This website, which was set up by
mother-of-two Bonnie Crowder, shows mother's post baby bodies in a
staggeringly honest light, saggy bellies, stretch marks, scars and
all. Alongside these refreshing pictures are real-life testimonials
from mums about their struggles to lose their baby weight. Others are
completely defiant about it and refuse to be pressured into losing
their bulge.
In today's society there is the
perception that women should go all out to lose any excess weight as
soon as they have given birth. This idea is fuelled by the media,
where day in day out we are shown new photographs of the latest
celebrity mum parading around just a few weeks after giving birth in
a skin tight dress without the slightest hint of a belly on her.
This puts just as much pressure on the
celebrity as it does the average mum. She must feel it would be a
cardinal sin to give even a glimpse of extra flesh to the awaiting
paparazzi the first time she steps outside with her newborn baby. It
would be more than her career was worth.
It is time real mothers gave the media
a run for their money and showed a far more realistic portrait of a
mum's post birth figure and this is exactly what this website is
doing.
It is completely unnatural for mothers
to be able to shrink back into their post baby form so quickly. It
takes radical measures to be able to slim down so fast, all requiring
a lot of money, time and energy. These are things a mum of a newborn
baby does not have in the non-celebrity world.
However, there are a whole host of
other resulting effects on a mother's skin which no manner of dieting
will erase, such as the stretch marks and the scarring.
These have become myths in the
celebrity world. A bit of lasering and a nip and tuck here soon
eradicates this problem, as does a good pair of knickers, and no one
ever talks about it again. It is time society faced up to the reality
of motherhood. Mums cannot become airbrushed, slim-line figures
overnight. The pressure has become so bad, it appears more and more
people are too ready to brand any mother who does not rush out to
erase all signs she ever carried a baby inside her as lazy. There
will be some people in society who as a result do not understand how
difficult in reality it is for women to return back to their original
shapes, while there are some blemishes which will never go away.
It is time mothers were able to not
only wear their saggy bellies and stretch marks with confidence but
for them to be seen as a badge of honour. They do not show that a
mother has let herself go after having children but rather are
testiment to all the hard work and effort it took to carry that baby
within her for nine months and then the agonising pain she went
through to give birth. A woman without any of these post baby
attributes should be deemed the inferior, not the other way round.
This website theshapeofamother.com
should go some way to helping move society in this direction. Of
course it will not be viewed by such a wide audience as the numerous
photos of mothers showing off their trim tums in celebrity magazines
but it is certainly a step in the right direction. Hopefully more
people will follow suit and begin to show off their post baby bodies
with pride.
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