Honoring The Real Woman's Body

Since I have stopped watching cable television, one thing I realized that I definitely don't miss is the ads that show perfect women with their perfect bodies that are perfectly made up and put together in their perfect clean homes.

Today's women are bombarded by ads on two levels: first, if your family isn't happy and joyful at all moments of the day, and if your house isn't perfectly clean and bright and sunny, then you are doing something wrong and you should not be happy until you buy their product.

The second message is, if you don't have a perfect body and if you don't wake up every day and put on a nice outfit and makeup and have perfect hair, then you are doing something wrong and you will only be happy when you buy their product.

I'm not talking about the ads that show young girls in size 4 walking on the beach in bikinis (although that certainly adds to the problem). I'm talking about moms on TV who are holding a 6 week old baby but are lacking the 6 week postpartum body. The message is: once you pop out your baby you should be able to squeeze right back into your size 4 pre-pregnancy jeans. No muffin-tops or postpartum bellies allowed, please!

Let's talk about real life: about wearing maternity jeans after pregnancy for a bit; about being so busy taking care of a newborn that you forget to shower for a day or two, never mind do your hair and makeup; about how pregnancy and giving birth is going to change your body. Even if you are a size 4 starting out and you are a size 4 after you give birth, there is still going to be changes. If it isn't weight gain it is stretch marks, or you might weigh the same but the weight sits differently on you now. It's going to be different and that's okay because that's real, that's life, and those changes are our badges of honor for bringing a new life into this world.

Women should be proud of their bodies, their stretch marks. I think this would be the case, except we are bombarded by these ads that cause us to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, and I think a lot of women are ashamed of their bodies and keep it hidden away as much as possible, when in fact it should be viewed as honorable and part of the essence of motherhood.

I can't be the only one who feels this way, can I?

Some links that I've read this week around this topic:

Midwives Honor The Sensuality of Pregnancy and Birth.
From the article:

The media reflects a lot of image confusion, resulting in pregnant women diminishing their desire to look pregnant. The social image of adopting a lean, masculine-looking body has influenced some pregnant women to try not to have any excess adipose tissue on them after birth. Our lean culture has pregnant women joining the obsession of calorie restriction and adopting eating disorders. This phenomenon has become so common that it must be screened for routinely during the prenatal health history. Superstars and models brag to the media about how much they exercise and the expertise of their personal trainers, who helped them reach their size two by their tenth postpartum day.

House Fairy wrote an awesome post that you must read on this entitled "Emerging From Underneath The Mountain of Capitalism's Misinformation"
From her post:

No wonder the tweens/teens gobble up the tabloids. They tell such a crisp and clean and linear and beginning-middle-end kind of a story, huh? Meet a hot dude, have an obnoxious wedding (or not, usually not) have a be-bop pregnancy with a tiny rounded shiny (what is that one about, btw?) tanning boothed belly--twins are hot right now, maybe try for twins--, and have a very mysterious birth with no details, prattle on about how you breastfeed and then appear on such and such red carpet such and such weeks afterwards with no baby in sight and unveil your new bod!The end!

And finally, if you haven't yet, please go visit The Shape of a Mother to see what real women look like.

It's one thing to diet and work to be thinner for health reasons, but to do it just to fit into our society's expectations on what women ought to look like? Something isn't right...

Honoring The Real Woman's Body