In Defense of Frida Baby

If you're a parent who finds yourself in the bowels of TikTok on the regular (hi, it’s me), you might have heard that Frida Baby is getting cancelled.

For the uninitiated: Frida Baby sells products for pregnant and postpartum moms and their babies. Thermometers, nail clippers, and the legendary NoseFrida snot sucker (their claim to fame, and genuinely one of the most effective things ever invented). For moms: anti-nausea bands, pregnancy pillows, and disposable postpartum underwear. The full spectrum of "nobody warned me about this" products.

They're not the only company in this space. But they are the only ones with a personality. They're also one of the very few brands willing to de-romanticize having a baby — as proven by this very accurate ad that depicts the postpartum hellscape with a clarity I wish someone had shown me before I gave birth. The first time I saw it, I ugly-cried and laughed at the same time, which is essentially the postpartum experience summarized.

Clearly, I am a fan of the brand. Which means I have some things to say about this boycott.

People are upset about Frida Baby's marketing copy — some of their taglines, product names, and slogans:

Instructions for a humidifier that says “I get turned on easily.”

Breast massager to help prevent clogged ducts that says, “second base never felt so good.”

Ok so a threesome reference in a 3-in-1 thermometer doesn’t really make sense…but aside from that, it’s not harmful.

A quick-read thermometer.

The product that started it all, the snot sucker. Now in battery-powered format.

The argument is that this language is inappropriate, even sexualizing, because it's attached to products used on babies.

If you're like me, you read those slogans and think: this is clever, this is funny, this is a brand that actually gets what it's like to be a parent who is exhausted and just needs a laugh. Some levity around something that is usually, let's be honest, no fun at all. I mean — who wants to suck snot from a baby's nose with their mouth? The joke practically writes itself.

But people are out in droves claiming this is the sexualization of infants. They're invoking "this climate" — the Epstein Files era, specifically — as reason to be on high alert about anything that could be read as perverse.

I understand the impulse. I do. We should be vigilant about protecting children. But I think this is exactly the wrong target, and I want to explain why.

Let's Talk About the Actual Arguments

First: these products are marketed to adults. The copy appears on packaging, on websites, in ads served to grown humans with credit cards. Babies cannot read. Toddlers are not parsing double entendres. The audience for this marketing is parents — specifically exhausted, sleep-deprived parents who are probably reading it at 3am while a baby screams in the background. If a cheeky tagline makes that moment one percent less bleak, I'm calling that a win.

Second: parenting is hard and lonely. There's a specific kind of isolation that comes with the early years of having kids, and humor is genuinely one of the things that helps people survive it. It creates community, it normalizes struggle, it says you are not alone and also this is kind of absurd. A brand that leads with humor isn't being irresponsible. It's being human.

Third, and this is the one that really gets me: how are we canceling snot sucker copy while Barbie continues her 65-year run in a miniskirt, stilettos, and a waist that doesn't exist in nature? Where is that energy? Where is the outrage about the actual documented ways we have always, systematically, presented distorted images of women and femininity to children? A tagline on a thermometer doesn't even crack the top 1,000 of things I'd put on trial first.

And the CEO's possibly-MAGA-but-who-actually-knows politics? Look — I am decidedly anti-Trump, full stop. But I'm not going to conflate "CEO might have different politics than me, based on a rumor" with "the company's marketing is predatory toward children." That's not a logical connection; it's cherry-picking details to build a case that already felt decided. We can disagree with someone's politics without deciding that their snot sucker copy is a threat to the moral fabric of society.

Make America Funny Again

Here's what sits underneath all of this for me: we are systematically eliminating humor from spaces where it is genuinely useful, and I think that's costing us something.

Parenting content is already drowning in optimization. Sleep schedules, feeding logs, developmental milestones, screen time guilt. The pressure to do it perfectly is relentless, and the spaces where you can be honest — where you can say this is hard and weird and sometimes disgusting — are shrinking. Frida Baby was doing something valuable: giving parents permission to laugh at the parts that aren't Instagram-worthy.

Humor requires a little risk. It requires saying something that might land differently than intended, or that some people won't like. And right now we are collectively deciding that the cost of that risk is too high — that it's better to be safe and sterile and blameless than to take a swing and make someone feel less alone.

That's not protection. That's suffocation dressed up as caution.

It's also, honestly, part of why I started taking stand-up comedy classes. Comedy has started to feel like the last actual safe space — and when I say that, I mean a space where you can share a real thought, make a real joke, and not be immediately handed your cancellation papers. The joke might fail. But at least it's allowed to exist.

How can people make time for this?

Guns are the number one cause of death in children in this country. Number one. We have not come close to solving that. We have not come close to even agreeing on how to start solving that. But we have apparently found the bandwidth to organize a boycott against a small, private-sector baby brand over a tagline on a snot sucker. I genuinely don't know what to do with that.

Leave small businesses alone. Direct the outrage somewhere it might actually save a life.

Let’s Take a Collective Deep Breath

The snot sucker copy is not grooming your children. It's marketing written by adults, for adults, to help adults feel something about a product they desperately need. It's smart, it's funny, and — yes — it makes me want to buy it. You can call me a pervert for that (but obviously I hope you won’t!)

What I won't do is pretend that this outrage is proportionate, logical, or actually in service of child safety. There are real threats to children that deserve our energy, our vigilance, and our fury. A double entendre on a lactation massager is not one of them.

Frida Baby, if you're reading this: keep going. Parents need you, both the products and the permission to laugh about them.

The rest of us: maybe direct the outrage toward something that can actually hurt a kid. And then go take a breath. You probably need it.