Milla J shows off her post-baby bod for Maxim

Hello, Milla.

Twenty months on from giving birth to her first daughter, Ever Gabo, Milla J is stripping off for this month's issue of Maxim. According to the model/actress:

"Look, I do Vogue, OK? I'm not doing this [photo spread] to advertise a designer; I had a little girl recently, and I'm doing this to show my post-baby body!"

"Lingerie and a sheet were all I needed," she goes on. "I know it's all about my body. I want to give readers exactly what they want, and they want to see me."

Um, okay. I'm glad she has a healthy ego.....

Anyway, if you remember Milla gained 70lbs during her pregnancy so the transformation is pretty unbelievable.

Pregnant with Christmas cheer

What better way to celebrate Christmas than with another (semi) naked and pregnant celebrity?

Yulia Volkova of the controversial Russian girl group, Tatu, poses with Lena Katina clad only in a bra and undies for the Russian version of Maxim.

"We have many girls are using pregnancy as an excuse to look worse — as if it were a disease," Volkova told Maxim. "A pregnant girl can be sexual!"

How's that for a stocking stuffer?

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=339969

Women are sexist too?

I recently bought the new issue of Marie Claire featuring that cover photo of Christina Aguilera naked and pregnant. Given that every news agency picked up on the story weeks before the actual issue was released, I can't say that article was surprising or in any way different from the countless pregnant cover stories that have been churned out in the past decade. However, this did occur to me.

In November, I wrote about Maxim's Hottest Pregnant Women, Ever feature as just another avenue for men's magazines to objectify women's bodies. Yet, as I reflect on the avalanche of women's magazines doing exactly the same thing, although perhaps less overt, I'm finding it harder to believe that the public sexualisation of pregnant bodies is forward-thinking or progressive. When it comes down to it, a pregnant naked body on a women's mag is a money-maker. Marie Claire isn't interested in promoting safe motherhood; they are jumping on the bandwagon that men's magazines have already cashed in on starting with the forefather, Playboy. Women want to look at other women's bodies and pregnancy is no different. We call men sexist pigs for expounding the value of a Brazilian wax or size FFF breasts. Yet, when a women's magazine puts a naked Britney or Christina on the cover, we (as women) fail to recognise that it is the women's body on the cover that is the focus, not her mind. Back in November, Us magazine launched a poll asking readers who looked 'hotter' in their pregnant photo shoot. This is no different from Maxim's poll of the hottest pregnant women. As women (and feminists, at that) we are not infallible. In fact, we are also complicit in the objectification of women's bodies.


Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/Us_Poll_Who_Has_the_Hotter_Pregnancy_Cover_Christina_or_Britney

Pregnancy goes porn?

Apparently Marie Claire isn't the only magazine making waves with a naked pregnant woman on its cover; 'hot' pregnant women are featured this month in men's mag Maxim under the title of 'Hottest Pregnant Women, Ever'

Featuring the likes of Christina Aguilera, Halle Berry and Heidi Klum, the editors at Maxim unsurprisingly find ways to objectify the pregnant bodies of famous women. Of Halle Berry they write:

"Descriptions like "over 40" and "with child" aren´t usually things we associate with looking hot, but Halle pulls off both better than anyone we´ve seen. Plus, we admire the guts it must have taken to walk into the maternity store and say, "Give me a big stack of the lowest-cut dresses you have."

It's no surprise that pregnant women are increasingly positioned as 'hot' or 'sexy'. A pregnant body is a clearly sexed body, despite historical associations of motherhood with the 'Virgin' Mary. In fact, pregnancy porn is a big business and its own genre of sexual fetish. A simple Google search will deliver various iterations of big bellies represented as equally as sexy as the big breasts that epitomise mainstream porn. In fact, Lisa Rinna was the first celebrity to do a naked pregnant photo shoot for Playboy magazine in September 1998. Rinna, formerly of the hit television show Melrose Place, chose a pornographic magazine rather than a lifestyle magazine to make her pregnant debut. However, as Rebecca Huntley (2000:350) argues, ‘Despite assertions of sexiness, Rinna’s pictures are not constructed as masturbation material, rather maternal material.’

Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey has famously argued that women have historically been ‘looked at’ as passive objects whilst men are the voyeuristic, active subjects (1989). What I find fascinating is that the pregnant women in these 'hottest' spreads either in Maxim or Marie Claire do not appear to be passive objects as they looks directly into the camera and appear to enjoy the position of being looked at. However, their glamorous appearances perhaps suggest remnants of an internalised male gaze that dictates how women should ‘appear’. It is also possible that the 'hottest' pregnant women features reflect an internalised female gaze as women also scrutinise their bodies equally or even more so than men (for example, the appearance of Christina and Britney both naked and pregnant on mainstream women's magazine covers and not in men's magazines).

Sources: http://www.maximonline.com/SexyTime/The9HottestPregnantWomenEver/slideshow/567.aspx