full size Beyonce, Hilary Duff, and Jessica Simpson Post-Baby
Credit: DLM Press/PacificCoastNews; Bruja, Juan Sharma/PacificCoastNews; Bruja, Juan Sharma/PacificCoastNews

From stars like Beyonce, who shed their baby weight in record time, to ladies like Jessica Simpson, who struggle to drop the post-pregnancy pounds, Hollywood’s new moms find themselves — and their physiques — under the media microscope.

Enviable aberrations like Victoria Beckham and Angelina Jolie aside, most women don’t leave the hospital with a newborn baby and a size 0 body. The Office’s Jenna Fischer recently vented to Celebuzz, “I actually think that the scrutiny of new mothers’ bodies has gotten out of control. Who cares if our boobs are hanging low and we have a little more junk in the trunk? We created a human being, everybody. Let’s celebrate!”

Hilary Duff would agree. In an interview with PARADE (via People), the 24-year-old mom shot back at her baby weight Twitter haters: “I like working out since it makes me feel more clear-headed and positive,” she dished. “Then I read comments on my Twitter page about how I’m waddling into Pilates and I go, ‘Wow, that’s a really mean thing to say. I just had a baby three weeks ago!’”

Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai gave birth in November 2011, and she’s in no rush to shed the weight she put on while preggers. However, her intense fan backlash highlights the unrealistic expectation that a formerly svelte A-lister should look exactly like her pre-baby self within weeks of popping a kid out.

Former Us Weekly editor (and relatively new mother) Janice Min wrote on this subject in The New York Times just last week, observing, “[F]rom this land of all-things-ersatz, from breasts to reality TV, has arisen another irresistible illusion: the Momshell (mother-as-bombshell). [...] You see, in today’s celebrity narrative, just two kinds of desirable maternal female physiques exist: the adorable gestating one (with bellies called ‘bumps’) and its follow-up, the body that boomerangs back from birth possibly even better than before.”

There’s obviously a place for postpartum reality in that narrative, but making room for it is the issue.

What do you think: Should we lay off the new moms, or is this scrutiny (however unwelcome) just another part of living life in the public eye?

Source: The New York Times

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