Ever since I became a mom (all eleven months ago), I’ve started paying attention to the “wars.” The Mommy Wars, the Nanny Wars, and now (worst of all), the Body Wars. I wrote an essay here about the post-pregnancy belly a couple of weeks ago, not knowing that ex-US Weekly editor Janice Min would tackle the very topic in a recent New York Times piece titled “Can a Mom Get a Break?” Min bemoans the fact that moms in 2012 are caught in an incredibly unfair battle of the bulge. Did you look like Heidi Klum before having children? No? That’s O.K. But if you don’t look like a supermodel after having children, maybe you just aren’t trying hard enough.
Yes, it’s ridiculous that Min is taking this stance when she (possibly singlehandedly) “invented the sport of celebrity baby-bump watching” and put stars on the cover of her mag months (or even weeks) post-partum with totally flat mid-sections. Yes, she’s probably very (or at least slightly) hypocritical, and yes, that makes her almost as annoying as those stars with the flat stomachs who seem to defy nature (because no amount of Pilates will make your belly look like that three weeks after giving birth, unless you are a droid).
Does Min still have a point? Totally. But you know what I think? I think that Min is making at least one wrong assumption when she says: I’ve noticed an unconscious reflexive once-over from others’ eyes, looking to see if I’m “back” to my old body or how my weight is faring. In the way men can’t help but check out a woman’s cleavage, women glance repeatedly at my midsection.
Janice, I have something to tell you, and I thinkhope you’re going to like it. Those other new moms glancing at your mid-section? They aren’t doing it to judge you. They’re doing it because, like you, they’re caught in the same “physical netherworld” you reference, inhabiting bodies they hardly recognize anymore—lives they hardly recognize anymore—and they’re looking at your middle, not because they want to see if you’re experiencing the same confusing alien-body-takeover they are… but because they want to see if you’re experiencing the same confusing alien-body-takeover they are! And if they see that you are? They’re secretly thinking, “Thank God—somebody else understands!”
My wee one recently started swim class every Saturday, which mostly involves him looking terrified-slash-momentarily-pleased while we pretend he knows what’s happening. I was nervous for the first class, not feeling totally “back to normal” or ready to don a swim suit, even as I was dying to take Baby swimming. Swim class was (for lack of a better metaphor) a great splash of cold (though in this case, heated pool warm) water in the face. You know why? Every single mom had on a one-piece bathing suit. Every single mom looked glowy happy, but slightly worse for wear. Not a single mom was judging any of the others. And as soon as I got in the water and saw how much my kid loved (okay, hated, but would soon love) swimming? I wasn’t judging me, either.
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