Originally posted at Ms. Magazine.My body is a battleground. I have spent most of my life waging a war on it. I have vivid girlhood memories of my worth being measured by my waist size and numbers on a scale. I was taught that I must “suffer to be beautiful.” This irreconcilable relationship with body and self continued into middle school, as I hid my budding curves; into high school, when I combined starvation, purging, and over exercising; and well into adulthood, including during my pregnancy and postpartum experience.

But I am not alone. I am part of a lineage of women who declared war on themselves, from my great-great grandmother who donned the organ-crushing corset, to my great-grandmother who internalized the Victorian feminine ideal of daintiness and measured each bite meticulously; to my grandmother who cinched her waist with girdles and ate diet pills for lunch; and to my mother who embodied the emaciated silhouette of the 1970s and aerobicized her way into the 1980s and early 1990s with her food-and-exercise diary tucked in her purse.

But this is not just my legacy. This is an experience shared by countless girls and women, beginning at earlier and earlier ages and affecting them well into their later years. This legacy of self-hatred and self-objectification–punctuated by disordered eating, continuous exercise and abusive fat talk–inhibits the path to personal liberation which begins with self-love.

As bell hooks states, these practices are “self-hatred in action. Female self-love begins with self-acceptance.” As the number of girls and women engaged in these destructive habits increases exponentially, campaigns such as Operation Beautiful, Fat Talk Free Week (which began on Monday) and the NOW Foundation’s Love Your Body Day (October 20) are more important than ever to combat the onslaught of voices undermining our personal and collective self-esteem.

While it may all sound simplistic, in my own personal experience I have found that self-affirming rituals such as banishing self-criticism and honoring my body through reverence and celebration to be rewarding and transformative. In fact, I have felt the most beautiful and whole when I have silenced the critic in my own head, limited my level of mediation and engaged in loving practices that allow me to cultivate respect for my body as opposed to deepening my disdain and disappointment. The greatest personal shift occurred with the birth of my son and the understanding that my body was the vehicle for creating, carrying and birthing this miraculous new life. Staring at my new son’s beautiful little body, I wondered why I didn’t regard my body in the same way–miraculous and perfect. I asked myself why I heaped self-loathing on a body that should garner respect and gratitude.

In fact, respect is the connective strand that binds the 20 ways to love your body that Carmen Siering offered in her Love Your Body day post. If we can learn to respect our body, perhaps we can learn to love our bodies over time, and eventually turn that self-love into personal liberation.

Photo from Flickr user crimfants under Creative Commons 2.0.

Photo taken Sunday, October 17, 2010 in the Morongo Valley.

Related posts:

Stretch Marks Don’t Discriminate

The Cervix is The Seat of The Goddess

I’m Pregnant But I Just Feel Fat

Plastic Surgery: A Family Affair

Celebrity Fitness Trainer to New Moms: “You Can Have Your Best Body Ever.”

Kourtney Kardashian Flaunts Her Post-Baby Bikini Body

Originally posted at ClaireMysko.com. Cross-posted with permission.

After hearing Biggest Loser star Jillian Michaels say that she probably will adopt because she “can’t handle” what pregnancy might do to her body, Gwynnie and Madonna’s trainer Tracy Anderson wants to give hope to women whose body image fears might have them thinking twice about getting pregnant (while she conveniently plugs her fitness program). She’s laid out her plan in this Huffington Post piece. Take heart, dear readers. Anderson understands what you’re going through because she’s a mom too! Her workout advice is predictable–it involves a lot of “discipline,” “focus,” “dedication” and “patience.” She also says it’s okay for moms to take time for themselves and that children will benefit from healthy moms. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that when she talks about her own approach to postpartum fitness, she doesn’t sound all that healthy.

Even though I was tired and could hardly catch a shower as a new mom, I found myself with a new power and belief that I could achieve anything…As soon as my OB-GYN gave me the green light to work out again, I started experimenting with my workouts whenever my son Sam was sleeping or with his Nana.

Six weeks after having Sam, I was smaller and more fit than I had been in my entire life. It took a lot of work, but I am a testament to the fact that pregnancy is not the end to your dreams of a perfect body.

Hmmm…I gave birth to my daughter seven weeks ago. I just got the okay to exercise from my doctor at my six-week check-up. For Anderson to have been her smallest and most fit at six weeks postpartum means that she must have been hitting the gym pretty hard at a point when most new moms are still physically healing and coping with serious sleep deprivation, hormone crashes and the general OMFG factor of caring for a newborn. As for that sage wisdom about napping when the baby naps? Apparently in Anderson’s world, there is no rest for the weary.

I absolutely get what she means when she says that she came to appreciate her power after giving birth. Bringing a baby into the world does make you feel like you can achieve anything. It also makes you very tired. And sore. And in desperate need of any tiny bit of shut-eye you can grab in between feedings, diaper changes, and the madness of managing baby meltdowns. Anderson sculpts and molds bodies for a living–I suppose it makes sense that she would want to immediately channel her new mommy power into her quest for the “perfect” body. That doesn’t mean the rest of us should follow her lead.

Obsessing about baby weight is the opposite of empowering. It prevents women from giving ourselves a break at a time when we need it most, and it keeps us disconnected from the amazing feats our bodies have just accomplished. Anderson’s timeline for getting her “best body ever” is unrealistic at best and it could be downright dangerous for some new moms.

Exercise is important, but sometimes the best thing we can do to take care of ourselves is to take it slow. You wouldn’t run a marathon and then wake up the next day and try to run another one. Hopefully you would pat yourself on the back and give yourself permission to relax for a while. So why should mothers put pressure on ourselves to work out six days a week (per Anderson’s recommendation) when we’ve just been through the biggest workout of our lives?

Again and Again.

Not only am I frustrated and annoyed by the persistent focus on baby bumps and post-baby bodies that increases unnecessary pressure on everyday women, I am bored with Kardashian.

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.

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.

I found this at Radical Doula and it just pisses me off!

Pretty Pushers (the name says it all) is “modernizing” your labor  by making it “fashionable” with designer delivery gowns and a “dressed up delivery kit.”

I swear!

This is fucking crazy. In order to primp up “that unrecognizable monster” (YES! This advertisement actually says MONSTER) in the hospital for post delivery photos (what are they sending in the paparazzi, I mean, really!?), the kit offers sheer gloss, lemon-water towlettes and a headband for those damn fly aways that birthing a human being brings about.

As if we didn’t have enough pressure in general…and I though the relentless focus on post baby weight loss was horrendous! This takes it to another level entirely.

And “moderninzing” labor? Labor is labor. What, throwing in consumer goods and imposed beauty standards and voila! we have a “modern” birth?

As Radical Doula says:

Perpetuating screwed up ideas about women’s beauty is already infuriating enough, but now we need to mix it in with childbirth. If you’ve ever actually been with a woman after she’s given birth, I’d say she looks pretty damn beautiful, sweat and all.

…doing nothing.

Right.  That’s realistic.

Rebecca Romijn was photographed and applauded for being back in shape mere weeks after her pregnancy and giving birth to twins. In a recent interview, she told Extra! that she lost 35 pounds in about 3 weeks by breastfeeding.

Romijn’s close to losing the 60 pounds she gained during her pregnancy and get this…She’s done it without a workout plan. “I think within the first three weeks, I took off like 35 pounds without doing anything!” Okay, almost anything. “I haven’t been able to work out that much because I have twins. It’s impossible to get back into a regular schedule.” So, what is her secret to dropping the pounds? “Breastfeeding is the very best diet I’ve been on. It’s amazing. It’s like you have to eat 5,000 extra calories a day or you can’t produce enough food for them.

Breastfeeding burns approximately 500 calories/day and women lose approximately 1-2 pounds/week. Salma Hayek is the only celebrity that I’ve heard speak honestly about pregnancy, baby, weight gain, weight loss and breastfeeding.

I wrote a similar piece in October when the tabloids were printing pictures of Angelina Jolie 11 weeks after twins.

In this week’s Us Magazine, we have yet ANOTHER story of success: a new mother of twins sheds all her baby weight after a mere 11 weeks.  How did she do it, you ask?  Oh, ya know, it’s just an illusion created by a “good dress.” Oh, and by receiving deliveries of assorted Asian fruit and vegetables, mussels, crabs and prawns.  No exercise, though.  Nope.  Just good genes and the usual claim: breast feeding! Salma Hayek spoke out against this myth. As she said to Oprah, “The only way women lose weight this way is by not eating AND breast feeding…and this is bad for the baby.”  Amen, sister.

The emphasis on unhealthy, often deadly, thinness is bad enough but to add that same pressure on pregnant women and new mothers moments after delivery is ludicrous! This signals an unhealthy and potentially dangerous trend by creating unrealistic expectations for ordinary women that don’t have the time of the means to devote their all of their energy to weight loss. Not to mention, even with the time and money, baby weight gain is not designed to fall off immediately.  No matter who you are (Nicole, Angelina, Jessica, Katie).

Bump watch has taken over the tabloids in a furious and obsessive way over the last few years and includes the intense scrutiny and public commentary on how much weight pregnant celebrities gained and how much they lost soon after birth.  Salma Hayek was absolutely chastised for not losing her pregnancy weight immediately after her daughter was born. which is one of the reasons she chose to publically address this craze on national television.