Are you a mother or a porn star?

By MIA FREEDMAN

“I’m going to say this very calmly and very quietly – but if people don’t stop trying to make everything sexy, I will burn this planet. I will watch it burn to fine black ash, so help me God.” *

These words aren’t mine. I wish they were.

They belong to Caitlin Moran. But the sentiment? SNAP, Caitlin, SNAP.

When she wrote those sentences, Caitlin was talking about the way animated heroine Merida from the kids movie Brave had been given a sexy make-over. I am going to co-opt her indignant threat and apply it to this ridiculous picture that Kim Kardashian posted on Instagram yesterday:

In under an hour, the image received more than 145,000 likes from Kim’s 10.4 million followers – and guaranteed exposure to tens of millions more  people who will see it after it’s picked up by websites, magazines, newspapers and TV shows around the world.

Here’s another image that Kim recently shared with those same people:

After I locate a neckbrace to treat the whiplash those two photos have given me, I have something to ask Kim: What the actual fuck? Are you a mother or a porn star? Why did you need to do this? Why does the world need to see up your bum and inside your top? Why not just cut to the chase and post a link to the sex tape (you know, the one you claim to be mortified about while disingenuously ignoring its role in your fame)? Are you really that desperate to reclaim your hotness that you’re happy to discard your dignity and that of your daughter?

Because there’s nothing tasteful about this photo, this pose. Nothing meaningful or clever or stylish or interesting. The only reason to publish it is to scream: LOOK WORLD! I MAY HAVE HAD A BABY JUST A FEW SHORT MONTHS AGO BUT I AM STILL HOT SEE HOW HOT I AM YES SMOKING HOT AND SEXY AND JUST SO HOT AND ARE YOU LOOKING BECAUSE HOT AND LOOK AT ME.

Well done. Because you’ve just confirmed my worst fears about the machine that is celebrity and the way Hollywood values women for only one thing: how sexy they look and how enthusiastically they can objectify themselves.

This photo is desperate. This photo is sad. This photo is inappropriate and no I don’t care if the word inappropriate makes me sound like a complete nana. It’s true.

I’m not suggesting that being a woman comes to a screaming halt when you become a mother. Nor being sexy, if that floats your boat. The two things can co-exist. But putting on a transparent and gaping white leotard, shoving your arse in the air and taking a rear view selfie (with extreme side boob) is not the action of a woman comfortable in her skin.

Nor does it suggest genuine sexual confidence. The opposite in fact. This is a woman who clearly fears she has no relevance, no value and no currency unless she portrays herself like a cheap and nasty piece of arse in one of her partner’s music videos.

Is this what celebrity motherhood has become? Have we bottomed out yet – and no, I’m not trying to be cute with puns. It’s a genuine question. I thought the rush to show off your ‘banging post-baby body’ in a bikini and high heels on the cover of a magazine was bad enough. But no. You now need to look like a porn star and portray your body in such a sexualised way as to obliterate any public recall of how you looked pregnant or the fact that you gave birth to a human baby.

Baby? That’s not sexy.

And if not sexy then…..wait, what’s the purpose of Kim Kardashian again?

“Mia stop being a bitch about Kim Kardashian” some commenters will say in 3….2…..1……

“Stop judging and slut-shaming.”

Yeah but no. Because Kim is the canary down the mineshaft. Kim is simply a magnified reflection of society. In this photo – by taking it and publishing it and thinking it’s a good idea to do both – she is merely tapping into this sick societal obsession with women having to look hot at every moment in their lives – from child to cougar.

And I, for one, have had a gutful. New mothers are more than their arse. Stop reducing everything to that.

[UPDATE: * some commenters have pointed out that this quote from Caitlin Moran is jarring on a day where NSW grapples with devastating bushfires. Obviously it was something written several months ago with no relation to today’s news and was never intended to be disrespectful or insensitive. Our thoughts and support go out to everyone affected by the fires.]

Take a look at the Kardashians through the years…