LeeLee, little kid cravings and lots of exercise

Does anyone remember LeeLee Sobieski? Well, um, she's pregnant and according to Us, she's been having some 'little kid' food cravings:

"I eat less ice cream than I ever did because the baby takes up so much space. Ginger is really good. I kind of want ginger to settle the stomach sometimes and then macaroni and cheese. I kind of like little kid food. I think I like eating what little kids eat."

She's still working out with her trainer which, according to the recently published results of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, is a good thing because the researchers found that first-time mothers who exercised at least three times a week during their pregnancy were less likely to give birth to a baby with excessive birth weight. Women who exercised during pregnancy were also found to decrease their risk of developing pre-eclampsia by 20%.

Halle Berry: thrilled to be eating

I've said more than once that pregnancy is often the only culturally sanctioned time of life when women can be 'fat' and are expected to have big bellies (notwithstanding the fact that there are size zero maternity jeans). I wrote about Milla Jovovich and how her somewhat extreme weight gain (reportedly 70lbs) was most probably symptomatic of her inability to have a healthy relationship with food given her career as a model, and in fact, she confirmed this late in her pregnancy http://babybumpproject.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-more-more-milla-j-are-cravings.html

I was sad to read yesterday Halle Berry said this about her 7 months pregnant body:

"This is the first red carpet that I've really walked down where I didn't have to think about holding in my stomach – because I can't."It's the first time I've been to an awards show where they served a meal and I actually ate it – the whole thing," she said. "I was eating off everybody else's plate and that felt very liberating and good."

I think it's great that Halle feels 'liberated' as she says but I'm not surprised that she feels this way. Women are taught to suck in and push up and shove all the extra floppy bits away so no one can see them. When you're pregnant, clearly sucking in just isn't going to happen. But to think that these smart, funny, talented women have never been able to eat a proper meal in public because their dresses are too tight or because an armada of cameras are staring them down, at the ready to splash just how much they ate across the headlines of the tabloids, is just sad. I think most women who read this blog are guilty of indulging in the same self-defeating behaviours at some point in their life but why do we allow that? We should feel liberated to eat whenever we want, not just when we are growing another human life. Halle might feel free to indulge herself now but no doubt when that baby is born, like every other celebrity, she will be back in her jeans faster than she grew out of them.

Source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20169669,00.html

Nicole Richie indulges her 'cravings'

So I'm back to being American for the next month...and what better way to celebrate my renewed American-ness than a post about Nicole Richie 'indulging her cravings'.

According to the Daily Mail, Nicole Richie was spotted in New York eating pizza. I won't go into what I think about pregnancy 'cravings' as I've already written about that before: http://babybumpproject.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-more-more-milla-j-are-cravings.html

However, I do find it interesting that Nicole is constantly praised for eating, considering her shocking thinness pre-pregnancy. Nicole, at 7 months pregnant, is described 'blooming' and not 'fat'. If the same story had been written about Britney Spears, undoubtedly, the tone of the story would have been 'Look at Britney eating pizza. She's a fat pig'. Richie, on the other hand, is represented as the 'good' mother looking after the health of her baby.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=495603&in_page_id=1773

More, more, more Milla J: are cravings fact or fiction?

It's funny how the media is so fickle in choosing which celebrity preggo to pick on from one week to the next. It was only a few weeks ago that our dear Milla J fessed up to stuffing her face resulting in the 70+ pounds she has packed on with little more than a month left to go before her first baby is born. We haven't heard any baby mammoth comments about her increasing proportions until today.

Milla J 'confesses' to Britain's glossy Grazia that she has a new relationship with food in light of her decades long stint as a stick figure model in which coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol were the building blocks of her food pyramid. Of a recent stay in Paris, Milla says,

"My friend and I went round Saint Sulpice cemetery, where French royalty are buried. On the way back, I said to her, 'Let's eat like kings!' I was craving bone marrow one day, and I scoured the whole of Paris searching for the leg of a cow. When I finally found what I was looking for, I cut it in half, digging out the yellowish substance, slathering it all over bread."

Of her modeling diet, she notes:

"Before I got pregnant, I really didn't care about food. I saw it as fuel, not something to sit down and enjoy. As an actress and model, I lived on cigarettes and coffee, and jet-lag tended to kill off any appetite I had.

And now that she's pregnant, oh how the tide has turned:

"My diet for most of this year has been - for breakfast, four eggs with bacon, toast and butter, if I was at home. Then if I was at a diner, I'd have a Mexican omelette, a stack of pancakes and strawberry milkshake.

"I'd stuff myself with cookies all morning - whatever was in the cupboard really - then I'd have a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for dessert. And I once ate two whole packs of coffee cake in one sitting!"

Perhaps a bit excessive but isn't it refreshing to read about a celebrity preggo that actually eats and isn't ashamed to say it?

It actually doesn't surprise me that Milla J is eating enough for a small army. In my own work on pregnancy cravings, I argue that whereas women are usually condemned for eating ‘junk’ food when they are not pregnant, pregnant women are often absolved of resposibility for their ‘bad’ eating behavior because they are ‘eating for two’ and are allowed to ‘give in’ or indulge their cravings. Milla's weight gain is evidence that she is allowing herself to actually establish a pleasure-driven relationship with ‘comfort’ foods. Whereas she might not have eaten junk food (or any food at all) pre-pregnancy because of its association with weight gain and given her career as an incredibly succesful model/actress, in pregnancy, the 'inevitable' weight gain liberates her food choices.

Before you start shaking your head, I'm not discounting that there are no actual physiological cravings for food in pregnancy. There's plenty of research to support that (hello, pica?!). I'm highlighting that Milla J is totally aware of her eating behaviour and is attuned to her eating in a way that cultural discourses suggest that pregnant women indulge their ‘cravings’ unreflectively or passively. She knows full well why she indulges her ‘cravings’ in pregnancy and has already said that her latitude in eating is justified because, ultimately, her weight gain in pregnancy absolves her, within reason and for a limited time, of the slim body ideal most women of the world aspire to achieve throughout their lifetime. Pregnancy is really the only time in her life (or in the life of any woman, for that matter) when she can be 'fat' and happy. Pretty sad realisation, isn't it?

Great article in The Guardian on Milla's weight gain and celeb pregnancy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2193507,00.html