It's funny how the media is so fickle in choosing which celebrity preggo to pick on from one week to the next. It was only a few weeks ago that our dear Milla J fessed up to stuffing her face resulting in the 70+ pounds she has packed on with little more than a month left to go before her first baby is born. We haven't heard any baby mammoth comments about her increasing proportions until today.
Milla J 'confesses' to Britain's glossy Grazia that she has a new relationship with food in light of her decades long stint as a stick figure model in which coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol were the building blocks of her food pyramid. Of a recent stay in Paris, Milla says,
"My friend and I went round Saint Sulpice cemetery, where French royalty are buried. On the way back, I said to her, 'Let's eat like kings!' I was craving bone marrow one day, and I scoured the whole of Paris searching for the leg of a cow. When I finally found what I was looking for, I cut it in half, digging out the yellowish substance, slathering it all over bread."
Of her modeling diet, she notes:
"Before I got pregnant, I really didn't care about food. I saw it as fuel, not something to sit down and enjoy. As an actress and model, I lived on cigarettes and coffee, and jet-lag tended to kill off any appetite I had.
And now that she's pregnant, oh how the tide has turned:
"My diet for most of this year has been - for breakfast, four eggs with bacon, toast and butter, if I was at home. Then if I was at a diner, I'd have a Mexican omelette, a stack of pancakes and strawberry milkshake.
"I'd stuff myself with cookies all morning - whatever was in the cupboard really - then I'd have a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for dessert. And I once ate two whole packs of coffee cake in one sitting!"
Perhaps a bit excessive but isn't it refreshing to read about a celebrity preggo that actually eats and isn't ashamed to say it?
It actually doesn't surprise me that Milla J is eating enough for a small army. In my own work on pregnancy cravings, I argue that whereas women are usually condemned for eating ‘junk’ food when they are not pregnant, pregnant women are often absolved of resposibility for their ‘bad’ eating behavior because they are ‘eating for two’ and are allowed to ‘give in’ or indulge their cravings. Milla's weight gain is evidence that she is allowing herself to actually establish a pleasure-driven relationship with ‘comfort’ foods. Whereas she might not have eaten junk food (or any food at all) pre-pregnancy because of its association with weight gain and given her career as an incredibly succesful model/actress, in pregnancy, the 'inevitable' weight gain liberates her food choices.
Before you start shaking your head, I'm not discounting that there are no actual physiological cravings for food in pregnancy. There's plenty of research to support that (hello, pica?!). I'm highlighting that Milla J is totally aware of her eating behaviour and is attuned to her eating in a way that cultural discourses suggest that pregnant women indulge their ‘cravings’ unreflectively or passively. She knows full well why she indulges her ‘cravings’ in pregnancy and has already said that her latitude in eating is justified because, ultimately, her weight gain in pregnancy absolves her, within reason and for a limited time, of the slim body ideal most women of the world aspire to achieve throughout their lifetime. Pregnancy is really the only time in her life (or in the life of any woman, for that matter) when she can be 'fat' and happy. Pretty sad realisation, isn't it?
Great article in The Guardian on Milla's weight gain and celeb pregnancy:
1 comment:
Got your blog from Brie. I find it an interesting topic, especially considering the strange political attention afforded to pregnancy as of late (in Australia, anyway).
On this topic, I remembered that had it not been for Cosby show repeats two years ago, I would have never learned that pregnant women are not actually meant to eat for two.
And yet, it seems encouraged to indulge pregnant women in their cravings. Having never been pregnant, I cannot speak for what said cravings feel like or how they differ from the cravings I get, but I can say that I have had a difficult relationship with food my entire life and struggle with intense cravings almost daily. It's taken me most of my life to convince myself of how unhealthy it is to indulge these cravings. I'm not sure it's any healthier to tell pregnant women to indulge theirs. Sure, pregnant women (and all women!) have to eat. Undisputed. But to celebrate the overt over-eating of a once-anorexic (or so it seems from her accounts of never eating) model does not seem right. She is still just as vulnerable to her relationship with food, just expressing it in another way.
I think more attention should be focused on healthy eating habits for women, especially during pregnancy.
Post a Comment