Post-Baby Body Backlash! 5 Celebrities Who Are Standing Up for New Moms

Fresh off of delivering a baby, models are returning to runways and actresses are debuting bikini bodies that have snapped back with the speed of an elastic band. By sheer force of will or genetic miracle, these already physically blessed women have been nonverbally setting the post-baby body bar for new moms higher and higher still. For proof, just see the controversial and robust comments section following Chrissy Teigen’s Mother’s Day selfie on Instagram earlier this month, in which she cooks in a crop top, revealing her incredibly whittled waist. While Teigen said last week that she’s enjoyed time off from working out since her baby was born—crediting her form to prenatal gym time—more Hollywood moms than ever are speaking out against unrealistic expectations, reminding new moms that the miracle of birth should give you the kind of physical confidence that goes well beyond a taut stomach and perky behind.

Yesterday, eight weeks after giving birth, Anne Hathaway sat down on Ellen to talk about her own post-baby body confidence. “Being a mom has changed me in a couple ways, one of them is . . . I would normally walk in [to the gym] and feel so intimidated, but I walk in and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I work out with 5 pound weights, but I pushed a baby out of my body. I feel good right now.’ ” She recounted one such instance during which, after she told an inquiring trainer that she gave birth seven weeks prior, she was asked if she was trying to lose her baby weight. “It’s a little bit too soon to worry about weight. I’m just trying to regain my strength,” Hathaway responded, clearly taken aback by the insinuation. New mom Olivia Wilde shared in Hathaway’s dismay, saying last year, “I believe in a world where mothers are not expected to shed any physical evidence of their child-bearing experience . . . I don’t want to waste my time striving for some subjective definition of perfection.”

Likewise, Zooey Deschanel reminded an interviewer of the abnormality of urgently returning back to your original state. “To expect someone to look like her pre-baby self immediately is odd,” she said. “There’s a lot that needs to go back to where it was. All your organs move around.” In other words, a woman’s body goes through a lot of changes while pregnant, some that she may never bounce back from. And that’s nothing to apologize for. According to Drew Barrymore, you gain much more fulfillment becoming a mother than you might have from having perfect thighs. “I would much rather have my kids and look a little worse in a bathing suit!” she has said. For Jennifer Garner, the change in her body requires no explanation. “I am not pregnant, but I have had three kids and there is a bump. From now on, ladies, I will have a bump. Let’s all just settle in and get used to it. It’s not going anywhere.”

So, instead of feeling the need to look Victoria’s Secret–ready within a month, year, or even a lifetime after giving birth, perhaps we can all heed Hathaway’s advice—and expect to hear something like “ ‘Oh, my god! You look great!’ [It] doesn’t matter if it’s true. If somebody says, ‘Oh, I had a baby 13 years ago,’ you’re like, ‘You look great!’ That is what you do! That is the etiquette!”

 

The post Post-Baby Body Backlash! 5 Celebrities Who Are Standing Up for New Moms appeared first on Vogue.