Natalie Portman compares self to whale

Just as Natalie Portman waxes about how unflustered she is about gaining pregnancy weight, at the Golden Globes (side note: did you see her Victor & Rolf gown? AH-MAZING), she says: “I hope I’ll get to lie in bed and eat popcorn and watch TV for the rest of it,” she laughs. “Not always be out in public looking like a whale, but it’s all nice energy that everyone is showing.”

Nat? You were setting such a good example!

Bumpaholics Anonymous

Hello, My name is the The Baby Bump Project and I'm a Bumpaholic.

It wasn't long before a new annoying term about pregnancy would enter the cultural zeitgeist.
'Bumpaholic' is the concoction of Women's Health magazine (US) in which they discuss women who love being pregnant. Apparently, some women love being pregnant so much that they are having babies strictly for their own narcissistic pleasure: they crave the adoration from other people and feel more 'liberated' (don't even get me started on how much I hate the way that this term is misused) by their pregnancy curves.

Aside from the fact that 'bumpaholic' is a nauseating term, I would have to say that I wholeheartedly dispute the perception that the reason for a rising birth rate is because women love being pregnant so much. First of all, I think most women would agree that if you work full-time as a stay-at-home-mum or in paid employment, having lots of children is not easy unless you have money to burn on hired help. Secondly, I get super annoyed by 'I love being pregnant because I can eat anything I want' myth that is continuously perpetuated when it is so ridiculously clear that today, eating 'anything you want' in pregnancy is a cultural/medical no-no. In light of moral panics about obesity, I think you can ask any woman and she will tell you that the days of 'eating for two' are well and truly over. As I found in my own research, the majority of women I interviewed felt 'fat' at every stage of pregnancy and post-birth and while these women by no means 'hated' being pregnant, they certainly were not eating whatever they could get their hands on. Pregnancy was far from 'liberating' when it came to body image.

I think it's kind of odd to say that women are having more babies because they are obsessed with being pregnant rather than making the quite reasonable assumption that a woman is having more than one child because...she likes children? or loves being a mum? Feel free to correct me, but pregnancy isn't a walk in the park. I think that while many women do enjoy pregnancy, many other women merely look at pregnancy as just a hurdle to overcome for the sake of the really precious outcome. I mean seriously, why would women give birth at all considering the pain that often accompanies it? Clearly, the end utterly and completely justifies the means!

Does this mean we need a new 12 step program? I can see it now: Bumpaholics Anonymous.

Celebs set a bad example for weight loss: DUH.

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, a German organisation, has officially recommended that women should not rush to lose weight post-baby and that celebrities set a 'bad example'. The advice will be used as official guidance for British mothers and also drafted by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The IQEHC says that weight gain is normal in pregnancy and that "women are exposed to many unrealistic images of female body size, and body size around pregnancy or after birth is no exception."

Um..YA THINK!?

While it is nice to hear that at least one government will actually be taking steps to unacknowledge the undue pressure many women experience when it comes to body size after having children, at the same time, I think that this kind of proclamation is pointless. Merely stating that women shouldn't feel pressure to lose weight is not necessarily going to improve a woman's body image. It is unrealistic to think that the world will get rid of tabloids or stop publishing news stories about pregnant celebrities and skinny post-baby bodies. What I would really like to see are practical measures that could easily be implemented by maternity services and hospitals around the world including free counseling services for women, free exercise classes and supportive mothers' groups. Acknowledging that the focus on celebrity bodies and slenderness is dangerous for women (pregnant or not) has been long established by feminists. It puzzles me as to why the idea that skinny celebrity mums set a bad example is like a revelation. If anyone had bothered to ask everyday women what they thought about body image it probably could have been established this a long time ago.

Portrait of pregnancy

I just came across an interesting portrait of pregnancy from a British writer in the new issue of UK Glamour. The author talks about gaining weight and 'losing' her pre-pregnancy figure:

"Why would I want a record of me getting bigger and bigger, when I’m the first to destroy any photograph of me that makes me look even remotely fat?"

Great photos and commentary, check it out:
Portrait of my pregnancy

Isla Fisher: fat thighs, no good

Isla Fisher was chatting to Page Six about her new movie, Confessions of a Shopaholic and just happened to drop a juicy tidbit about pregnancy:

"I never work out. I just don't enjoy it. I gained 60 pounds during my pregnancy, so [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer hired me a trainer for Confessions of a Shopaholic. But the trainer said I had a bad attitude. He told me I was genetically blessed because I'm little, but he did warn me that it was gonna catch up with me.

Just when you start to think that she's refreshingly 'normal', she goes on to say:
"I didn't feel self-conscious about my body until I had a baby, and now I think, 'Thank God there's a photograph of my thighs when they looked like that."

Aw. It's sort of like putting ketchup on an expensive steak. Can you just admit that like most other women and celebrities for that fact, you do care about your weight? The whole 'I never exercise or worry about my weight' thing is so old it's like 1985 and we're all wearing leg warmers.

Source: http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20090215/Enchanted+Isla

Kate Moss sporting a bulge

Poor Kate Moss. The gal puts on a little bit of weight and everyone thinks she's pregnant. This situation nicely encapsulates the research about the meanings of fat and pregnancy I've been doing for the past few years. Women can never be 'in between' as it were: they are either 'fat' or 'pregnant'. A belly is only acceptable when it is flat or pregnant; a little pudge is no good.

Of her changing shape, Kate Moss told New York Magazine:

"I am a woman now! It’s true. No, honestly, I’ve never worn a bra in my life. Ever! It’s so awful, even my friends are phoning me up and saying “Are you pregnant?” And I’m like, “No! I just put on a couple of pounds, and they went in the right place.” Isn’t that weird? And how perfect for lingerie."

Sources: http://nymag.com/fashion/09/spring/54319/index1.html
http://www.babble.com.au/2009/02/16/bun-in-the-oven/

Lisa Marie: the joy of two

The first photos of Lisa Marie Presley and her twin girls, Finley and Harper, have arrived in a People exclusive. "I really wanted these babies," says Presley, 40, who tried for two years to get pregnant before conceiving the twins.

"My blood was too thick and would clot, which caused several miscarriages," she tells People. "The moment I took blood thinners, I got pregnant."

Although poor old Lisa Marie was chastised for looking 'too fat' when she was pregnant, she admits, "I was unable to see my toes by the fourth month, but I only gained 30 lbs. total. I worked out up until the seventh month."

There you have it. Elvis would be proud.

Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20252307,00.html

Rebecca Romijn welcomes twins

Rebecca Romijn, 36, has given birth to twin girls, Dolly Rebecca Rose and Charlie Tamara Tulip.

Romijn has been on bed rest for the last few months. She told Page Six magazine in November that she was ready to give birth.

'I can't move anymore...I'm a beached whale!' she said. "I have not been without a bra this entire pregnancy. I refuse. I'm not taking any chances. I'm determined to keep the puppies up!"

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/news/rebecca-romijn-jerry-o-connell-welcome-twin-girls

Ulkrika Jonsson weighs in on bouncing back

TV presenter Ulrika Jonsoon is 5 stone heavier since she had her 4th baby a few weeks ago and she has written an essay for the Daily Mail about the scrutiny of her weight gain and the pressures to bounce back. She's written a very honest account of her weighing more than her husband, the enormous praise lavished upon Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry for their washboard abs a few weeks post-birth, and the struggles she's had with fighting to be skinny throughout her life:

"I remember thinking at the time that if I ever got pregnant again, I'd be one of those gloriously slender Yummy Mummies, driving my immaculate family around Chelsea in a vast and shiny 4x4, laughing mockingly at all the fat mums-to-be passing me by. Some chance. My body shape has changed more this time than it did in any of my previous three pregnancies, when I managed to notch up just a measly three stone".

A refreshing read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042408/Ulrika-Jonsson-Im-stone-heavier-Im-proud-post-baby-body.html

Charlotte Church: fighting the fat

Charlotte Church may be happy to be pregnant for a second time, but one thing she's not looking forward to is getting 'fat'. In the latest edition of Ok!, Charlotte says:

'I’m not looking forward to getting a big fat face and arms again. I was just beginning to get my body back and I was doing quite well.'

In the next breath, however, she back pedals and says:

'It’s what women are made for. If you can’t indulge yourself during pregnancy, when can you?’

Source: http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/celebrity-news/266157/charlotte-church-i-m-not-looking-forward-to-getting-a-big-fat-face/1/

Fat and Pregnant

I don't know about you but I'm pretty sick of reading about obesity. Australia was recently crowned the 'Fattest Nation' just edging out the United States and let me tell you, every second article in the papers lately is about the 'ticking timebomb' of fatness.

It comes as no surprise then that there is now a new genre of obstetric care emerging to accommodate pregnant women who are more generously proportioned. A new Centre for Bariatric Obstetric Care is opening in Ann Arbor, Michigan outfitted with special equipment to 'manage' the pregnancies of morbidly obese women.

Contrary to what seems to be logical, obese pregnant women are advised not to gain any weight at all during pregnancy, and instead, are encouraged to lose weight. Whilst it is clear that there is an impressive list of legitimate risks associated with obesity and pregnancy outcomes, one gynecologist has noted that pregnancy is effectively 'obesity's ground zero'. If anyone else has noticed, a range of headlines lately have been about how eating junk food, for example, in pregnancy can causes 'irreparable' lifelong damage to foetuses, predisposing them to being overweight by the age of 3. Now, it seems, it is okay to blame overweight women for obesity in the next generation. This is worrying. As much as fat is something that has come to be feared, my concern is that 'fat' has come to be a scapegoat for the privileging of foetal rights over maternal rights. For a while it was just women who smoked and drank that were blamed for foetal abuse, will having an extra piece of cake now carry the same moral weight?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/magazine/13wwln-essay-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Mylene: that white bikini and feeling fat

So Mylene Klass has appeared three times in that white bikini everyone knows:

1) In 2006 when she was standing under the waterfall in I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here

2) In 2007 when she was pregnant, appearing in an ad for Marks and Spencer

3) A third time, 3 months after she gave birth last year (in photo at left), again for Marks and Spencer.

Mylene recently revealed she was pretty traumatised by having to wear that bikini postpartum seeing as she was surrounded by uber-thin models. She says:

“I’m only 5ft 5ins and I had a bit of a tummy. I felt small and podgy.”

She said: “I said to them ‘You do realize I just had a baby three months ago?’

“It was really difficult for me to overcome my issues so soon after giving birth.”

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1030268/Myleene-confesses-I-felt-fat-THAT-bikini.html

Gwyneth Paltrow: happy to erase all traces of motherhood

In a new interview with V magazine, Gwyn Paltrow describes how much she hated her post-pregnant body. After gaining 3 stone with Moses, she says:

"I didn't mind the big boobs. But I hated the stomach roll, the back fat and the post-pregnant butt. And it was so hard to get rid of. Especially the final 20lb."

I find this sort of commentary really confronting. Sure, I love the fact that Gwyn is being honest but I'm really getting sick of this complete disavowal of the post-baby body in the media. That somehow the photos above represent Gwyneth Paltrow better or are 'more beautiful' than the person she was immediately after having her babies. I'm troubled by the implication that the body in those photos is different to the body she had when she was pregnant or post-pregnancy.

What I find really interesting (and this is something I'm trying to sort out in my PhD work at the moment) is that there is this perception that the bodies that you have before, during and after pregnancy are actually different when in fact, it is the same body in different forms. What I mean is that surely Gwyn looks all raunchy and emo in the magazine cover shots but the truth is that is exactly the same body that she had just a few years ago, fat rolls and all, in a different form. You cannot get rid of fatness; it's always inside our bodies whether it is visible on the surface or not. The very ambiguity of fat (not a liquid that seeps, not inside or outside the body) means that it cannot be expelled physically or psychologically. It is through specific interactions and locations and in specific contexts that fatness becomes real for women and pregnancy is one such time. The constant emphasis on fatness and thinness, and more prominently the praise given to celebs who shed baby weight quickly is symptomatic of a culture that continually forces us to believe that fat is something that we can get rid of entirely. The truth is that for most women, there is no such thing as an 'ideal weight' because even when they reach their 'ideal' it is never enough. The fat is always there and to maintain anything resembling 'ideal' requires that women constantly monitor their diets and their bodies in order to stave off visible fat a little longer. In this way, fat never leaves. It is always in our bodies, constantly threatening to creep to the surface and Gwyn's 'hot mamma' post-baby photos are deceiving for exactly this reason. Paltrow knows that she will always have to maintain a specific diet and exercise regimen in order to keep her fat at bay.

I've spent the last three weeks thinking about fatness exclusively...can you tell? And by the way, apologies for the recent spate of short posts. My dissertation is due...very, very frighteningly soon.....

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1020274/Gwyneth-Paltrow-reveals-I-vices-poses-sexy-basque.html

Liz's losing battle

Headline: Despite endless diets, Liz Hurley's curves are very noticeably growing. Is it a baby on the way or is she losing her battle to hold back time?

Why is it that a woman's stomach can only be 'fat' or 'pregnant' and never in-between if it is not unambiguously flat? Cultural norms continually reiterate that a distended stomach (and I don't see any sign of a bloated belly on Liz) indicates either pregnancy or fatness and nothing ‘in-between’. Whilst the stomach itself does not possess any inherent meaning, its public meaning is created depending on who is doing the ‘looking’ (for example, the media). This whole fiasco about Liz being pregnant or not reinforces the fact that women can never be 'in-between' pregnancy and non-pregnancy. If you are not one or the other, you are just perceived to be fat or in Liz's case 'losing the battle to hold back time'. *sigh*

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=564029&in_page_id=1879

Christina defends her post-baby body

It was only a matter of time before people started to call Christina Aguilera 'fat' even though she has just had a baby. In a bid to regain her pre-pregnancy figure, Aguilera claims she likes her post-baby curves:

"I haven't got back to my pre-baby weight yet, but I'm loving my body. My husband loves my cleavage in particular. I've just got back into the gym and I'm doing boxing and weights. I want to be in shape for my next record."

*sigh*

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=25285

baby weight + ballerina = no good

I seem to spend an inordinate time discussing pregnant celebrity weight loss and weight gain on this blog. Then I saw a fantastic article in the Globe and Mail about the pressure to lose baby weight for professional ballet dancers. Of course! Why in the world hasn't anyone discussed this before?

Two ballerinas from a Toronto dance company discuss the business of being a pregnant and a ballerina:

"Being a ballerina is all about fighting your body, fighting the effects of time. It's about being preternaturally young and beautiful. You have these 20-year-olds nipping at your heels all the time. And being pregnant is about surrender to your body. You're going to gain 40 pounds. You have to deal with it. You have to accept it."

This is such an fascinating body narrative; to be ballet dancers, women are constantly in the pursuit of perfection, almost to excess. In a sense, to be a ballerina is to engage in a sort of feminine protest against the meanings and the shape of a typically feminine body (curves, breasts). As Bordo argues in obsessively pursuing slenderness and hollowness, women come to embody the 'masculine' values of the public sphere (e.g. a body that is always controlled, contained). The ballerina embodied this intersection in almost a 'battle' between male and female sides of self.

On the other hand, pregnancy is a time of constant, uncontrollable bodily change and is a bodily state striking in its inscription of extreme femininity. Self-management in pregnancy becomes more elusive, the more hotly it is pursued. Whereas a ballerina posseses a body in defiant protest of conventionally feminine body shapes, pregnant bodies not only resist cultural norms of slenderness, they constantly threaten to erupt and challenge normative femininity. As a ballerina's body is coded as a rebellion against the maternal, domestic femininity; pregnancy is the embodiment of reproduction and the maternal.

Pregnancy for a ballerina is a major career decision. "It's pretty traumatic. You worry if you will get your body back. It is your instrument for your art." The dancers in the interview reveal that that they purposely had to wait until the 'end' of their careers to fall pregnant (age 37 or 38) essentially because the 'damage' done is irreversible.

"The end of the [ballet] career happens to coincide with the end of your reproductive career. By the time you are 40, most people have finished their classical ballet careers, and most women are not having babies past 40. It's a decision all ballerinas have to make."

And we thought being a celebrity was hard work.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071112.wlhampson12/BNStory/lifeMain/home

A picture is worth a thousand words

This is quite possibly the best possible cartoon to describe the purposes of this blog. I love it.

Source: http://www.mikhaela.net

http://feministing.com/archives/008067.html#comments

Britney Spears: faux pas or just fat?

Seriously. If I hear another balding, middle-aged male news presenter make another crack about how 'fat' Britney Spears looked at the MTV VMAs the other night, I swear I will have to throw down.

After two children, more power to you, Britney. At least your entire torso doesn't fit up my sleeve.

http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20053775_20055600,00.html

Jaime Pressly on her freakishly fast weight loss

And more from Jaime Pressly in USA Today on her weight loss and starting filming again, ironically enough, knocked up and ready to deliver on My Name is Earl.

"I was back in the gym when he was 10 days old, working out with my trainer," she says. "I'm almost back to where I was before."

I read in another source that Jaime lost the first 10 lbs on a liquid diet immediately after the birth (sounds really safe, eh?) and spent 3 hours in the gym every day to drop the rest (apparently only 5lbs left to go).

"I personally don't think I look smoking hot, but Eric [her partner] tells me I do. I think he's biased," she says (it must be hard when just plain hot isn't good enough for you?!)

As for playing her pregnant character again on the show, Pressly says:
"I'm going to deliver the baby on the show. I'm coming back in shape and I have to wear a fat suit," she says with a sigh. "Incredible."

Goodbye babyweight, hello narcissism? Incredible.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-08-09-jaime-pressly_N.htm

Gaby Reece stays fit during pregnancy

"In May, Gabby Reece told TODAY viewers how to get into shape for bikini season. Now, she'll be showing them how to stay in shape while pregnant".

The athlete, model and writer announced that “I'm a little over three months pregnant” to TODAY's Natalie Morales and Hoda Kotb. The due date is Jan. 2".

“I try to tell women, 'You're not dead. You're not fat. You're pregnant,'” Reece said.

Of course she doesn't feel 'fat'. She's 6'3'' and effortlessly striking. She's a fitness guru, professional volleyball player and will create a line of workout DVDs for pregnant women. But nevertheless, I applaud her message.

For full story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19494011/