Murphy Brown — a fictional TV character — opting to become a single parent. But as recently as a decade ago, we were salivating over the unbearable sadness of the single mother. Says Mack: “Women who were no longer tethered to a husband — how could they possibly be happy as women, as mothers, when they are no longer linked to a man?”

Holmes, who split from Tom Cruise in 2012 when Suri was six, garnered headlines like, “Katie’s Crisis: Will I Ever Find Love Again?” Shortly after the divorce, she was reported to be seeing a “confidence coach” and “struggling with Suri.” Michelle Williams, whose baby daddy, actor Heath Ledger, passed away in 2008 when their daughter was just two years old, was the reigning tragic figure of the tabloids for a good five years. There were constant paparazzi snaps of William, makeup-less in leggings and a messy ponytail, towing Matilda around Brooklyn, chugging a huge coffee with checkout-aisle headlines featuring words like “single,” “exhausted,” and “heartbroken.” (Sometimes all at once.) She cried sitting for magazine interviews more than once, maybe because people kept asking her about how much her life sucked. Zoom out, and you could see the common tabloid trajectory: heartbreak led to the exhaustion of single parenthood led to the desperate search for a new partner.

Whether or not Katie Holmes or Michelle Williams actually felt this way about their lives is besides the point. “It was our society's view on single motherhood,” says Weber. “It was seen as such a tragic thing to be stuck in, versus now…actually being kind of chic.” The movie The Idea of You, which came out in May and broke the rom-com streaming record for Amazon MGM, featured Anne Hathaway as a very hot, very charming single mom who runs an art gallery and is wooed by the lead singer of a boy band. She has a chic wardrobe, impeccable bangs, and a great job. The movie is a shot of single moms CAN have it all injected right to the vein. It’s hard to imagine this movie, or at least this version of it, coming out ten years ago. “It would’ve been Kate Hudson and she’d be wearing a baby carrier and the baby's falling out and her iced coffee spilling," says Weber.

Nothing exemplifies the shift in perception more than Holmes, who of course, used to be the poster girl for sad single mom-dom and now is a New York fashion darling, with a collaboration with APC. “Everyone used to feel bad for her, now everyone loves her,” says Weber. “Her life is exciting.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if girls started having children with their gay bestie and raised them in a group setting like we did back in caveman times,” Fox has said.

That may be the greatest calling card of the SMOD: their lives are good. They’re living lives they chose, not the lives that were forced upon them. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Fox said of single motherhood to Ratajkowski during the podcast. “This mother-father-children structure… people are really starting to not like it. I wouldn’t be surprised if girls started having children with their gay bestie and raised them more in a group setting like we did back in caveman times.” Recently Fox did just that, moving into a Harlem home with her best friend Richie Shazam and Richie’s partner Ben Draghi. She also revealed in a TikTok comment that she’s been celibate for two and a half years and has “never been happier.”

The snapshot of SMOD happiness, circa 2024, abound: Slick Woods, who identifies as bi, is on again/off again with her son’s father, model Adonis Bosso, but they’re like best friends. Ratajkowski swapped saliva with Harry Styles after splitting with her baby daddy, sat courtside at a Knicks game with Pete Davidson, and took a Valentine’s Day nude with comedian Eric André. But she’s commented that she “can’t imagine wanting” an actual relationship with a man. “The main thing I would want from a relationship is emotional support and men are having such a hard time giving that to women,” Ratajkowski said on her podcast. As Weber puts it, “They’re writing a new narrative — I don't even need to date again. They’re like, ‘I already have a kid, so why do I need to mess around with anyone for any serious reason? I can just have fun.’”

It would be easy for me to find SMODs an affront to my own, less chic brand of single mom-dom. To go down the avenue of why am I being accosted by images of model single moms flashing their perfect midriffs at the playground? To compare, make excuses: they have more childcare than me! (Though, false. Julia Fox reportedly doesn’t even have a nanny.) Better genes. (Sure.) More money. (Definitely.) But instead— and this is surprising to me, because judgmental is my default setting— I’ve find them to be inspiring. Sure, I’m never going to push a stroller around in a bralette. I’m not even going to do my taxes in the privacy of my own home in a bralette. But there’s something about the ease and confidence of the SMOD that’s been perspective-shifting. Last week I was fifteen minutes late to preschool pickup due to a meeting with a book agent. Did one of the teachers give me a dirty look? Yes, she did. But no one died. (I.e. it was not ultimately Uncut Gems.) Perhaps some of the “burden” of parenthood is simply in my head.

Of course it would be naive to suggest that any kind of motherhood is 100 percent effortless. Yes, we saw the adorable photos of Julia Fox’s three-year-old son, Valentino, on the red carpet with his mom at the Diesel show during Milan Fashion Week last year. Less seen? Valentino, in his tiny toddler headphones, squirming and screaming in her lap on the front row. Motherhood is not always unadulterated joy. No one would deny it. “It isn't total sacrifice and martyrdom, it's also not total jubilation all the time,” says Mack of motherhood. “It’s more complicated. I think we’re finally starting to move towards that nuanced view.” Fox and Ratajkowski are both forthcoming on the hardships of parenthood on their podcasts and in their books. But of course that just adds to their appeal, part of their all-inclusive package. “They’re both sides of this perfect coin,” Weber says. “Fashion darlings, but also relatable single moms. They’ve figured out how to cover the entire span of why somebody might like you.”

I guess SMODs can have it all—or, even better, just take what they want from the buffet.