I know people who have come through pregnancy without stretch marks, whose bellies have magically gone back to looking as they did before their kids were born. I do. And some of those people have even managed to do that without strict dieting and ridiculous exercise regimens. Genetics, y’all. They’re just not fair.
For the majority of us, though, we get stretch marks. Our bellies don’t snap back. In fact, the skin has been so stretched out, there’s often not much snap to it at all anymore. (The skin on my stomach looks like a stretched out garbage bag, and like a stretched out garbage bag, it will never go back to being not stretched out.) The underlying muscles are shot. Your body has extra fat deposits and skin everywhere. Your breasts have been stretched for breastfeeding and once you stop, there’s more skin than is needed for your depleted amount of breast tissue, making them look like socks with a few spoonfuls of porridge in the toes. Often, during pregnancy or breastfeeding, your boobs get stretchmarks, too.
A lot of people never lose the baby weight, and for many of those who do, we have aprons of loose skin around our middles that we can tuck into our pants. Time and exercise help, but for many, many people, the only way to get rid of this excess skin is through surgery.
This is normal. This is natural. If you’ve ever marveled over just how much human skin can stretch in pregnancy, then you shouldn’t be surprised that it doesn’t always go back. Having loose skin after pregnancy is the obvious logical result of having skin stretched that much, that quickly.
I get that for Shakira, her body is her career. How she looks directly impacts her ability to make a living, and however warped that is, that’s her reality. I don’t blame her for what she feels she has to do. That’s the society we live in. However, Shakira has openly discussed the fact that for years, she did not have a healthy body image or healthy approach to food and fitness. At one point, she was speaking to a therapist for an hour every single day to deal with her body image issues. Even Shakira struggled under the pressure of trying to look like Shakira.
And the thing is, Shakira devotes a huge amount of her time, money, and energy to keeping her appearance the way it is. After all, looking good is her job. So while I spend 8 hours a day sitting at a desk fiddling around with spreadsheets and answering e-mails, Shakira spends a significant portion of her workdays working out, getting her hair and make-up done, taking care of her skin, removing body hair, filing and painting her fingernails, picking out clothes to be seen in public with by paparazzi in order to perpetuate a certain image, etc.
How Shakira looks is not normal. It’s the result of hours, days, years of relentless effort.
What bothers me is when I see magazines or websites or trainers who tell people, especially people who have recently given birth, that they can get Shakira’s bikini-ready body. Unless you’ve got genetics on your side, several hours every day to devote to working out and getting dressed to be seen in public, and an army of personal chefs, personal trainers, stylists, hair and make-up artists, and nannies, no. You probably can’t get Shakira’s bikini-ready body, even if you do all of the exercises Self shares in a stupid slideshow every single day.
Peddling this crap as if it’s somehow an attainable goal for the average person who had a baby five months ago is bullshit. It’s selling perpetual self-loathing and low self-esteem to sell magazines or workout tapes or fitness gear or whatever.
The thing that pisses me off the most about all of this, though, is the fact that obsession with incredibly restrictive dieting and hours of demanding physical workouts every single day are treated as “healthy.” It is not healthy to invest that much time, energy, or focus in your appearance. For most people, including I’m sure many celebrities, it makes it almost impossible to lead a full, well-rounded life, because so much of your time and energy get sucked into making sure you look just right. It is not healthy for someone to be pushed so hard to look flawless that they have to speak to a therapist every single day to cope with that pressure. I’m not even sure that this sort of lifestyle actually yields greater positive health benefits, especially when you consider how easy it would be for this to tip into a full-blown eating disorder, which effects your bones, your heart, your reproductive system, and more and can eventually kill you.
Is it good to be active and to eat a varied diet filled with fruits and vegetables and rich with nutrients? Yes! Absolutely! Is it good to conflate health with washboard abs 5 months post-partum or to perpetuate the idea that this is somehow a normal and attainable-to-most-people standard? No. It’s fuckery from beginning to end, and it exists to make you think you need magazines and fitness products and hair products and make-up and clothes and whatever to be a happier person, so you will buy things and other people can get rich off your misery, which they invented through some twisted psychological warfare.
The thing is, washboard abs won’t make you happy, and for most of us, who at best will only ever be able to pursue them without obtaining them, the pursuit of something that is not genetically, physically, financially, or time-wise possible will make you absolutely miserable.
Health should be a whole-life pursuit. It’s not just about looking fantastic in a bikini after you have a baby. It’s about having enough, and enough good things, to eat. Having enough time in your day and physical strength to be active, to rest, to take care of yourself, to take care of those you love. It’s about having a job you like, where you aren’t abused or exploited, where you are safe, where you are paid enough money to take care of yourself and your family. It’s about having support in your family and in your community to cope with life’s challenges. It’s about having something in your life that gives your life meaning, having hobbies or interests that make you happy, being able to see the good in yourself, having a strong sense of self-worth and value in the world around you. It’s about having people who love you for who you are, regardless of how you look in a bikini or in anything else.
I reject any definition of health that presumes to tell me that health lies in the size of my thighs or the appearance of my belly, before or after it grows a baby. That’s not health. That’s my appearance. Those are two separate things.