I recently almost broke my rule of not participating in Facebook drama (or indeed in using the site for anything other than lurking on parenting forums and hitting “love” on poodle ones). A woman in some mom group I’m in—not someone I know personally, nor were the other participants—said that she’s having trouble losing weight after giving birth. She provided her dimensions, which made it clear (and this was her point in offering them) that her goal/pre-pregnancy girth was itself on the high end, so this was not about a quest to remain a supermodel forever. (Poor Linda Evangelista, though! On-the-job injury, really.) She simply wanted her body back, in the form she remembered it.
Anyway. Advice ran the gamut. Some was about how to lose weight, but it was mainly about different women’s experiences with postpartum body changes. Which sure do vary! Some find that nursing means you rapidly lose weight, others (ahem) do not particularly find this, and in fact only return to their previous builds when not in an extended third-trimester feeling of constantly needing to eat. The overall gist was less 'you can do it!’ weight-loss cheerleading than ‘bodies are weird’ which, they are, they are! But then there were those other comments.
One woman offered a gentle reminder (did she actually say “gentle reminder”? maybe?) that bodies change permanently after childbearing, even if the number on the scale returns to the familiar zone. Fine. But this other lady, whoa. She called out the OP for… fatphobia. It is, you see, fatphobic to think one weight is better than another, even if you’re directing this concern at your own body, one that by your own admission will be fat at your goal weight. The “fatphobia” poster chided the OP for not doing as other women (per the poster) do, and embracing her new dimensions, ones that (please don’t kidneygate me for quoting three words) resulted from “growing a human.”
I will digress to add that this poster mentions having not yet given birth herself, and one does wonder if her idealism on this front will fade as the weeks then months pass and she continues (as so many of us do!) to look yeah kinda pregnant.
Maybe it’s not just fatphobia now but bad motherhood to feel less than enthused about your post-pregnancy physique. How dare you feel ambivalent about the body that gave you your child, as though that ambivalence (on what planet though??) translates to ambivalence about the child herself. And I use “herself” intentionally, because the real crime is trying to lose weight after having a daughter. Shouldn’t girls today be growing up in a better world? They’re not, but don’t you want them to, don’t you?
The thing is, I do. I continue to think that the energy expended by women (not just women I know I know) to be a bit thinner than whatever they’d be if they didn’t worry about it is energy better spent on just about anything else. Unlike other beauty pursuits, thinness impacts every waking moment—mealtimes but also the ravenous times between. And for what? Most women and girls (but especially most grown women) do not have a future as a model for one of those stores where it’ll be like “model is 5’10” and wearing an XXS.” I’m not here to litigate—armed with a PhD in French, not public health—at what threshold or under which conditions someone should worry about their weight for health reasons. My point is that there’s no prize for being particularly thin, unless you’re also particularly young and beautiful, or good at ballet or something. No compensation. Literally no one cares if some random lady (especially over 25) is thin, or rather, not on a level remotely proportionate to the impact not eating when or what you’d like to be eating has on your own well-being.
And yet! I’d like to fit into jeans I wore before I was pregnant. Let me be clear: I’m 38, 5’2”, and would benefit aesthetically from at the very least a good amount of cosmetic dermatology I have no plans to get, so this is not about wanting to be a supermodel. It would however be nice not to have to chuck my existing wardrobe in favor of a new one, or realistically, in favor of, at best, first-trimester stretch pants. And yes, this is about vanity. I’d like for the silhouette I see in the mirror not to look, from the side, like the baby has not yet exited. I suspect that this will simply happen in time, without my intervention, because outside these circumstances I’m stable-weight-privileged, but last time and this time I have (pardon the passé language) plateaued, and yes probably do need to eat fewer than three almond croissants a week to change this. Some days that’s sort of whatever. Others I go for a run when I’d rather use that complicated-to-get 40 minutes to take a nap. And then I feel like a bad person. I have daughters.
Then one must factor in the logistical challenges of eating when you have an infant and a toddler. Either you are familiar with this situation firsthand or not, and if not, I suspect there’s no way to explain it that doesn’t sound overwrought. But basically the entire meal involves tending to people who, by virtue of being babies, cannot tend to themselves.
Coordinating doing the meal and actually eating during it can be a challenge. I have had the thought, well, this is good, I will lose the baby weight. (Followed by the self-loathing for wanting that in the first place.) At any rate, that is not how it works. It simply means feeling cranky until the time comes when it’s possible to shove some food down without leaving anyone unattended, at which point yes obviously it’s easier to take some bread and cheese than to make a salad. It also means feeling weird about food, which is unpleasant, and something I’ve been about to blithely avoid for most of my life, feeling all smug in my decision to embrace my set-point size, which conveniently, under other circumstances, is fairly small. (Not 1990s-ideals, Upper East Side-ideals small, so this maybe did take some courage, but, like, not much courage all the same.)
I shouldn’t care, but I do, but I don’t that much, but I don’t not, so.
The postpartum angst I’m describing is just a ramped-up version of the more general thing, where it’s now taboo to want to lose weight/stay thin/care about your build at all, but also where the old aesthetic ideals remain, if in slightly tweaked forms. Everything is couched in euphemism. Mom and baby workout classes are “body positive” but also have a name (“belly”) that speaks bluntly to the matter at hand. The form to register offers weight loss as one of the possible goals.
Everyone is in competition. I don’t care how this gets presented online and in articles. Everyone wants to be the prettiest. For themselves and their offspring to get ahead. It is too much to ask, or asking the wrong question, to discuss “fatphobia” as this ambient force in the world, something to be vanquished. A more realistic goal than transcending self-centered, unfairness-oriented caring of all kinds is, by all means care, you will, but maybe not quite so much.