Pregnancy and Unrealistic Beauty Standards

For as long as I can remember I have marveled at the beauty and miracle that is pregnancy and childbirth. I sometimes feel that I am almost obsessed with it, to the point where I question whether maybe my true calling in life was to be a midwife or doula or labor & delivery nurse. Maybe part of it stems from having the opportunity to watch my own niece be born when I was only 16 years old. At the time, I remember a friend asking me, "didn't it gross you out?" That question almost seemed ridiculous to me after having witnessed and experienced what I did. Even as an immature (I assure you that I was very immature) teenager I could not deny the absolute miracle of witnessing a human being, a human soul, enter this world and take her first breath. It was one of the most beautiful and spiritual experiences of my young life, and left me with a sense of excitement for the future when I could experience pregnancy and childbirth for myself. 

I was 3 years into my recovery when I became pregnant with my first child. I had spent the first two years of my marriage trying to prepare myself mentally for pregnancy, because I was not naive to the fact that my body would change drastically and that I had to be okay with that change in order to not relapse while pregnant. I was at a very good place with my body image struggles when I became pregnant, and surprisingly I could not wait to get bigger and look pregnant. I even started wearing maternity pants when I was only 8 weeks along, even though my belly had not grown yet. When my belly did begin to grow, I would stare at myself in the mirror and just smile at my pregnant form. It was beautiful. I truly believed I was more beautiful than I had ever been. There was a baby inside of me, what a miracle! This was womanhood. This was beautiful.  I had always looked at pregnant women as beautiful, and I naively thought that while I was pregnant I wouldn't be subjected to the same pressures to be thin or look a certain way as I did when I wasn't pregnant. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I soon found out that the pressures were just as prevalent, possibly even more so, during pregnancy than they were before. I literally had to be warrior against all of these messages during all 3 of my pregnancies, to ensure that I stayed healthy while carrying my precious babies. This toxic culture threatened to steal the happiness that I had looked forward to for so long. With my blog post today, I want to address some of the pressures all pregnant women are subjected to in this current age... 

The Media    

So, as you probably could guess, I am not a fan of tabloid and fashion magazines. I do not purchase them, but I can't seem to avoid looking at the headlines while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store. A while back, every time I went to the store I saw headlines like this one above about Kim Kardashian's pregnancy. I have also seen similar ones of other pregnant celebrities. Now, I'm not even going to talk about what this type of scrutiny does to the celebrities themselves; who, lest we forget, are actual human beings. Instead, I am going to talk about what these irresponsible stories and headlines do to pregnant women everywhere. When a magazine displays a pregnant photo of a woman and then tears that woman down (almost to the point of making her a villain) the way they did to Kim Kardashian, pregnant women are likely to internalize those messages for themselves. Women that look the same or even heavier than the celebrity being scrutinized will feel that the magazine might as well be saying the same things about them. Women who are smaller than the celebrity may put pressures on themselves to not get any bigger, as to not be subjected to that type of criticism. Although, the topic today is pregnancy, I must note that many girls and women internalize these messages any time a celebrity is scrutinized or glorified for her body (whether she is pregnant or not).

Now, let's talk for a minute about pregnancy magazines. I remember getting some free pregnancy magazines early on in my pregnancy. At first, I was so excited to look through them and read the articles, but I soon found out that I must avoid them like the plague. Women in these magazines are photoshopped just like any other magazine, and the pregnant models do not accurately represent the body types of the majority of pregnant women. Just look at the woman above. I ask you, did you look like that while pregnant? Do the majority of pregnant women in your life look like that? These magazines set a dangerous and unrealistic standard of what a pregnant woman should look like. NEWSFLASH: PREGNANT WOMEN SHOULD HAVE BODY FAT... and that is not a bad thing. IN OTHER NEWS: it is normal to have swelling, acne, uneven skin tones, and stretch marks while pregnant. SIDE NOTE: None of these things take away from the beauty of the pregnant woman. Society has really missed the mark on what actually makes a pregnant woman beautiful. The beauty is in the miracle. Pregnancy is a miracle. You are a woman. You are growing a human being inside of your body. That little human gets everything it needs from you, from your body. That is beautiful. Believe it. Relish it.  

I can't mention the media without talking about the ridiculous standard it sets for post-pregnancy women. So new moms aren't already dealing with enough?.... adjusting to breast feeding, fatigue like they have never known, coping with the largest hormonal shift they have ever experienced, taking care of a new little human that depends on them for EVERY NEED, healing from either a vaginal birth or cesarean section, dealing with little or no time for themselves or their spouse, being stuck in the house most days, possibly dealing with a colicky baby. Since new moms obviously don't already have enough on their plates, let's just add to that the expectation to lose all their pregnancy weight (which took 9 months to put on mind you) and look like a swimsuit model in 8 weeks. No biggie. Imagine me saying all this with the most sarcastic tone you can imagine, because this pressure is ridiculous...RIDICULOUS! Not only is a woman supposed to refrain from heavy exertion for 6 weeks postpartum, but there is a purpose for all the extra body fat a woman puts on during pregnancy. That purpose: breastfeeding... NOURISHMENT for her precious baby. If I had not had extra body fat after giving birth, I have no doubt that I wouldn't have been able to produce enough milk for my babies. I had never experienced such a spike in metabolism and increase in appetite as I did while nursing. I couldn't seem to get enough calories in me to keep up with this incredible milk making machine that was my body. If I had restricted myself in an effort to lose weight, my milk would have either dried up or I would have not been able to produce enough of it to be the sole source of nourishment for my babies. Let's also not forget that a woman who just had a baby has just experienced a complete change in her body. Her skin is stretched out, her uterus is still enlarged, her hips have been expanded...it is in no way realistic to tell a woman she should look like the above picture at 8 weeks postpartum. Let's also not forget that the girl in that picture doesn't truly look like that either. She is photoshopped (all magazine photos are). 

Pregnancy Weight Charts

I am completely against weight charts in general, but especially for pregnant women. First of all, every woman is different and every pregnancy is different. To try and put all women into one mold and call that healthy is just, well, WRONG. To put this pressure on women, in the name of health, often leads to unhealthy consequences. Women may diet, or restrict, or develop the eating disorder informally referred to as 'pregorexia' in an effort to stay within these ranges. Please refer to some of my previous posts about the effects of dieting. Now add to those effects the demands on a woman's body while growing a baby inside of her. No other time in her life is it more important to be fully nourished. So why don't we shift the focus from a pregnant woman's weight and onto her health? Why don't doctors educate women more on nutrition (not dieting) and exercise as a means to have a healthy pregnancy, rather than telling her "as long as you are in these ranges you are healthy"? I will go into more detail as to why I disagree with the notion that you can determine a person's health by their weight in future posts. Just know that I believe this mentality is counterintuitive for everyone, whether they are considered to be at a 'healthy weight' or not. I WILL tell you that I gained more weight than the recommended weight charts with all 3 of my pregnancies. This was not because I, all of the sudden, changed my whole lifestyle when I got pregnant. It is because that is what my body NATURALLY did. I ate intuitively, I exercised, I took care of myself, and I did not stay within the ranges that are recommended. If I had given into the notion that my pregnancy wasn't healthy because my weight was above what the charts told me it should be, I would have made unhealthy choices, which would have put me and my babies in danger. One side note: I do still believe weighing a pregnant woman is important, because a sudden spike in weight can indicate major swelling due to pre-eclampsia or other pregnancy complications. 

Cultural Pressures

We have become a culture that almost idolizes women who gain very little weight while pregnant, just the same as we idolize thin, non-pregnant women. There are women who naturally just don't gain a lot of weight while pregnant, but they are not the majority. There are also women who unnaturally put on very little weight while pregnant and we, as a culture, encourage it. How many times have you heard someone praise a pregnant woman for being so 'tiny' or being 'all belly'...like that is so much better than a full figured pregnant woman? Also, how many times have you heard snide or judgmental comments about pregnant women who put on a lot of weight? I'm not talking about the media like with Kim Kardashian. I'm talking about friends and neighbors and family members. Sometimes these comments are behind the person's back, but they can also be said directly to the pregnant woman. I know I had my fair share of insensitive comments while I was pregnant. Side note: I would think twice before making any kind of snide remark about a pregnant woman's weight in my presence, you might just get an earful. That's right all you pregnant ladies-Alicia has your back.

Pregnant women are already dealing with so many things, can we just stop with the comparisons of one pregnant woman to another? Can we stop putting one pregnant body type on a pedestal and saying that it is the only way to be beautiful while carrying a child? Can we look deep inside and see what it is that actually makes pregnant women beautiful, ALL pregnant women? We need to change as a culture, in more ways than one, but definitely in regards to the pressure we put on pregnant women. This should be a time in a woman's life that she can celebrate her feminine curves and soak in the miracle that is occurring inside of her divinely created body, without judgement from others. Let's stop getting in the way of this beautiful, miraculous event and embrace the beauty of it fully and completely.