Stop the Post-Baby Weight Loss Madness!

I am in Hawaii. Paradise on earth. I’m with my husband and my 3-year-old twin daughters. It’s our first real vacation in a long time. But where am I really? I’m trapped in a set of three-way mirrors shedding clothes, outfit after outfit,  immobilized by a black cloud in my head. In this room of mirrors I can see parts of my body that are easy to ignore in the only full length mirror in our dimly lit hallway at home. In summery clothes skimpier than I normally wear, lumps and bumps I don’t recognize seem to have appeared out of nowhere.

My husband comes in. “What the hell is going on?”

“I just can’t get comfortable.” I mumble miserably. He grasps the situation immediately, which may say something about his level of intimacy with my vanity.

“Babe, you look beautiful in everything you’ve put on, but we’re heading into our mid-40s…” I shoot a glare his way. He shrugs. The march of time isn’t his fault. “I liked the first thing, the blue shirt and skirt.”

I know my latent body issues have been roused by the Allure I read on the airplane. The naked issue. The article explains that this issue is extra special because all of the women photographed nude are mothers—three of them having given birth in the last year. Look, I know blaming beauty magazines for making you feel like shit about the way you look is like knowingly swallowing a poison pill then raging when it sickens you. Maybe I thought I’d grown so secure I could enjoy the superficial fun without getting bogged down in comparisons? Oh, foolish woman, know thyself.

Kristin Bell, one of the actresses artfully photographed in the nude, calls the issue a “celebration of the female form.” She says she posed naked because she talks “a big game about being comfortable in my skin and I wanted to put my money where my mouth was.” I like Kristin Bell. As celebrities go, she seems down to earth. Nice. My daughters worship her because she is Princess Anna in Frozen. But this is hard to swallow. How brave is it to disrobe when your body is flawless, the lighting will be gorgeous, and you have a team of experts in place to make sure that every exposed inch is perfection?

Dressed and out of the condo, I’m still pulling clothes away from my middle. I remind myself that I have plenty to feel good about. I do yoga regularly and am reasonably fit. Within a few pounds I’ve basically lost the baby weight. I mean, it’s been three years, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect a ticker tape parade for this accomplishment, but still it was a struggle and I take some pride in it. Like most women of a certain age who have had a kid or two, I’m finding it takes serious discipline just to maintain what I’ve got. Stunning abs and a rock hard butt are a mirage. But I have an area—let’s call it the mommy pooch—that drives me crazy. I notice it on other women from time to time, even women who are quite thin. It is an area that draws a circle starting three or four inches above the belly button and traces a curve to three or four inches below. It’s like an insulating fat pad your body made for your babies that doesn’t know when to quit. Coming from a people who store their fat in their belly anyway, I feel like I have a little extra problem budging it.

One of the least lovely things about this pooch, especially on an otherwise fit body, is it makes me look a little pregnant. Sadly, this is not just paranoia on my part. Several times in the last few years I’ve been asked if I’m pregnant. When my daughters were around 8 months old, a yoga teacher suggested I use the wall for a balancing pose to “protect the baby.” For a moment, to save us both embarrassment, I considered just going with it, but decided it would just have led to more uncomfortable questions later. Another time, at the doctor’s office, a woman was with her aging, deaf mother who loudly wondered if I was there to check on the baby. Everyone in the waiting room heard her and people shifted to look at me. At least, in this instance, I wasn’t supposed to respond, since technically I wasn’t supposed to have heard it. The daughter grimaced at me apologetically. I smiled reassuringly and looked back at my magazine. But here’s the thing, I really shouldn’t have to be polite about this because it should never happen. Let me just take a moment to emphatically repeat: Never, never, never ask or suggest or wonder aloud if a woman is pregnant unless you are already 110 percent sure that she is. Just don’t.

The thing is, when people think you’re pregnant but you’re not, what they are actually saying is that you are a little fat. The idea that I am, in fact, a little fat can upset me enormously some days. But, honestly, what the hell is so terrible about not having a flat stomach? Sure, we should try to be healthy. Exercising and eating well can help with that. I have learned over the last few years that regular exercise is the single most helpful thing in a long-term struggle with anxiety. But, beyond that, who cares?

We have a mania about discipline in this culture. There is a constant subtext that with enough hard work all goals are achievable, including a rock hard bod. This is patently bullshit and most of us realize it over the course of a disillusioning early adulthood. But, nonetheless, fat and shame hang together in most of our minds like evil idols. I’d like to make a case for indulgence. I would argue that there is a particular and peculiar pleasure that can only be attained after eating one too many slices of pizza. There are things that can only be confided or understood after a few too many glasses of wine. Muffin tops are the universal symbol of life being lived to its fullest. This roll of flesh signals a refusal to live in a prison of deprivation.

Never, never, never ask or suggest or wonder aloud if a woman is pregnant unless you are already 110 percent sure that she is. Just don’t.

A few hours later, I am snorkeling with my husband at a gorgeous beach. Our girls are with a sitter and for a few hours we’re free. I’m a strong swimmer and I love the buoyant feeling of moving through the waves with fins, eyes open like a fish.  Then I remember what we all know, but maybe forget. Our bodies are not the mannequins we dress and press into some mold we wish they would maintain. Our flesh is a precious vessel; a guide to experience, the guardian of a beating heart and whirring brain. For a moment, I stop moving and hover weightless, taking in the miracle of creation in dazzling color moving all around me. I am a part of this now because I am a body. One more astonishing being in this world of blazing life.

A lovely friend of mine recently gave birth. I went to visit her and her baby when she was only a few weeks old. My friend had a rough, but wholly successful at-home birth. When she describes its more horrifying aspects to me, she does so casually. To me right now, she seems supernatural, something still human, but in touch with a power and awareness that is primal and deep. Her baby is perfect and smells like heaven. My friend is radiant in the way of new mothers—tired, of course, but brimming with that giddy love you have for your infant and the overflowing joy of having her safely in your arms.

But sometime during the day, my friend begins to fret about her body. She’s going to a wedding. In LA of all places. The land of the bikini body. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, and I’d like to believe it wasn’t all bad. I hope I told her she is beautiful, but I also know that I do that thing that we do so often as women. I commiserate. It’s that oh-I-know-it’s-so-hard-look-at-me-it’s-been-years-I-still-have-it-don’t-worry thing. I’m starting to think this kind of empathy isn’t actually too helpful. I think we mean it to be helpful. But it isn’t. It’s like finding your friend caught in a trap and instead of trying to release the trap, putting your foot into one just like it, so at least you suffer together.

What I wish I’d said is this: Dude, you’re like a freaking goddess right now. You have no idea how gorgeous you are. You are so beautiful at this moment in a way that can’t be faked, or airbrushed, or smoothed into the ordinary. You are an astonishing being in blazing life.

You have no idea how gorgeous you are. You are so beautiful at this moment in a way that can’t be faked, or airbrushed, or smoothed into the ordinary. You are an astonishing being in blazing life.

Later, on the beach in Hawaii. My imperfect body is drying in the gentle hazy sun. Nerves humming, feeling alive, I can let go of the hook of anxiety. And I think I’d like to sit down with Kirstin Bell. I’d tell her body is killer and, respect, because I can’t even imagine the discipline it takes to maintain that kind of perfection. I would tell her that I understand that she is part of a powerful machine that is always reminding her that the eyes of the world are on her. A world in which we splash pictures of celebrities across magazine covers wondering if their post-natal bodies are bikini-ready. You’ve just performed one of the most staggering acts of womanhood. You have just done one of the most profound things a human being can do—bring into this world another human being who relies entirely on you—and all anyone cares about is what you will look like on the red carpet. I can’t empathize, but I can sympathize. That seems harsh. Even I might be rallied into boot-camp-level fitness with that kind of pressure.

But woman to woman, Kristin Bell, I’ve got to tell you, when the only bodies we celebrate are the ones that look like yours, it doesn’t feel like much of a celebration to most of us. It’s just a party we’re not invited to. I can’t help but think, collectively, we could do better. Once we let everyone in and stop worshipping this weird, cruel demigod that serves no one but corporations and industries that make their money off the back of female insecurity, that could be a party worth getting naked for.