Pregcellent: Enough With the Naked Pregnant Celebrities Already!

Kelly Mills — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:32:00 GMT

Christina Aguilera is on the cover of January's Marie Claire, buck nekked and pregnant as all get out. I think that since Demi Moore did it waaay back in 1991 for Vanity Fair, we've had the opportunity to see about 75 thousand naked pregnant celebrities in magazines. If you are old like me, you might remember that when Demi posed sans clothes for Annie Leibovitz, there was a big brouhaha. Was it empowering or exploitative? Should knocked up ladies be sexy? But that was the 90's. Now? Eh. But don't worry, I can still manage to work up some pissy anger over the whole thing.

Lord knows I have no problems with nudity (in fact I'm on the pro side of it) and sure, pregnant women can be sex symbols. Be my guest. But I'm starting to get irritated with the phenomenon because of course the burgeoning stars are given the same treatment as everyone in magazines, meaning they are airbrushed and shrunk down and reshaped into this bizarre aesthetic. (I'll add that Xtina is one of those celebs who gets the mighty computer treatment in almost every photo I've ever seen, so she looks like she's made of a strange polymer. She might be a pretty lady in true life, but it's hard to know what she actually looks like with all that retouchification.) And the result is that instead of all these pics being an affirmation of the sexy power of a woman 7 months along, we get an impossible, unrealistic, and frankly weird standard of beauty that pregnant women get to aspire to. Joy.

Stretch marks, the pregnant ass, weird pigmentation, swollen ankles--hey, that's a normal pregnancy for you. But the only things these stars show is a round belly and the bigger-than-before boobies. I'll give my undying love to any famous lady who poses naked in a magazine, far along in her pregnancy and untouched by computers. It might even be sexy.

Telling Our Girls They're Not Pretty Enough

Karen Murphy — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:53:00 GMT

My daughter Serena, age 7 and in the 2nd grade, thinks she's fat. Not only that, but she doesn't like her eye color (golden brown) and thinks her hair is wrong too (it should be blonde). Hardly a day goes by when she doesn't mention her appearance in some way, apparently not seeing that she's a lithe and slender girl with huge dark eyes, and my heart sinks every time I hear it. I don't know where it comes from, either, as I don't reference myself or anyone that way, she doesn't watch TV all that much, doesn't own Bratz or Barbies, and her subscription to Cosmo hasn't kicked in yet.

It breaks my heart, because I know what it's like to have body dysmorphia and think you're towering over all the tiny petite people in the universe while you lumber along like an elephant. I know all about anorexia and bulemia and diet pills, and I'll do anything to keep my beautiful daughter from going down that same torturous road.

Which is why things like Girl Tech's Digi Makeover make me sick. With this contraption your kid can do her very own airbrushing and "portrait enhancement" because, you know, she's not good enough as she is. I don't know what to make of this other than to ask what the hell are we doing to our daughters?

What are you doing to help your daughters maintain a sensible image of themselves and not buy into the undeniable excesses of today's culture regarding image?

Strollerderby : airbrushing

Pregcellent: Enough With the Naked Pregnant Celebrities Already!

Telling Our Girls They're Not Pretty Enough