Kate Middleton May Change The Way The Media Scrutinizes Women’s Post-Baby Bodies
Yesterday when I was freaking out over what I felt was an extremely offensive move by the Daily Mail for talking about Kate Middleton‘s “Mummy Tummy” other people were taking OK Magazine to task for releasing their “Royal Baby” issue on Tuesday which focused on Kate Middleton and her workout regime and a six-page “Duchess Diet.” This issue hit the newstands on Tuesday, the same day Kate left the hospital and less than 24 hours since she had given birth.
TV Presenter Katy Hill took to Twitter to voice her outrage and suggest that consumers stop purchasing OK Magazine:
And I love her so much for using her voice to call out OK for doing this.
This morning, The Guardian UK has an apology issued by OK:
A spokeswoman for Northern & Shell, the parent company of OK! magazine, apologised for any distress the cover may have caused.
“Kate is one of the great beauties of our age and OK! readers love her,” she said. “Like the rest of the world, we were very moved by her radiance as she and William introduced the Prince of Cambridge to the world. We would not dream of being critical of her appearance. If that was misunderstood on our cover it was not intended.”
Most of us are used to seeing headlines about new celebrity moms and their “post-baby bodies” and we have all seen the cover pages of a new mom looking less than front-page ready with a headline that screams “So And So Looking Frumpy” or a new mom looking totally front page ready with a headline that reads “How I Got My Body Back!” Both of these are totally unfair to average women, the former because there is nothing wrong with a new mom looking “frumpy” (You just had a baby for crissakes) and the latter because most women are too busy with the realities of life to devote all of the time and money it takes to completely focus on getting their “pre-baby body” back, plus the nanny in tow to watch their newborn while they hit the treadmill for three hours a day.
I hope that the outrage over the OK magazine and Daily Mail headlines causes a shift in the way we treat new mothers, even celebrity ones. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again and I will say it until my voice is broken: All that matters is that the new mom is happy and healthy and healing well. It doesn’t matter what she looks like, what her weight is, or whether or not she is in the same size she was before giving birth.
When a woman has a baby, she deserves the time and privacy after to do nothing but heal her body, enjoy spending tine with her newborn, and rest. Her body and the shape it is in after giving birth is not something the media headlines have a right to judge or scrutinize. I hope Kate Middleton and the thousands of women who stand with her is making the media start to realize this.
(Image: twitter)
