Monday, November 19, 2012

"Mom-Shells" Make Me Want To Commit Momicide

I don't know about you, but I kind of want to give Gisele Bundchen a high five. In the face. With a chair.

To be perfectly fair (which admittedly, I tend not to be when discussing supermodels), I'm sure she's actually a lovely person. It's not her fault that Tom Brady obviously ignored the series of telepathic messages I spent years sending him, in which I attempted to convince him that models and B-list actresses weren't so great and he should find and marry me instead. I got over it when I married someone handsome, funny and kind and Tom Brady started having children he didn't want to claim and forgetting to shower on a regular basis. But her husband isn't why I want to give her a chair five. This is why:
Now to the unknowing eye, this might look like just another picture of a gorgeous supermodel in her skivvies, but in actuality, it is one of the biggest works of post-baby propaganda out there. Why? Because this picture was taken a scant three weeks after Giselle gave birth. Three. Freaking. Weeks.

Now if you're a mom reading this and thinking "What the what?!" you are not alone, my friend.

Let me back up a bit.

After Layla was born, I committed one of the most common faux pas of first-time mommies all over the world: I packed my regular old pre-baby pants into my hospital suitcase under the impression  (okay, delusion) that once the baby was out, I could just sort of pick right up where I left off body-wise. Unfortunately, during my pregnancy I really got into the whole "eating for two" deal and got an endless kick out of the fact that the bigger I got, the more people were telling me I looked great (because let's be honest, how many times does this happen in your life?!). I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed the crap out of the compliments and I'm glad I did. I was healthy, the baby was healthy, and I had an excuse to eat unlimited bags of Cheetos to a point that my fingers were permanently stained neon orange and I even had a series of stress dreams in which I gave birth to a giant Cheeto, but that is a story I should probably save for a trained professional.

My point is this: I know I'm not the only woman who has ever gone into the hospital nine months pregnant and roughly the size of a small compact car and expected to come out with the same body they had senior year of high school. So either every pregnant woman is dillusioned by hormones and artificial cheese or something else is to blame.

And as luck would have it, something else is to blame. And that "something else" is a six-foot tall leggy Brazilian who probably used a lot more than telepathic messages to get Tom Brady.

Okay fine. It's not just her.

The real problem, as with most things in life, is that nasty little "love to hate" machine called the media. This isn't the first time I've ranted about body image and standards of beauty. Both are thrown in our faces all day, every day. Next time you go to the grocery store, check out the magazines at the checkout. There's the requisite Kardashian story, a Jennifer Aniston pregnancy rumor or two, and then pictures of celebrities who "Lost 20 pounds and feel great!" (going from positively skeletal to virtually invisible) or celebrities who "Are binging because of a secretly gay husband/tanking career/alien abduction" (going from skeletal to fantastically normal, but don't get too excited because it's temporary). It's disgusting. But it's even worse when it's a new mom, usually out on the town looking fully-rested with a full six pack, approximately six minutes after giving birth. There's even a name for these ladies and their apparent superhuman metabolism and unfailing gorgeousness; "Mom-shells".

I stumbled across this phenomenon (or at least the official name of this phenomenon) a few months ago. Some editor from a tabloid (I honestly can't remember which one, but does it really matter? They're all the same) was on a morning talk show raging about how unfair it was that new moms feel pressured to be stick thin again post-baby, all thanks to the magazines full of mom-shell celebrities. Evidently, this woman, who had once paid a lot of creepy people a lot of money to basically stalk them and take their pictures, now realized that she was facilitating something dangerous and toxic because she had just had a baby herself and was subsequently hit with the full implications of her "work". Suffice it to say, this editor quit her job and swore that magazines were going to stop printing stories like this. I saw it as a win for women. There's just one problem: It hasn't really happened yet. Because apparently, we being obsessed with how big or small the bodies of perfect strangers are is an addiction we just can't seem to kick.

It honestly makes me wonder, is this a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" situation? Do people feel societal pressure to have a perfect, celebrity-esque body or are celebrities just trying to keep up with the public's expectations of them?

Either way, it sucks.

And while I will admit that I single Giselle out for purposes of my own personal vendetta, I could easily name 100 other celebrities that looked like she did only a few weeks after giving birth. It's not natural or realistic. It just makes the average new mom whose fingers are still vaguely stained orange, can only fit into sweatpants, and smells vaguely of spit-up feel really, really bad about herself. Which is the worst part of the whole deal.

Having a baby is one of the most amazing things I've ever done (and I was lucky enough to do it twice!). I am constantly amazed I was able to pull it off and actually live to tell about it. The human body is an incredible thing and I never really realized that until I had a baby. Post-baby is a time to feel like a super hero. It's a time to be amazed by the capabilities of your body, not repulsed by a couple of extra pounds.

Honestly, I'm torn between wanting to have a massive tabloid burning party and wanting to find every new mom in the world and telling her how awesome she is. I mean, come on. Look what you did! You made something out of nothing, grew it with your body, and even managed to get it out! If that's not infinitely cooler than anything you've ever done then you are a much more exciting person than I am.

When Ben is bugging Layla, I always tell her to just ignore him, because if he sees he's having no effect on her, he'll go away.  So I guess until the world decides that motherhood in it's purest, sloppiest, most natural form is sexy, all we can do is ignore the mom-shells of the world and hope the effect will be lost and the phenomenon will go away.

I can't wait for the day that a normal body is seen as a good thing. Won't that be nice??

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