When I was seven years old, and much to my very religious mother’s chagrin, my goal in life was to be Madonna. There’s nothing that fills a parent with a sense of pride quite like a first grader baring an exposed midriff and black lace gloves.

As I grew older, graduated college, and had daughters of my own, I aspired to be someone successful and refined like Sonia Sotomayor or Meg Whitman. At least that’s what I told my impressionable young children – and the moms around me I wanted to impress.

And surprisingly, a few of my friends have confessed their mom crushes on Pink as well.

If we use our imaginations, we see Pink as the Hollywood version of ourselves. The rebel who is able to reign in her partying to balance a career, marriage (a long-lasting marriage by Hollywood standards) and a new baby while still maintaining a high level of bad-assery.

Ok, yes, she  just scored her first number one debut on the Billboard Top 200 while my major accomplishment for the week was baking an apple cobbler for book club (although I forgot the forks and everyone was forced to eat it with their hands), but in my head we’re soul sisters.

Like many six-year-olds, MJ has shunned some of my favorite female performers, like Florence Welch or Kim Schifino of Matt and Kim, for Top 40 radio – 99% of which makes me want to puncture my eardrums with my car keys.

However, if she’s going to listen to pop radio, I urge her to look at Pink as a role model (and to ignore the cursing in her lyrics) for the following reasons:

She appears to have a strong marriage – In 2008, pop fans witnessed the demise of Pink’s marriage to motocross racer Carey Hart through the lyrics and video to “So What.” But within a year, the two had reconciled and in 2011, had their first child. In Hollywood, where matrimony is often regarded as gossip fodder, it’s refreshing to see a couple who admits marriage can be ridiculously difficult and puts in the hard work to make it stronger. Who knows – tomorrow their breakup could be splashed across People, but in the meantime, I’ve already set up an imaginary double date with them for mozzarella sticks and margaritas at Applebee’s.

She has a maturity that comes with age– When Miley Cyrus famously copied Pink’s signature platinum blond Mohawk at the Grammy Awards, Pink probably felt the same way I do when I have to fight 21-year-olds in cutoffs and cowgirl boots for the bartender’s attention – “Who does this little b**** think she is?” But publicly, Pink commended Miley’s “new” look on Today. “When two girls get fearless and shave their heads, it’s a big deal. I think we’re just a little more daring.” An incredibly classy way of handling an irritating situation.

She is the Dave Ramsey of the pop world – Every time I see photos of Lindsay Lohan on a shopping spree or getting out of a sports car, my first thought is, “How far can that Mean Girls paycheck really go?” Pink, on the other hand, advocates the importance of building up one’s savings, to the point she deposits half of her earnings in a “F*** you” account. 

In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, she remarked, “When I first started, L.A. Reid said, ‘Make sure you put money into your F*** You account. That’s the account that, one day when people ask you to do things you don’t want to do, you say “F*** you.” ’ I make sure that my F*** You account is okay, so that you never have to make decisions based on money. I feel like that’s where people kill their careers.”

As a mom of daughters, I feel every woman should have a F*** you account so that if she needs to escape a bad relationship or a bad boss, she has the safety net she needs to start fresh.

She is a breastfeeding champion – I give mad props to any working mom who continues to breastfeed when she returns to her career. Pink, who still nurses 15-month-old daughter Willow, has been a vocal proponent of breastfeeding, even getting into a verbal altercation with a man who criticized her right to feed her daughter in a restaurant. Best of all, she promotes breastfeeding with a sense of humor, remarking that she had to sacrifice her nipple rings during nursing because, “…it was like a sprinkler.”

Pink recently announced her dates for her The Truth About Love tour, and unfortunately the nearest stop is Chicago. I think that’s only because she had a busy schedule and not because some crazy suburban mom was stalking her through blogs, pretending to be her BFF.

So, yes, I want to be Pink. If for nothing else, her killer abs.

By Nicole Plegge, Lifestyle Blogger for SmartParenting

Main Photo: Creative Commons licenses