On Looking Like I've Had Children

The story my body tells

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Pinterest was one of my last holdouts in the social media world, kept around for recipes and fitness content. One of my friends recently told me that her priest said Pinterest is a more “sophisticated” social media addiction, which made me laugh out loud—I did convince myself that it was fine to keep around, as long as I didn’t follow anyone.

My most recent postpartum period proved me wrong—there’s a lot of harm Pinterest can do, beyond minor discontent and ingratitude. The trajectory of algorithms never ceases to amaze me. As Jaron Lanier writes, “Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.” In just about any topic you choose, there’s a way it can spiral out. Food and fitness content quickly went from recipes and fitness plans to starvation content and AI-generated “before and after” videos, and my home page was dominated by the consistent messaging that I needed to lose weight. Phrases like “You will never see results until you…” or “lose the baby weight in 6 weeks with this system” were incessant.

I am grateful that my story has not included a struggle with body dysmorphia or disordered eating—content like this was never a trigger for me. But sitting in my newly postpartum body, I found myself taken in for perhaps the first time. I had just recently picked up weights again for the first time since giving birth, and noticed a different reason for approaching fitness than I was used to. I was anxious, desperate even.

Pursuing a life with as little digital influence as possible, if nothing else, gives you some space between you and the way technology and social media operate. When you’re not as accustomed to being influenced by media, you can notice it faster when you are influenced, and take action with less hesitation. I quickly hit “delete” on my Pinterest account in those early weeks of returning to fitness postpartum, wanting my old approach of exercising for physical and mental health to come back.

Unfortunately, Pinterest is far from the only place the postpartum body is devalued. Evie Magazine, a platform that suggests it's the Cosmopolitan of conservative, traditionally-minded women, published an article called “I’m Not a Villain for Wanting My Pre-Baby Body Back, and Neither Are You”. I wrote a few things for Evie several years ago, and had my name pulled from the publication for several reasons—this piece being one of them. While no, it’s not villainous to want the pre-baby body back, I wouldn’t argue that it’s virtuous, either.

The starvation content on Pinterest and the article in Evie have a sentiment in common that, to me, is truly anti-woman: that of the postpartum body being something to rid oneself of, as quickly as possible. This is tragic, impoverished, and unhealthy on many planes.

This is not to say that mothers should not pursue fitness, and set lofty goals for themselves. Maintaining a healthy weight and physical strength are fundamental to a healthy motherhood. But to base those goals on an often unattainable image is bowing to a culture that says women’s aesthetic appearance is their highest value—a belief that feeds a billion dollar cosmetic industry, underpinned by pornography’s ongoing formation of our perception of what’s normal and attractive.

The reality is that I will never have my pre-baby body back. I will be strong, healthy, and even fit, but I will never have the body back that has not carried my precious children. I will never have a stomach that has not stretched to accommodate their growing life; I will never have breasts that have not nursed them. I have stretch marks on these legs that chase them, and a few extra pounds that may always be with me. Because they are with me.

I do not want to write my children out of my body’s history. Instead, I want a culture that encourages mothers to pursue health for its own sake, to celebrate how their bodies look now; not one that bases their health on their ability to reclaim a body that no longer exists—to even forego nourishment in that effort. No, women who want their pre-baby bodies back aren’t villains. But a society that tells them they must get that body back, or else—that’s villainous.

I love to exercise; it’s a staple of my daily life. I truly think it’s crucial that mothers care for their bodies and strive to keep them strong and healthy, for their own sake and for the sake of their children. I want my children to see me work hard for health, but not work hard in order to look like I didn’t have them. The people I love most love and celebrate this body and all it’s done—I can do the same. Men who think their wives are only more attractive after bringing life into the world exist. My body tells a story that only it can—that I have been the first home of two unrepeatable beings, carried them as they were being formed in secret, and labored for them to take their first breath. My body was the first to cradle and nourish them, the first to soothe them. I’m the place they’ve been comforted as they’ve burned with fever, the arms that reach for them every morning.

The life of our soul expresses itself through the body. I’ve experienced that longing to “feel like myself” again after having a child—a valid longing, to come back to oneself. But every mother knows that coming back to oneself after having a child is coming back to a new self, getting to know her again—and finding that, perhaps, she’s better than she was before. She has new ways to express old desires, new dreams that better articulate her heart than the old ones. Coming back to my body through care, dress, fitness means the same—coming back to a new body, one that is, perhaps…better. A little softer in some places, but better. More given, more real. I look in the mirror and look like I’ve had children. There’s the beauty: I look like I’ve had children.

I won’t have my pre-baby body back. I have the occasional hard moment with that, but more often than not—nine months after encountering so much that told me I should—I realize the truth: that I don’t want it back. My body has been broken, pushed to its limits for these children, and lived to tell the tale and be stronger, more tender than it was before. I think it should look like it.