Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Hudson, and the Post-Baby-Body Instagram Trend that Has Us Scratching Our Heads
By Lauren Le Vine, REDBOOK.
On Friday, Jessica Simpson shared the above photo of herself and a friend in cute LBD's on Instagram. "Happy to have you @baylormcg Let's party!!!! Wahoooo," the caption reads. By Saturday, the photo was making headlines. "Jessica Simpson Flaunts Slim Figure in Tight, Little Black Dress--See the Pic!," one popular entertainment news site wrote. "Flaunt" is by far one of our biggest pet peeves in gendered headline parlance. It turns an innocuous photo of two friends into a visual declaration of conquering ideal societal body expectations and desires.
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And yet, could Jessica be posting these photos and not at all minding when she makes headlines for "flaunting" her "slim figure?" When she covered the February issue of REDBOOK, Jessica told us, "Three days ago I was staring at myself naked in front of the mirror--which I never do anymore--and I thought, This is going to happen! I am going to be able to do this! When you put on 70 pounds, it's hard to believe it's ever going to be different. I'm not saying that things won't be a little droopier, but that's okay." It's clear from photos that she's lost the weight and is proud of her hard work.
And Jessica isn't the only celeb mother trying to reclaim the narrative about her body via Instagram. Jennifer Hudson recently shared this collage of bikini photos she snapped during a trip to Mexico.
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Still, while the bathing suit photos assert body confidence and a sort of "I dare you to say something negative" attitude, the captions tell a different story. "If I'm in a bathing suit I should pose proudly," Jessica's says. Not "I'm going to pose proudly;" "I should pose proudly"--as if someone else is dictating the rules regarding how to look when posing in a bathing suit. "I'm so not that girl! But I work hard, I deserve it right [sic]," Jennifer's caption asks the viewer, giving him or her the power to decide.
Kim Kardashian was one of the first celebrity mothers to share this type of post-baby-body weight-loss selfie, but she took direct ownership about why she chose to do it.
"This is my big, like, middle finger to the world on everyone that called me fat," Kim Jay Leno, adding that the public scrutiny of her pregnancy weight gain, "really hurt my soul." She went on to say that losing the weight was "the hardest challenge of [her] life."
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That's right, it took Kim Kardashian to articulate the problem here. The constant media attention and public fixation on pregnant women's bodies (whether the person is a celebrity or not) has turned a perfectly natural biological and evolutionary process--gaining weight to nourish a fetus, then shedding some or all of that weight once the baby arrives--into a Herculean challenge at which we can either succeed or fail. Since it's been turned into this battle to be won, the trend has emerged of sharing a photo on social media to declare victory. And when said photo gets shared, people write articles pointing out that someone "achieved her weight goal about two years ago and hasn't slipped since."
Imagine losing weight, feeling great about yourself, and sharing a photo of your happiness--only to have someone remark that you haven't "slipped" yet. It's so undermining. In these photos, clearly taken at moments of contentment, Jessica, Jennifer, and other women shouldn't have to question if they have the "right" to share them or whether or not one "should" pose proudly in a bathing suit. Kim shouldn't have to call her photo a "big middle finger" to body-shamers.
In Pantene's new campaign, "Sorry, Not Sorry," they urge women to stop apologizing for seemingly innocuous things, saying it's a crutch which displaces our power. The post-baby Instagram bathing suit trend is a perfect example. If you want to post one, post away. But own it in the caption, too... heck, flaunt it. That's the only way to flip the script and stop the incessant judgment. Everyone faces hard challenges in her life; losing weight after having a baby should not be one of them.
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