On September 16, Bobbie launched "Feeding Is Personal, Not Perfect," a satirical short film called Baby Formula... Almost. It stars Nara Smith, the creator best known for making everything from scratch, cereal and gummy bears included, often in couture. Here she is in sweatpants, panicking, buried in parenting books and forum threads, hunting for the perfect formula. She eventually lands on the punchline: there isn't one.

I don’t think anyone believed the mother of four with the silent, spotless house. Not really. We knew it was a performance, and we kept watching anyway, some of us with admiration, plenty of us with a raised eyebrow. What's new is that Nara finally said so herself.

The campaign ran across social, CTV, TikTok, YouTube and Meta, with a Times Square billboard and a merch drop alongside the film. Bobbie made a big bet on audience maturity. Smith is polarizing, and a lot of people can't stand what she represents. Bobbie put her at the center of a national campaign anyway, betting that an audience that spent years rolling its eyes at her would extend some grace. It was a smart play, because who extends more grace than moms? 

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Perfection sells. It’s eye-catching and aspirational. People stop their usual scrolling because Nara’s content makes you feel like you, too, can live a life with no friction. 

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Nara told People she once saw using formula as a personal failure, a belief she said didn't come from anywhere in particular, just from being hard on herself. She changed her mind about this once her milk supply dropped and her family kept growing. "Giving myself that grace was something I really learned along the way," she said.

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Bobbie picked the mom who seemed like she had it all figured out to admit she didn't. The pitch isn't "our formula is better." It’s the boldest way to send the message “it’s okay if your feeding journey isn’t ideal”, and no competitor can copy that with an ingredient list.

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So why did this campaign feel risky? Well, many people (especially women) don’t like Nara. And that’s because of what (they think) she represents. Critics say that she promotes an unrealistic ideal of a domestic life, and that her content undercuts the work of the feminists before us. But didn’t the women before us fight for us to have choices?

Nara Smith is only 24. She has four kids. She changed her mind about how she feeds them, and about how tightly she needs to hold the reins. She’s just a young woman growing up in public.

We say we support women's choices, right up until a choice contradicts the version of her we'd already filed away. Smith never applied to be the Martha Stewart of her generation. The internet handed her the crown after a few viral videos, and yes, she ran with it. That's what people do when an audience offers them a role. Running with it isn't signing a lifetime contract.

If "support women's choices" means anything, it has to cover the choices that reverse the last ones. Women get to be wrong. Women get to evolve. Women get to say "this didn't work for me" without needing to be judged by the court of public opinion.

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