Beauty VS Baby

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26081703/

If you watch this article’s accompanying video about celebrity moms, the rhetoric is overwhelmingly congratulatory to the celebrity moms who lost weight fast (for some, within 2 weeks after giving birth) and got back to their pre-baby weight. In the video (not article), exercise and diet are encouraged for the benefit of the mother, but nothing is said about how excessive exercise/diet can in some situations prove harmful to developing fetuses, or, how too much exercise too fast can prove detrimental to a woman’s healing body. The uterus must contract, ab muscles must heal and reattach, etc. Moreover, the push to exercise and diet immediately after birth runs counter to the advice of most doctors.

In a rather uncomfortable moment in the interview, the fitness expert questions how the pregnant interviewer manages to look so fantastic and mentions how great she looked after her first child's birth. The interviewer clearly looks uncomfortable, perhaps aware that she too may be judged by celebrity standards.

I understand that it is celebrities’’ “jobs” to look good, but I find the pressure to look good as a new mom too much. Logically, I know their lives are very different from mine. Celebrity moms have an entourage of individuals who take care of the day-to-day things that often bog the rest of us down. I went to Target yesterday, only to have bought the wrong thing, and now I have to go back. Had I an entourage, I’d send some poor fool to do the task for me while I consumed a smoothie made by my nutritionist, check in with my daughter and the nanny, and then hit the gym for 2 hours with my personal trainer. Instead, duckling and I will trek out in the rain in search of BPA-free sippy cups. If I’m lucky, she’ll nap today allowing me to get some work done.

Furthermore, the visual rhetoric of contrasting the pregnant female body with a post-partum body implies that the pregnant body is far from the ideal. A sample magazine cover in the article announces “How I got my body back” and later includes a before/after picture of Heidi Klum. The before/after images suggest that Heidi Klum in a bikini is far more attractive than Heidi Klum pregnant (isn’t she always attractive?). These images are all over the tabloids and news, celebrating a new mom’s return to her “normal” body. Cameras scrutinize tummies both for baby-bumps (always on the lookout for the next pregnant star) and for any remaining flab after childbirth. When celebrity tummies are deemed “normal” and “fabulous” so soon after birth, it implies that the poochy belly I had while my abs were healing and my uterus was contracting to its normal size in the few weeks (okay, months) after childbirth was neither normal nor fantastic (admittedly, I have never had, nor will I ever have, Klum’s abs).

For many of us moms, our bodies will never be “normal” again. Instead, they bear the marks of pregnancy – stretch marks and sometimes a new element of squishiness. Perhaps we should learn to celebrate these changes as badges of honor rather than shameful reminders of the pregnant—read, “fat”—body. This website is trying to do just that: http://theshapeofamother.com/