Lately, it seems that there is a baby boom among celebrities and you know what that means… “baby weight.” Tabloids are filled with stories of celebrity mommy weight gain/loss tales. Last month, one of my friends was at the store and noticed a grip of magazines, each with a different celebrity who had recently had a baby next to the words “How I got my body back” on the cover.
Although I’m not a mother, I can certainly empathize with the pressure women go through to “lose the baby weight” after childbirth. So let’s say I’m a new mom and I’m in the store with my newborn baby enjoying the joys of motherhood. I’m in the check-out line and I glance over at the magazine rack (first mistake) and alas I see five different celebrities looking absolutely “perfect” with the words “How I got my body back” next to them. I’ve been feeling a little insecure about the weight I’ve gained and pretty eager to get it off and now I’m convinced, if Jenny McCarthy can do it, so can I! The diet starts tomorrow.
Not only are these tabloids ridiculous because after all, weight is not a newsworthy story, they put an enormous amount of pressure on new mom’s to focus on their bodies and how unacceptable their post-child birth bodies are to society.
I found a quote from Will & Grace’s Debra Messing about the pressure she felt to lose the “baby weight” post child-birth.:
“…Though Debra says that both she and her husband are enjoying her “new, womanly body,” she admits that she felt pressure to get back to her prepregnancy weight ASAP. “It’s an implicit expectation, I think…at the beginning of the season, I was really working out a lot, and dieting, and it affected my ability to breast-feed. My doctor said, ‘You’re exercising too much, and you’re not eating enough to make enough milk.” Well, that was enough for me. I said, “I’ll stop exercising as much, and I’ll eat enough so that my body can produce nutrients and milk for my child…period. If that means I’ll be five pounds heavier, then I’ll be five pounds heavier.” (Quote Found Here)
Since so many women hold themselves to celebrity standards, the pressure to be thin post child-birth is worse then ever. The desire to be thin should certainly not affect your ability to breast feed your child!
And don’t forget that plastic surgery and personal trainers are what the celebrities have to use to get those “perfect” abs after a baby. Call me cynical, but I just don’t believe any woman who says her belly went from pregnant to perfectly flat in 6 mos from anything a regular person could afford.
Isn’t it also interesting in this context that the pregnant woman’s body is seen as “not MY body”…then after childbirth is done, the women want “their” bodies “back”..? *hahaha!*
The changes a woman’s body goes through during and after childbirth are not acceptable as being “hers”.
As long as we’re on the subject….
One of my guilty pleasures is reading some of the gossip columns…mainly I like to see the clothes and fashion, etc. but of course I have noticed, especially during the past couple of years, “hollywood” is really…uh….INTO the pregnancy of celebrities.
Similar to weight gain/loss, I don’t really see a pregnancy as ZOMG BIG NEWS!!! STOP THE PRESSES!…it’s like some big achievement for a celebrity to get knocked-up anymore. Then I thought about all the huge baby bellies you get pictures of when a ’star’ gets pregnant….it occurs to me that this is the only time it is acceptable, and even CELEBRATED to be absolutely huge. Big as a house.
Everyone loves you even if you weigh a zillion pounds and look like you swallowed a hippity-hop ( http://www.fompy.net/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/20/hippityhopkids.jpg ) because you’re Bringing New Life Into the World.
Plus, after you pop that baby out, the general public knows (expects) you’ll ‘Get Your Body Back’ and shed the baby weight…..rrrriiiiiigghht..?
Also, didn’t Sarah Jessica and Heidi — who were certainly not exactly zaftig prior to giving birth — work out something ridiculous like three hours a day post-partum??
I mean, I don’t know about you all, but I’m not sure I can find that kind of time in my schedule. Even Michelle and Condi don’t work out that much.
I always wonder when I see these headlines… where did their bodies GO? I mean, didn’t they need to use them to birth their respective children? That’s pretty remarkable if you ask me. I think I would want to keep the body that made my kids, instead of getting some body back from a bygone era.
It starts before you give birth. All of the pregnancy magazines feature young, supple, women, who with the exception of their bellies, would not look pregnant. If you’re a normal (whatever is normal for you) sized pregnant woman, with swollen ankles, cellulite, acne, oily hair, stretch marks, and all of the other appearance related side-effects of pregnancy, then there is obviously something wrong with you. I don’t want to look like I’ve never had kids, just like I don’t want to look 12, or 20. I want to look like myself, a 31 year old mom.
nice blog
It’s simple, really, how they do it. It’s called a NANNY. Any real woman who has just given birth is either sleeping, feeding, or changing the baby for the first three months…not working out three hours a day.
Ugh. Don’t forget that they can afford that tummy tuck too. Because most women are not so genetically lucky that their abs snap right back.
Let me tell you though: Most of the women I know who have had a child recently (including myself) are so totally overwhelmed and they put themselves last. And on that “Me” list, health/exercise and weight are far down it. Above it are things like using the bathroom, showering, not going crazy, eating whatever is handy/fast to eat, oh yeah, and sleeping.
So yeah, screw them for perpetuating WAY unrealistic standards.
And sometimes we have to accept we will never get our old body back; thanks to the birth of my son my boobs are bigger (not gettin’ any smaller and it’s been almost 2 years) and the mommy pouch? Smaller but still there. Same with a huge bikini-cut c-section scar. I miss my old body sometimes but not as much as I love my son.
I know. The pressure is now seeping into not only getting your pre-pregnancy body back but also not losing it in the first place. As for most pregnant celebs in the mags, you wouldn’t know they were pregnant if not for the belly. Some of them don’t even look pregnant, like Nicole Kidman. She never looked more than a few months pregnant, even just before the baby was born. Scary!
I, too, don’t understand the desire to erase the existence of my children from my body…. these stretch marks and c-section scar, they are part of me, just as my growing children are part of me. They are distinct and daily reminders of my life as I chose it, so why would I want to change that?
My body has *always* been my body, in all of it’s stages of growth.
sick, sad and pathetic. it almost seems like that in the first months after giving birth, the body and weight is more important than the baby.
i don’t get it why at a time of their life when these women could be so proud at what their bodies have produced, when they could have pride in themselves, their body, their look and yes, their weight, they go run to the next fitness coach/surgeon/you name it to look like nothing ever happened.
franzi
If Everyone’s all concerned with the effects of pregnancy on the female anatomy, why doesn’t Everyone just adopt instead? Plenty of kids to go around…and you get to “keep your body”! *haha!*
The tabloids are misleading to so many women. There is not ONE simple thing you can do to get your body back to a pre-pregnancy state. Some women have a difficult time losing all the weight while others walk out the hospital looking as if they have never had a child. I think we should focus on being healthy after birth and worry less about wearing a particular size.
If I had enough money to pay for personal chefs and personal trainers, I could have “MY” body back too! Too bad I’m not wealthy enough to have my own body. Guess I”ll have to share with someone else??? Any offers?
And you know, it’s very rare to get your body “back” – once you’ve been through a pregnancy, nothing’s the same. You have a new body, one that’s brought a person into the world – trying to eliminate that evidence is like saying that giving birth wasn’t important. Your child isn’t important.
…trying to eliminate that evidence is like saying that giving birth wasn’t important. Your child isn’t important….
I am childless by choice. With regard to women who do choose to get pregnant and give birth…I would guess that it isn’t unusual for the new mother to want her body to…I dunno…”recover” somewhat from its changes during pregnancy, no? But I wouldn’t say that negates the importance of the child itself…
Another note on the topic. After Jamie Pressley had her baby, she said something to the extent of she was “encouraged” to get back to her pre-baby size before starting work on “My Name is Earl.” Not all of them do it just because they’re vain. They do it because they’ll loose their jobs if they don’t. Hollywood actresses, even the already thin ones, are told to lose weight before they start shooting all the time. You’d do it too if your livelihood depended on it. So we should be attacking the higher ups who insist that they be this way, not just the women themselves.
[...] 28, 2008 Others in the fatosphere have been writing (here, and here- if not elsewhere) about the odd language applied to women after childbirth: [...]