Our mum tums are a badge of pride
As this photo turns a footballer’s wife into an unlikely feminist heroine, JENNI MURRAY says...
WHILE it’s not unusual to see a scantily dressed footballer’s wife — a WAG as they’re known — pictured in a national newspaper, there was something about Rebekah Vardy, wife of England and Leicester footballer Jamie, that caught my eye this week.
Hold on a minute. What was this? A prominent roll of somewhat saggy plumpitude hanging over her knickers? And were those stretch marks I could see?
In the photo, Rebekah was holding her three-month-old son, Finley — her fourth baby — aloft, proudly showing off her ‘mum tum’, giving those of us who didn’t have a washboard stomach days after giving birth the chance to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
‘Thank you, Rebekah, for emphasising what’s normal for most of us,’ the country’s women gasped in unison.
Not everyone was complimentary, of course. Becky got her fair share of abuse online, as is the norm these days.
It’s got to be said the 34-year-old hasn’t been the most popular of WAGs. Often perceived as being rather brash and brazen, she has never been what you might call a woman’s woman.
But with that one picture, she will have gone some way towards capturing the hearts of the fiercest of feminists.
Too often in recent years, we’ve seen new mothers lauded for appearing to have lost any sign of a baby belly the minute they step out of the maternity ward.
Some, we’re told, have even gone so far as to request a Caesarean and tummy tuck while under the anaesthetic, so great is the longing to instantly wipe out any residual evidence of a pregnancy.
Then there are the women who seem to shrink before our very eyes. The Duchess of Cambridge was back to her willowy self within weeks of the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
But it’s the models who take the biscuit (a treat I doubt has ever passed their lips). Supermodel Miranda Kerr appeared on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week just two months after giving birth in 2011. And model Heidi Klum was back modelling a mere five weeks after she’d left the delivery room.
As we all know, there’s no place for even a hint of a paunch in the fashion world.
As Rebekah Vardy pointed out, there is a wholly unrealistic pressure to get your figure back virtually overnight after having a baby. Why? Because so many women in the public eye seem able to do it and are praised for it.
Believe it or not, this pressure is not altogether a new phenomenon. My second son, Charlie, was born in 1987, and I went back to work quite quickly afterwards.
As a freelance journalist, there was no such thing as paid maternity leave and we had a mortgage to pay. I waddled happily back to work, still high on the marvels of motherhood. But, when I made a crack on the radio about the joys of big pants and elastic-waisted trousers, the response could not have been more aggressive.
CORRESPONDENCE — for we received letters in those days — informed me that I should not be encouraging other women to ‘let themselves go’. Elastic waists, listeners said, were an abomination and I should not be advocating women looking ‘revolting for the sake of their husbands who wanted to regain their attractive wives after they’d put up with pregnancy and childbirth’.
I was aghast. What sort of husband would give a monkey’s about his wife’s waistline when he, like her, was concentrating on keeping a baby fed, changed, cosy and happy, while, at the same time, they were both longing for a decent night’s sleep? I don’t recall my husband, David, ever making a disparaging comment about the way I looked. He probably wouldn’t have dared, but I prefer to think he was as besotted as I was with his beautiful babies, and so busy with sharing their care that he didn’t have time to suggest I might benefit from a few trips to the gym.
I was never ashamed of my slightly bulging frontage which, to be honest, I don’t think I ever really got rid of.
To me it’s an inevitable result of the maturing of the body as it does all the grown-up things involved in having a family. The emphasis shifts from yourself to the next generation. With that comes the pleasure of seeing them revel in their own carefree, confident youth, just as you once did.
So, how safe and desirable is this obsession with weight loss after childbirth? A survey carried out by the Royal College of Midwives in 2013 found that weight gained in pregnancy has a negative impact on the self-esteem of 82 per cent of new mums. Around a third (31 per cent) felt under pressure to get back to their pre-pregnancy size.
The RCM warned that women can easily feel ashamed of their post-baby bodies, which is never a good idea when a new mother’s mental health may be at a low ebb, due to fluctuating hormones and exhaustion.
In a report commissioned by the Government’s Equalities Office, psychotherapist Susie Orbach and a specialist in body image, Holli Rubin, both warn that a mother who obsesses with getting her figure back after birth may focus less on bonding with her baby.
Women normally gain 20 per cent of their body weight during pregnancy, and midwives usually don’t recommend they even start thinking about dieting until at least three months after the birth.
And, no, the skin doesn’t quite achieve the taut elasticity it had before. Even fitness fanatics such as Davina McCall have shown or spoken about ‘slightly saggy skin’ years after their last child was born.
And Victoria Beckham, a mother-of-four who’s as skinny as a pipe cleaner, has revealed the toll all those pregnancies have taken on her body: ‘I’ve got so much saggy skin on my stomach.’
Rebekah Vardy has done such a good thing in demonstrating that eye contact and playfulness with a baby is so much more important than worrying about the size of your tummy.
They say that it takes nine months to make a baby and another nine months to get your body back. A year might be more realistic and, of course, caring for and loving your child is a lifetime’s commitment which matters much more than your abs ever will.
As body image expert Holli Rubin wisely said: ‘Wait till you’ve got used to having a baby. Skinny jeans can wait.’
For ever in my case!