Look everyone! You, too, can lose a crazy amount of weight and look super skinny just days postpartum! All you have to do is buy this magazine!As if motherhood isn't hard enough with the whole having-and-raising-a-baby thing, mothers have the additional pressure of recovery from pregnancy, which most women will tell you, is no picnic. For many of us our skin goes to hell, we lose all our hair, and we feel like crap from lack of sleep and constant breastfeeding. Let's not even discuss the postpartum hormones.
This is Kourtney Kardashian with a "post-baby body exclusive" in OK! magazine, here to give us some perspective. Here she is in a great picture, beautiful teeth, awesome skin. She looks the absolute picture of motherhood . . . and she looks really skinny. While it is true that some mothers do slim down quickly after giving birth, here's the real before-and-after versions of that photo:
What? You mean that flat belly's not real?Turns out Kourtney was photo-shopped after the birth of her son (7 days postpartum) and made to look as though she has dropped all of her baby weight plus some. Shocking.
I'm going to ignore, for a moment, the ridiculous alliteration of the family's names (Kourtney and Khloe and Kim? Oh, my!), and move on to the part I find really offensive. While Kourtney openly says this image is not real (she admits she gained 40 pounds during her pregnancy, not 26, as the magazine claims), the damage is still done.
OK! implies that if after you give birth you haven't fully recovered and look like a supermodel within a mere couple weeks, you must be doing it wrong.
Popular media wants to tell women that while you might not look so awesome after the birth of your child, all the good celebrity mothers do. If you feel a little less-than-spectacular, we have the perfect diet plan for you to follow. Just buy this magazine . . .
We say, don't buy it ladies. You just don't have the right publicist.
