Updated version of this post at Elephant Journal, February 8, 2011.

I felt that way at the beginning of my first trimester and I’ve heard it among too many other pregnant women. Instead of equating the swelling belly and increased adipose tissue (fat) with hormonal changes and additional weight designed to support the pregnancy, too many women just feel fat (and hate it).

I always found the pregnant form immeasurably beautiful. Radiant women with full curves and a new life growing inside. I looked forward to the day I would become pregnant and join this league of life-giving, glowing goddess women. I took the home test, it confirmed my pregnancy and one of the first things that went off in my head was, “uh-oh, what about my body?” I am embarrassed to admit that the fat fear was present almost from conception.

I had moments where I felt beautiful but I didn’t embrace my fecundity and fullness in the same way I had imagined. Those “beautiful” moments were sprinkled in among terror over my ever-expanding body. I remember coming home and crying at the end of the first trimester because I felt ugly and fat. My partner would remind me that I had a long way to go and I was not big (at that time).

Reflecting on those feelings of self-rejection and body hatred makes me sad, sad because my beautiful son was growing inside of me. I’ve written about this subject a lot lately because it is maddening that women seem destined to carry their culturally induced body anxieties into what should be an incredible life experience. The tabloids ridiculous obsession with the baby-bump and the post-baby body has not helped pregnant women feel any better about the changes their body goes through. In fact, it’s just “another way to make a woman feel fat.”

To help women cope with body pressures before and after pregnancy, author Claire Mysko wrote Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? The Essential Guide to Loving Your Body Before and After Baby.

If you’re like most expectant women, you’re worried about what pregnancy and motherhood will do to your body, your sexuality, and your self-esteem (even if you don’t want to admit it out loud for fear of the Bad Mommy Police). While the journey to motherhood is truly miraculous and brings forth life, it can also bring forth a myriad of legitimate concerns.

Enter beauty activists Claire Mysko and Magali Amadei, who offer a much-needed forewarning on what to expect from your changing body, as well as a reality check for each stage of your pregnancy, exposing the myths, challenges, and insecurities you’ll face throughout pregnancy and beyond—and what to do about them.

Unfortunately, I did not find this book until well after my son was born and deep into the throes of my body loathing. I hope all pregnant women (or soon-to-be-pregnant) will find this book and that it will assist them.

While I think this information can be incredibly helpful, it’s not enough because we’re in a mediated cultural environment that continues to throw jabs from every angle. We need to employ active tools of media literacy to deconstruct these images as well as create and expose ourselves to new images, realistic images. That’s why I love the website, The Shape of A Mother, a website that demystifies the pregnant and postnatal form with images and stories from real mothers without computer retouching or plastic surgery.

As a first-time mother, I admit that I was clueless and surprised at the physical changes I encountered. I felt alone and disappointed that most of the physical and emotional changes I experienced were not discussed honestly and openly by other mothers. I felt like I was thrown into the jungle without the adequate provisions and tools to emerge successfully. We need less stories about women like Ellen Pompeo (who went up to-gasp-size 26  jeans during pregnancy), Gisele Bundchen (kudos on the home birth, though) or Nicole Richie (“svelte after one week!”)  and more stories about average women who are pregnant but just feel fat. Maybe if we have more people discussing these issues candidly we can avoid more women spending their pregnancy obsessing over their inevitable expansion and being present to the miraculous process they are engaging in.

Now that would be beautiful.

Me during my first trimester, feeling gigantic (not gigantic at all). Me during the last few weeks.

Whatever your stance on goddesses is, as a woman, you can’t deny the power of that statement.

“The cervix is the seat of the goddess.”

I’ve been practicing what is known as The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power with my teacher, Nita Rubio, for 5 years and I’ve had more than a handful of powerful moments in the sacred, female-centered space she facilitates (one of the few spaces in which the “male gaze” is not present). Revisiting my battle with my body after giving birth has been rough to say the least. Instead of basking in my body’s ability to create, sustain and give life, I’ve resorted to full blown body bashing and self-loathing. To hear Nita state, “the cervix is the seat of the goddess,” as I moved into a full body meditation immediately shifted my perspective on my body and my relationship to my body (at least for a few moments) and gave me something to ponder long after class was over that Tuesday night.

In that moment and for several following, my anger, disappointment and frustration was mixed with a sense of gratitude, reverence and respect. Too often we view our bodies as an object to manipulate and control. When our body doesn’t live up to some of our wildly unrealistic expectations, we engage in negative self-talk and equally destructive body practices. The internal critical dialouge and punishing rituals we engage in to force our body to do as it is told is nothing short of an abusive relationship with ourselves.

How would we and how can we treat our bodies differently by shifting our perspective on, our image of, and our relationship to our bodies, bodies that carry us through the world, allowing us to experience life in all its good and bad?

Whether or not you abide with goddess worship, or have a clear understanding of feminist spirituality and the place of the goddess in that tradition, the idea that the cervix is the seat of the goddess, establishes (or re-establishes) a sense of wonder about our physical forms. Instead of seeing our bodies as taken-for-granted physical vehicles, our bodies become a source of magic and beauty.

When I look at my son’s body, see it work, watch it develop, I am in awe. It is pure perfection, beauty, a miracle. I don’t remember the last time I felt that way about on my body. Is my body any less miraculous because of my scar and the extra pounds I’m currently carrying? According to images and messages in the dominant culture the answer is an unequivocal, yes.

Listen, I haven’t reached total body enlightenment. I’m still grappling with the negative fat talk in my head. But, Nita and my son reminded me of the beauty that is me and when I believe it again whole-heatedly, I will truly be whole, truly at peace.

Even the supremely fit, athletic, former “Girl Next Door” is not immune to postnatal stretch marks and gooey belly flab.

The following video confirms the Internet speculation about Kendra’s recent post-baby-bikini photo shoot. Those pictures were most definitely retouched.

In the Us Magazine video featured here Kendra is shocked to find her figure unchanged weeks after the birth (girl, try a year after birth). The conversation goes like this:

“What the hell is this?” Wilkinson asks her husband, NFL star Hank Baskett, as she lifts up her suit top to reveal her stretch marks. “I want to look sexy for you again!”

After he tries to comfort in a what I think is a pretty half-hearted and half-assed attempt, she says, “I wouldn’t fuck me!”

Listen, I know this segment on her new reality show and video clip at Us Magazine is more about creating new tabloid drama, strains of body gossip and body snarking but I’m relieved to see this. I’m relieved in the same way I was relieved to hear Kourtney Kardashian call “bull shit” on her (supposedly) unauthorized and retouched post-baby pictures via OK! Magazine.

I am embarrassed to admit that I have had more body image issues in the last two years than ever before (and I have had some major body issues in my life). As soon as I started growing and showing at the end of my first trimester, I felt fat, ugly and subsequently depressed (oh, and pissed off).

It’s hard to admit. I’m a feminist. I teach Women’s Studies. I critique the media, examine body image and beauty ideals. I should have no body image issues what so ever.

But I have and I do.

I’m a product of this culture. I live in this culture. Even though I limit my level of mediation, I am media literate and conscious to the ways of the media and advertising, I am still swept up in the media current. And, what a strong current it is.

I had gotten my body image issues under control before I got pregnant and felt great for years. The pregnancy and the post-natal body threw me for a loop. Like Kendra, I’d never experienced a mushy body that felt so foreign to me. I’d never lived in a body that I felt I didn’t have control over. I had this romantic notion in my head that I’d be one of the bounce back success stories. Hey, I’m healthy, fit and eat well. No problem. I’ve got this.

Uh, hello 60 pounds and a c-section later. What the heck is this? Who is this?

I’m not saying Kendra or Kourtney are feminist media sheroes but I will admit that those morsels of honesty are helpful. I can only imagine how much pressure would have been taken off of me (and countless others) if messages like these were the norm instead of the countless stories proclaiming a complete weight loss of all baby fat a week after birth.

They’re just awful and insulting to “real” moms.

Kendra Wilkinson-Baskett is the latest in a long string of celebrities (Heidi, Gisele, Nicole, Rebecca)  featured on a magazine cover shortly after giving birth. In this case, the  former “girl next door” is splashed on the cover of OK! Magazine 8 weeks after delivering via c-section.

It is hard to believe that a woman who gained 55 pounds and who did not give birth vaginally could be back in a bikini so quickly. As a mother of an 11-month-old son that was delivered via c-section, I speak from personal experience. I was unable to work out for at least 6 weeks (doctor’s orders) and I did not feel able to do so until month 3.Yet, Hefner’s former “girlfriend” is pictured in a string bikini, posing with her babe, 2 months later.

I scrutinized the photos and they appear to be heavily photoshopped. The former reality star’s head and neck don’t seem to match the torso below. Look closely.

What aggravates me about these post-baby bodies that often appear on covers mere weeks, if not days, after delivery is the anxiety they cause in everyday, mortal women. Labor, birthing, the possibility of recovering from a surgical birth and the care of a hungry newborn are overwhelming. The pressure to be bikini ready is an unnecessary and insane preoccupation for a postnatal mom.

We’re bombarded with unrealistic and unattainable images incessantly as it is. To target new mothers, exacerbate insecurities that surely already exist and make women feel guilty for not losing the weight quickly enough is inexcusable. The fact that I’ve blogged about this issue multiple times is disgraceful. I hope this will be the last time.

I doubt it.