Image via WikipediaI think we can all agree, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, that Jessica Alba is hot. Well, most of the time. The mommies among us might agree that she has been gorgeous through both of her pregnancies, but it seems not everyone agrees. Evidently many folks out there, including Jessica Alba herself, don't think so. They think that she has to look like her idealized airbrushed self from the pictured Playboy cover shoot from 2006, before she even thought of becoming pregnant. They think she needs to look like that to get the good parts, get the call backs and be taken seriously. Ok, srsly?
This disturbs me. Here's a woman who is a pretty okay actress, seems like she might be a sweetie in real life, has a lovely family life with her second child on the way and yet she's only satisfied if she looks a certain way, regardless of whatever she has going on in her life. She's out there saying that to lose her baby weight she resorts to starving herself.
I *get* that as an actress, her career is based on how she looks. I *get* that casting agents will look at pregnant pictures of her and wonder if she can carry their show/movie/video. I *get* that she gets paid for looking pretty in pictures. But isn't she more than that? Don't her backers want women of the world, like me, to see her as a more fully developed
I'm actually not angered by her admission, as she obviously has an understanding of what is expected of her; rather, I'm saddened by the situation and think it's a false premise.
As all of the reality TV shows on A & E, Bravo, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and Oprah herself, show us, humans, particularly women, particularly the 24-55 head of household shopping and movie ticket buying public, loooooove slow steady character building stories. Who doesn't watch at least *one* of the Real Housewives sagas? Who didn't cry with Shannon when Gene Simmons proposed? Who hasn't watched Oprah's network programming and thought "right on sistah (or brotha)"? Ok, so I'll admit, I watch all of them (and more) at odd hours when Dear Husband and Dear Child are snoozing. I have suggestions for one or two other shows for the networks; but hey, that's not my gig and they’re not askin’ my opinion on it, ya know?
But back to our regularly scheduled blogging....
By Jessica Alba admitting that she feels she needs to starve herself, she's sending a sad message to us all. You know that tweeners, teens, and young and old women alike are reading these stories and thinking, "Great! See, that's what women do; we starve ourselves to reach our goals." Considering that the average woman gains 15-25 pounds after she's married, and gains an additional 30 pounds when pregnant (I do NOT make these stats up), the starving thing might sound like an easy fix, but it's not. By starving, one is going to war against oneself. The only way to keep the starved weight off is to sustain the starved environment - ie, Jessica Alba will need to keep starving herself *indefinitely* to try to keep the starved weight off.
And forget about breastfeeding, which studies are lauding as one of the biggest gifts we mothers can give to our children. Studies show that even extremely malnourished women in developing countries give their children nutritious breast milk; even if it may be pulling the nutrients necessary from their bones.
But by stopping breastfeeding to starve her body into weight loss submission, she may be making her journey unnecessarily harder. I, like many breastfeeding mamas, found that I lost the pregnancy weight within the first six weeks post partum (after giving birth) doing nothing besides breastfeeding. However, many moms do not. If it's solely pregnancy weight that she's trying to lose, perhaps breastfeeding is a better answer than starving, and weight training after breastfeeding ceases might help her get the definition she's looking for.
Slow, steady weight loss is the better option in my humble opinion.
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