Nothing winds me up more than the insistence - mostly by celebrity gossip sites - on describing women as ‘showing off’ various parts of their bodies. Pregnant women who are simply wearing clothes are ‘showing off their baby bumps’, women wearing bikinis are ‘showing off their curves’ and - most recently - Stacey Solomon, 33, has been ‘showing off’ her post-baby body simply by posting photographs of herself. In a series of photos posted on her Instagram, the presenter - who gave birth to her fourth child, Belle, four months ago - was modelling swimwear for a shoot she was working on for In The Style. She told her followers she had posted, ‘Just because… I felt bloody beautiful today!’
Stacey may have been wearing swimsuits in her post, and celebrating herself (as well she should) but that didn’t necessarily mean she was ‘showing off’ her post-baby body - nor offering it up for judgement or analysis. Of course the majority of her responses were telling her how amazing she looks, because she does, but they mostly didn’t refer to the fact Stacey has had a baby this year. But the headlines which followed did.
Our society’s obsession with how women look once they’ve had a baby is something I find entirely damaging. We may have made some progress when it comes to body positivity, but judging whether, or how quickly, a woman has ‘snapped back’ or lost the ‘baby weight’ is a narrative which never seems to go away. As a woman who has struggled with her weight after giving birth last year, the sense of scrutiny over how fast you can look like you did before you ever got pregnant - once which is actively encouraged in our tabloid media, not to mention on social media - creates a toxic pressure.
Your body is put under such huge pressure during pregnancy, birth - and if you choose to, or are able to, breastfeed. Whether you lose weight can be dictated by many things: genetics, time, money, mental health, wherewithal. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter. What should matter is your happiness, health and your baby’s health. Body Coach Joe Wicks entered this chat in April when he posted about how proud he was of his wife Rosie’s ‘dedication’ to losing her baby weight seven months after giving birth. It was pointed out by a lot of disgruntled followers that it takes a lot more than dedication to be able to follow the kind of diet and exercise programme to do what Rosie had done: there’s privilege involved, not to mention time and support (and the fact she’s married to a personal trainer).
This isn’t to say that seeing Stacey’s photos wasn’t wonderfully refreshing. Not because she looked a certain kind of way in a swimming costume: but because she looked totally happy and entirely unfiltered. And that should be the goal for anyone looking for what to look like post-baby, in my opinion.