Can we please stop talking about Kim Kardashian and her pregnant body?
And by "we", I mean newsstand tabloids?
I'm sick to death of tabloids treating her pregnancy like she just had a vat of hot acid poured all over her. She's still an attractive, curvy woman. I fume wheenver I pass by tabloid headlines, such as
these. The messages are: she's fat, she's gross, she's out of control, she's ugly, she hates her body, she'll never look the same again. Then they compare her to Kate Middleton, who has the "decency" to be thin while pregnant. Not all women's bodies are the same, and to compate Kate to Kim is like comparing a German shepherd to a pug. They're both fine dogs, but they can't adhere to the other's conformation.
Sure, Kim enjoys flaunting her (previously non-pregnant) figure, but that doesn't create permission to eviscerate her as soon as she strays from her usual norm-- not to mention, she's
pregnant. Do we have no media-coverage exceptions or reprieve for this? This villification of her body changing is to the media's hatred of women and perpetuating of body and sex-shaming; as a meathead homophobe is to being gay. It's a joke of a thin veil.
Most celeb-covering media obsess over a woman's body, particularly as they become pregnant and give birth... if you look the same after as you did before, you win. If you look at all different, you're a disgusting slob. It reminds me so much of the
Elizabeth Smart quote today about how abstinence-only education destructively teaches that sex is like chewing gum, and that no-one wants an already-chewed piece. In the media's eyes, a celebrity's body loses value when they become pregnant, and the value is further dashed if their figure does not look the same as before pregnancy within a couple of months after giving birth.
These are the standards we uphold for celebrities, but they in turn also trickle down and become the standards by which we judge eachother and ourselves. It wasn't terribly long ago that I myself would read such headlines and think, "Boy, I better not become pregnant. I'll be fat and disgusting and permanently lose esteem in everyone's eyes."
These are the headlines supermarkets choose to display at every single checkout. You cannot pay for you or your family's groceries without pure hatred radiating out at you as you put your peaches and tampons on the conveyor belt. Let's celebrate people at the beach adhering to a strict ideal! Let's rip to shreds anyone that isn't! This celebrity is old and looks bad without makeup! These headlines don't just shit on celebrities who aren't "perfect" in every culturally-proscribed way, they shit on anyone "weak" enough to be normal.
They should hide this garbage wherever they keep the skeezy porno rags. Oh wait-- they don't sell those in grocery stores? As it should be. Put them in censored plastic sheaths like they were doing with Cosmo for awhile, at the very least. I don't want to see these soul-damaging headlines every time I go to the store, and I don't want anyone, especially someone younger than me thinking that the only way they can every really be good is to be whatever a trashy magazine tells them "good" is.
