Jennifer Mercurio's Blog

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Starving Jessica Alba

Cover of the March 2006 issue of Playboy magaz...

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 ~~character~~ person? Isn't that what we're all striving to do, build our own complex stories?

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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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Simple Exercise

Image by mikebaird via FlickrWhen was the last time you felt like a kid running just to feel the wind on your hair and skin, or hugged yourself and swayed back and forth, or started singing to yourself? That long, hunh?

Try one of those activities tomorrow, and let me know how it makes you feel. I'll bet it cheers up the rest of your day.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Zumba Fitness

There are so many places one can begin with Zumba Fitness, but I’ll start with one – it kicks my ass in a completely new way. It’s really not like much of anything I’ve tried before.

It’s the perfect complement to running, since running is all about moving forward with momentum, whereas Zumba is all about swishing side to side with obtainable sexiness. While most workouts involve forward/back action, Zumba mostly involves side to side action, which works new muscles and jiggles normally dormant jiggly bits, in original and interesting ways. To a large extent, you don’t know what’s coming with Zumba and once you’ve gotten there, the routine has moved on to something else.

It took me a while to cruise into it and just be one with the Zumba. At first, I thought I’d try out the “how to” instructional phase. That was interesting. Basically, the instructor says, let’s start slow with this, yes that’s right, lets add this, good…..and then it’s as though she’s been injected into a popcorn machine and begins bouncing all over the screen as though we’re supposed to as well. While I could not keep up, it was so hysterical that I began to laugh very loudly. It was absurd to think that I’d begin moving like that at that velocity that quickly. But even in the laughter, Zumba Fitness pulls you in, because it’s completely disarming. No one expects you to bounce around like a ping pong ball.

The point of this video game is working out and having fun. And once you give in to the rhythm and allow yourself to attempt the moves, it is a lot of fun. I caught myself thinking that this video game would be perfect for a college student or someone in their twenties, because it’s so freeing. But wait, this middle aged woman (me) was feeling the freedom and goin’ for it. Like a 20 year old.

The fact that the music is in Spanish also forces you to simply feel the music and let it move your body. Thank God it’s a video game that I can do in my bedroom, as opposed to going through the hip grinding, salsa swaying, tush thrusting bits in front of people one doesn’t know, let alone people one does! The first few times I worked out with Zumba Fitness, I had to stop and recalibrate my butt, tummy and thighs. I kept losing the rhythm, because I’d never really experienced anything like it before. It’s kind of like Dirty Dancing and you’re Baby. No one really expects much of you, especially if you’re alone in your bedroom working out, but you can cut loose and have the time of your life.

There’s too much to write about Zumba Fitness, and Zumba in general, for one post, so I’ll end this post here and return with more discussion of the actual sequences and my takes on them in a later post. If you haven’t gotten it yet, do so now; you won’t regret it. It rocks.