Janice Min, who has admittedly made a living from editing and publishing such Frankenmom Hollywood stories, comes clean about the obsession with thinness post-pregnancy.
My partner and I want to have kids in the next three to five years. I began my academic pursuits in high school. I’m now an almost thirty-year-old academic; I have an academic woman’s body. I don’t ‘rock’ Pilates-fresh abs, although I do do Pilates. …I’d like to be happy with my body before we begin this child-birthing adventure. Seeing as how I’ve had this academic body for about 13 years and have been ‘working out’ for the last 4 years, its likely that by the time I get there, the baby body will come.
Just sitting at the table over tea, I told my partner how yeah, my best mate growing up was bulimic; and how, yeah, I was teased by boys in high school for being ‘fat’. But I didn’t have THAT MUCH bad-body-image-reinforcement direct from the source, which leads me to believe the majority of my body-image issues are socially reinforced. And then I think about this Akin idiot, about the US Congress trying to (still) control women’s bodies, and female genital mutilation, amongst the mass media airbrushing… I really wonder, if there is any hope for our gender. Will there EVER be a day when we don’t beat ourselves up for the way we look? Will there EVER be a day when a man’s hair loss is the front page of US Weekly instead of Jessica Simpson’s ‘baby-fat body’? Will the objectification stop?!
Is asking to be accepted too much? Why are our bodies such a source of conflict for us and for people who view our bodies as expressions of something more significant about our personhood?
…le sigh.
the article is a good read anyhow.
