Will Kim Kardashian’s Saint baby inspire a new holiday the way Jesus did? Will he have new Yeezy mood sneakers that change color depending on who his creepy father is mad at? No one cares BECAUSE WE NEED TO FIND OUT WHEN IN GOD’S NAME KIM IS GETTING HER BODY BACK IN ORDER.
Kim Kardashian says she lost 17 pounds since giving birth, and predictably, your favorite news outlets are reporting on this like it’s raining Frisbees and champagne. Last time she revealed her post-baby body, other legitimate outlets praised her quick weight loss too because obviously.
First, let me express my heartfelt excitement for women of all sizes and astrological signs for wherever they are on their body journeys. Your loss, maintenance, and gain goals are all golden. Kim Kardashian wants to be 120 pounds? She deserves to be 120 pounds. But reporting on the number of pounds lost after popping out a kid like they’re basketball scores is unnecessarily obsessive and rife with problems.
Just this week, Zoe Saldana celebrated her post-baby weight loss on Instagram, the most self-congratulatory medium around.
Holy S—! You guys, I had to share this, this is one of the old #guardiansofthegalaxy costumes that I wore back in 2013. After twins I can’t believe I was able to slip into this. @marvel and @jamesgunn don’t be mad, I’m not showing anything that hasn’t been seen before… besides, aren’t we designing new stuff?…. It pays off to work hard! I mean it mommies of the world, if I did it you can too.
Where the Kardshian’s and the Saldana’s of the world are concerned, we get that building and hanging onto a personal brand might have something to do with weight, and what a woman does with her body is no one else’s business. Saldana is stunning and commendable. She deserves all the holy s***s. But no matter how well-intentioned she is, obviously most “mommies of the world,” don’t have Zoe’s access to childcare or trainers, and so not all the moms loved her savior complex. Of course she worked hard, but being famous helps. Saldana’s “recovery” back to her body probably took a RIDONCULOUS amount of cash money, and it’s not in the cards for everyone. It’s also not everyone’s ambition.
This is not to dismiss any woman’s impressive ability to alter her physique, no matter how obnoxiously packaged the media’s coverage about it is. But after the unimaginable toll a baby takes on your body, this narrative is destructive.
To be fair, motherhood can be one of the most narrow archetypes of all. Telling a mom to get off the treadmill and watch her kid is also misguided. We’ve all heard people throwing verbal stones at moms for spending too much time trying to get their abs and self-respect back instead of what they should be doing: squeezing out some sweet milk to the tune of Mozart. Post-baby weight loss is a perfectly respectable and personal goal, but this obsessive race for women to get back to their old selves is just another way to remind women: as long as stay thin that’d be great!
And go figure, sometimes rapid weight loss isn’t even so hot for your bod after a pregnancy so why the urgency? Melinda Johnson MS, RD told Web MD. “All the magazines ask, ‘How did she do it?’ The more important question is, ‘Why did she do it? They do this with very, very strict diets, and a lot of them do it by getting back into activity before their body is really ready for it.”
Just recently a non-famous mom celebrated the truth about her life and body after giving birth, and it resonated. She said this:
After this So here I am. I may not be magazine ready, my nana undies and bedtime nursing bra are certainly not going to be rocking a runway anytime soon, my hair is greasy, I have no makeup on, my body is squishy and plentiful, I’m not even sure I’m totally ok.
But I am strong. My body is healthy.”
It would be very wide-eyed to ask members of the media to stay away from their most important calling: checking in on Kim Kardashian’s weight, but maybe this mom has the right idea.
