Pregnant women are NOT fat

[matril]

Excuse me while I go off on a rant. I am sick to death of a pregnant woman's shape being equated with obesity, as if it's so shameful and ugly to have a round belly that they have to constantly moan and/or apologize about how disgusting they look. I personally think that pregnant women look beautiful. I acknowledge that others do not share this opinion, but it's tragic to me that while in the process of creating life and carrying an actual living being inside of her, a woman finds it so very unfortunate that her body has to change shape. Well, how else do you expect to carry something that's eventually seven or eight pounds, plus everything else that's required to support it? It frightens me that a woman could actually endanger her baby by not getting enough nutrition because she's afraid of gaining those thirty pounds. Guess what, screwed-up weight-obsessed society?? It's healthy weight gain. Your baby needs it, you need it, and you're not fat.

When did being told "You look really thin!" become the greatest compliment a woman could receive??

Yes, who am I to talk - I've been underweight my whole life, I don't understand what it's like to feel fat, and even when I'm pregnant I don't have the whole ankles-swelling, fluid-retaining feeling that makes other pregnant women feels so miserably huge. I acknowledge that I have a different view from the other side of the fence. I have a feeling of true elation to step on the scale and see that I've actually gained weight when I'm pregnant, since I can never get it to happen otherwise. I'm quite frustrated that I've never managed to keep any of the pregnancy pounds that everyone else complains they can't seem to lose. So it's true that it's hard for me to wrap my brain around the other mindset. But frankly, I've known about two truly overweight people in my entire life. Everyone else, to my eyes, seems like a perfectly healthy person with a normal amount of flesh on their bones. I envy the fact that they aren't constantly freezing, or unable to bump a limb without bruising it. It seems like every woman in our society has some in-built guilt complex that they really ought to watch their weight just a little better, lose just a few more pounds, and I just look at them and think, "What the heck is wrong with you? Be happy with your weight; you're perfect!" I look at movie stars who "put on the pounds" to play chubby roles and it makes me ill to look at Hollywood's absurd version of an overweight woman. Oh, give me a break!! They go from anorexic to normal. What an insult it is to women who are truly obese and truly struggling to reach a healthy weight, to see these mildly curvy actresses pretending that the fact that their ribs aren't showing means they're overweight. Oh, curse this whole stupid society.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

"You look really thin" became a compliment when we started having an abundance of food at our disposal. Seriously - if you look at historical patterns, thin was fashionable during the fat years, but when food was scarce, fat was the way to go. (I remember reading Peter Freuchen's account of courtship among the Inuit of last century - of course, food was always hard-won in the north, so the big plump girls were the ones who had suitors hanging around at all hours!)

I'm surprised people are complaining about pregnancy weight gain (and I should be one if anything - I gained a LOT and had swelling like you wouldn't believe, mostly because it was high summertime and so easy to get dehydrated anyway). For heaven's sake, give those babies some calcium! Your belly is going to swell no matter what you do. Just think of it as following the fashion of an earlier time, when curvy fertility goddesses were common idols, not anorexic movie stars :).

[matril.livejournal.com]

It definitely has to do with people being well-fed and taking it for granted. Back in the day, corpulance was sign of great wealth. Now if you're wealthy, you can afford a personal trainer who helps you deprive your body of its basic needs to achieve that stylish skeletal look. :P

Most things I've heard in relation to pregnancy weight gain are a kind of resigned "Well, I'm just going to be really ugly as long as I'm carrying this baby." But I've yet to see a nice-looking woman turn ugly from pregnancy. Eye of the beholder, I guess.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

"Well, I'm just going to be really ugly as long as I'm carrying this baby."

[Insert caustic infertile comment here]. At least getting ugly was one concern that never crossed my mind for a second - small mercies and all that :).

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Part of it is the social emphasis on thin-thin-thin (women are now expected to lose their baby weight at a movie star's pace), but I can't help but think part of it is because society has devalued women as mothers.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Motherhood used to be considered the pinnacle of feminine beauty and power, to the point of being god-like (see above comment)but now it's severely devalued, particularly by women themselves. In my personal opinion, all of the power that men have traditionally wielded, and which has become much coveted by women nowadays, diminishes to nothing when compared to the power to create life and raise impressionable young people, but clearly I'm not of the majority opinion.