Sun-Herald & Sunday Age column: celebrity new mothers put your CLOTHES BACK ON DAMMIT

Sometimes, I’m a masochist. Why else would I pick up a copy of Woman’s Day at the supermarket to take a closer look at the bikini-wearing blonde on the cover a few weeks ago? I didn’t immediately recognise the face but the baby perched incongruously on her hip grabbed my attention.

Was it a feature about a Miss Universe contestant doing some babysitting to pay for her boob job? No. It was yet another nauseating “My Hot Post-Baby Body!” story, this time about Australian actress and star of Without A Trace, Poppy Montgomery.

We’ll deal with Poppy in a moment. But first, it’s worth noting these infuriating stories come in two varieties. The first does not require the new mother’s involvement. Gwen Stefani or Jennifer Garner or Naomi Watts simply appear in public at some stage after giving birth looking – gasp – thinner than they did when nine months pregnant if you can believe that. This causes magazines to wet themselves with excitement and immediately publish splashy photos of the celebrity’s “Amazing Post-Baby Body” with inset “before” pregnant shots. Fat! Birth! Thin! Magic!

above: a page from a recent magazine story. Hello – since when did being pregnant with twins qualify as a ‘before’ picture!!??

The other type of story is even worse. In this version, a new mother like Poppy actively participates in a photo shoot, reclaiming her hotness by taking off her clothes.
The accompanying interview is tediously samey. First, the celebrity conspiratorially reveals how much pregnancy weight she gained (numbers are suspiciously exaggerated) and then explains how she lost it before declaring how complete she feels with a baby and also tight abs! The baby is always superfluous in these stories. The main event is the weight loss. After gaining 31kgs by “overindulging” in ice cream and avocado, Poppy says she signed up for a diet meal-delivery service and began a DVD workout program. In no time, the magazine breathlessly reports, she was back in her pre-baby, size 27 jeans! “It was hard, but worth it,” she confirmed.

So why do famous new mums do this other than to make the rest of us feel like demoralised and inadequate pieces of flabby crap? Part vanity. Part self-promotion. But also? Commerce. Not only do they usually pocket a thwack of cash from the magazine but they’re also often pushing a third party meal plan, diet program or workout video.

Companies flogging weight loss products have always known celebrities are good for business. Sometimes these endorsements are explicit like Jenny Craig signing Magda Szubanski. Other times, the relationship is subtler and only by reading carefully will you notice the suddenly skinny celeb may be surreptitiously spruiking something. Not only are the images you see likely to be fake (thank you Photoshop) but the explanation for their weight loss is equally suspect because they’re probably being paid.

Gwyneth Paltrow is currently doing a publicity binge about her personal trainer, a tiny hard-bodied woman called Tracy Anderson. After reading yet another article in which the two pose together and Gwyneth gushingly credits Tracy with re-making her post-baby body (by working out two hours a day, six days a week, give me a BREAK), I became a smidge curious about why she’d be promoting her trainer so eagerly. A bit of digging revealed the little mentioned fact that Gwyneth and the trainer are in partnership to open a chain of Tracy Anderson gyms and produce a line of workout videos. Ka-ching.

Then there’s the cringe making advertorial appearing in newspapers starring former E-Street actress Alyssa-Jane Cook. It’s helpfully headlined “How I Lost My Mummy Tummy” and next to the requisite before and after bikini pictures, Alyssa goes into elaborate detail about how after the birth of her third child at 40, her saggy tummy was making her existence miserable. So miserable, “my sex life with my husband Gary had dried up”. This was, according to Alyssa, “….partly because I was so tired and partly….because I had become a different woman than he married twenty years ago…in body, mind and soul.”
But Alyssa, isn’t that the point? That your body, mind and soul change over 20 years and three children? Isn’t that a GOOD thing? Alyssa goes on to explain how a weight loss system (free 30 day trial available now!), flattened her tummy and now? “My biggest problem is keeping Gary off me.”

I understand Alyssa-Jane is just trying to make a buck. But to her and Gwyneth and Poppy and everyone else who participates in the business of selling body insecurity to vulnerable new mothers I say this: I’ve had a post-baby gutful of the way we’re being sold the rubbish idea that the female body must remain frozen in time at around age 23 and that we’re only sexy and empowered if we conform to a cookie-cutter media model of What’s Hot. Says who? How does a flat stomach empower me?

What about the idea that our bodies change with time and childbirth – sometimes permanently – and THAT’S OK? What about the fact that most men don’t view their partners as a sum of inadequate body parts? What about more focus on the miracle of having a healthy baby? What about gratitude for even having a baby when so many women can’t? What about some respect for what our bodies can do instead of fuelling a competition to see who can erase all evidence of having created a life and race back into their pre-pregnancy jeans? Stick that in your bikini and smoke it.