Читать книгу Work. Mama. Life. - Ali Young - Страница 24

Ah … the pre-baby body phenomenon. Does it make your skin crawl too? The push of mothers to achieve their pre-baby bodies is well understood. In a 2004 article, Professors Shari Dworkin and Faye Wachs dived into the phenomenon of how past feminist uprisings have been used to create the link between looking ‘great’ and our ability to mother well. I mean seriously, WTAF?

One of the key points in this article that really clarifies the outside-in view of the female body is: ‘Exactly at the moment when a woman's body is accomplishing a highly valued route to femininity, she is least likely to be viewed as aesthetically ideal’. It's the view that while pregnancy is a great thing, it isn't an attractive thing. In my experience, other females notice how we are ‘looking great and glowing’ through our pregnancies. Yet there are perceived responsibilities that once we have a child, we will go back to looking and being exactly as we were before.

A survey conducted online by BabyCenter of 7000 new mothers identified some key points in the after-baby-body world. It found that 64 per cent of the survey takers felt their body image had gotten worse after they became a mother. Interestingly, it also found that over time, even if mums lost the weight, their body image remained altered in 62 per cent of the population. That's a lot of body image concerns we are carrying around.

Mothers have enough changes in their world learning how to care for this new little person, and how to navigate a whole new existence. I mean, they've just momentously birthed, passing into matrescence and their new sense of self (more on that in the next chapter). Well done, Mama! Being concerned about getting their body back should be one of the lowest things on their agenda.

Expectations that within weeks after birth you appear as if you haven't been pregnant at all abound. If we look at the social commentary around celebrities after they've had children, you can see the continual seeding of this narrative into the psyche of mothers worldwide.

I remember when we were living in South Korea — my husband and I moved there when our kids were two and one years old — we got a group of mums together to exercise. This was a super precious time for me as I didn't know anybody and it allowed me to forge beautiful friendships. On reflection, there was definitely an undercurrent of exercising together to allow ourselves to look a certain way (and can I just say that all of us were healthy and looking after ourselves and our kids well). Many conversations were had on how to best feed ourselves without losing milk supply or energy levels to allow us to get that old body back again.

Hell, I juice-fasted, I ate a low-carb diet, I did everything to make myself look like I did before I had kids. And I never questioned it. I just thought that was what I was supposed to do. It was an expectation of my motherhood that I was a successful mother if I looked a certain way. And that was defined by my pre-baby self.

Zero recognition was given to how the process of becoming a mother changed my physical being. Zero acknowledgement for growing babies, the widening of the ribcage, the softening of pelvis shape, the years of breastfeeding.

Nope … it was all about fitting back into the dresses of years past and being happy with my sense of self, which was based on this external perception of what that was. It's time we all started calling bullshit on this. I didn't know any better … and one of my core desires is to help mums recognise they are more than just the way they look!