Seriously, when did Us magazine become the authority on parenting? It never ceases to amaze me how what once was a fairly daggy celeb rag selling copies only for its good photos has become the American celebrity goss mag hovering on the same plane as People. Today, emboldened by its market share of gossip hungry twenty and thirty-something urban women, Us derives some perverse delight in castigating Britney Spears for everything she has done 'wrong' which according to the editors is 'bad mommy behavior'. Who writes this rubbish? As I said in my last post, when are people going to leave Britney Spears the bloody hell alone? Why is it that we have to constantly rehash the car seat incident, the falling over that nearly caused her to drop the baby. Some of the slides in the Us gallery show Britney going out with her family minus the children. When did it become illegal to leave the kids at home with the nanny? What really gets me going is this antiquated notion that 'good' mothers must be selfless at all costs. Today, the cultural expectations placed on the shoulders of mothers are so heavy that doing your best is not good enough anymore; motherhood entails a set of behavioral guidelines that women must follow and against which they are judged. I find it really interesting that Britney always seems to be the target of this 'bad' mother discourse particularly when most photographs of Spears show her with her children. How often do you see other celebrities with their children regularly?
To view the slideshow: http://www.usmagazine.com/britney_baby_drama
Katie Price: 4 weeks postbaby
Katie Price vowed to lose her baby weight only 3 weeks after giving birth to her new daughter 29 June.
'I'm determined to get back into my bikini after the baby,' she says. 'I'll be back in it in 3 week, sitting round my pool and enjoying the sunshine.' Jordan, 29, is sure her favourite juice detox diet will do the trick and is confident she'll reach her goal.
Out in London a few nights ago, 'Jordan' proved she's well on her way just a month after giving birth in a figure-hugging yellow dress.
'I honestly don’t know why [I’ve lost the weight]. I’m so busy looking after the kids I forget to eat lunch because I’m just not feeling that hungry.'
'I should have a great body soon because I’ve lost nearly all the weight, then I’m going to get my boobs done in December.'
What more could she possibly do to her boobs?
I'm a hypocrite. So sue me: Another Nicole Ritchie post
So yeah. Maybe a few days ago I said how annoyed I was that everyone and their mother was expending way too much brain power on the pregnancy of Nicole Ritchie. However, I am finding myself uncomfortably fascinated by her publicists' ability to manufacture answers for her to the 'hard-hitting' Diane Sawyer questions that continually repeat she has 'never had an eating disorder' (because after all, you would have to be eating at some stage to have one) and that she was never 'close to death'. So even though Nicole was pushing more drugs than Corey Haim, revealing an eating disorder is ostensibly much worse for her career.
"I eat all the time, especially now. I'm constantly hungry. I'm eating at least every hour," she said. "And just like any mother, you want to take the best care of yourself, especially while you're pregnant. I'm definitely eating healthier now."
With pregnancy comes weight gain and Richie says she's prepared for it, saying she has already gained 10 pounds. "It's what my baby needs and to me, numbers don't mean anything. If I gain 40 pounds, if I gain 50 pounds, then that's obviously what my body needs to do. I'm totally OK with that," she said.
Ritchie is quite possibly more vacuous than Paris Hilton. Why she deserves a three part series on the state of her health on American television really astounds me (and of course I continue to be a part of her media campaign by continuing to write about her. For shame!).
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3443916&page=1
"I eat all the time, especially now. I'm constantly hungry. I'm eating at least every hour," she said. "And just like any mother, you want to take the best care of yourself, especially while you're pregnant. I'm definitely eating healthier now."
With pregnancy comes weight gain and Richie says she's prepared for it, saying she has already gained 10 pounds. "It's what my baby needs and to me, numbers don't mean anything. If I gain 40 pounds, if I gain 50 pounds, then that's obviously what my body needs to do. I'm totally OK with that," she said.
Ritchie is quite possibly more vacuous than Paris Hilton. Why she deserves a three part series on the state of her health on American television really astounds me (and of course I continue to be a part of her media campaign by continuing to write about her. For shame!).
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3443916&page=1
Oops, she did it again: save Britney or save her sons?
Speaking of moral panics, it fails to surprise me that Britney Spears is once again being castigated as the 'bad mother'. If putting 'soda' in bottles or fending off the prying lenses of the stalkarazzi are the worst things that this woman has done as a mother, I'm not sure that she is really 'dangerous' as tenuously truthful Us Weekly (apparently a trusted source of parenting advice these days) shouts in this week's headline. There is a difference between dangerous and clueless. When I was a kid, one of my childhood friends was given juice in a bottle every night when she went to bed and her teeth all rotted. Her parents weren't trying to cause her lifelong dental problems. They were young and didn't have a clue. Britney doesn't have a clue. And you know why that's okay? Because she has a whole team of nannies to do the things that she isn't able to do herself. As much as people want to bang on about the 'crisis' situation in the Spears household, I am sure that those kids are very well-looked after (even if it's not necessarily by their own parents). There are plenty of parents in the world who actually abuse their children. The claims that she is most definitely 'bipolar' and her behaviour erratic seem a little harsh even if they are true.
According to Us, when Britney and her children stayed in a Pacific Palisades home:
“She ate tacos on the bedroom floor!” a source says of the home. “She got crumbs and grease everywhere. She let her babies and her dog roam the floor. She left the bed a mess – I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
Shock! Horror! A mess! She's not responsible but she's certainly not dangerous.
Britney has been constantly scrutinised since she became a mother and I find it interesting that the 'bad mother' media slant never seems to change despite the fact that her behaviour has not always been 'erratic'. And why is it that Kevin Federline comes off looking like Dad of the Year? This is the same guy who left Shar Jackson WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT, leeched off Britney for a few years, partied like a rockstar and only NOW decides that he wants full custody of the children ostensibly so he can get more money out of their divorce settlement.
Lay off the girl. She's making a lot of tabloid magazine editors very very wealthy as a result of all the salacious gossip bandied about regarding her personal life. No wonder she's going crazy.
World Breastfeeding Week: to breast or not to breast?
It's World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 Aug) and I thought I should say a little something. As the media bangs on about how critical it is for mothers to breastfeed their babies (higher IQs! stronger bones! bonding!), I thought that instead of agreeing and being politically correct, I would post a link from the New York Post for all of those mothers of the world who are feeling the pressure to breastfeed when they can't or just don't want to. The WBW website suggests that new mothers should 'save one million babies' by breastfeeding within the first hour of birth as "the first and most vital step towards reducing infant and under-five mortality". Point taken, but this suggests to me that women who do not do this are somehow going to do irreparable damage to their babies if they don't/can't breastfeed straight away. That doesn't seem like a fair call. Babies born to mothers in Brooklyn that aren't breastfed are definitely not on par with babies born in Africa somewhere that you see on TV, starving with bloated little bellies. I think 'save the babies' is better suited to babies born in abject poverty or to neglectful parents, not for babies born to mothers who aren't breastfeeding. Although I agree that breastfeeding is critical, there are moral panics surrounding 1) saving children 2) breastfeeding 3) being a 'good' mother. What are we we really anxious about? And why are 'non-breastfeeders' the precipitating factor of blame?
Apparently, NYC has banned the free formula given to new mothers on their way home from hospital. Journalist and mother Andrea Peyser thinks this is just another strike by the 'breastfeeding gestapo'.
Note: Please don't send me nasty emails about how I'm promoting the downfall of society by suggesting that breastfeeding isn't important or beneficial. Let's give the other side of the debate a little air time.
Source:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08012007/news/columnists/breast_feed_gestapo_in_a_milk_bilk_columnists_andrea_peyser.htm
http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/
Apparently, NYC has banned the free formula given to new mothers on their way home from hospital. Journalist and mother Andrea Peyser thinks this is just another strike by the 'breastfeeding gestapo'.
Note: Please don't send me nasty emails about how I'm promoting the downfall of society by suggesting that breastfeeding isn't important or beneficial. Let's give the other side of the debate a little air time.
Source:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08012007/news/columnists/breast_feed_gestapo_in_a_milk_bilk_columnists_andrea_peyser.htm
http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/
Baby Bump Project lands in Canada (part 2)
Just a quick note to all of my favourite Canadians out in blogland:
I will be a guest on Adler Online - Canada's National Radio Show with Charles Adler at 2:40pm tomorrow. If you live outside of Canada, you can also listen online.
Corus Radio Network
www.charlesadler.com
Vancouver CKNW - Kelowna CKOV 63 - Saskatoon 650 CKOM - Regina 980 CJME - Calgary AM, 770 CHQR - Edmonton 630 CHED - Winnipeg CJOB 68 - London AM980 CFPL - Cornwall AM 1220 - Hamilton AM900 CHML - Toronto AM640 - Montreal AM940
I will be a guest on Adler Online - Canada's National Radio Show with Charles Adler at 2:40pm tomorrow. If you live outside of Canada, you can also listen online.
Corus Radio Network
www.charlesadler.com
Vancouver CKNW - Kelowna CKOV 63 - Saskatoon 650 CKOM - Regina 980 CJME - Calgary AM, 770 CHQR - Edmonton 630 CHED - Winnipeg CJOB 68 - London AM980 CFPL - Cornwall AM 1220 - Hamilton AM900 CHML - Toronto AM640 - Montreal AM940
Nicole Ritchie is pregnant. Is anyone surprised?
As I scanned Google News as I do most mornings, I just happened to notice that there were no less than 503 articles devoted to the exoskeleton that is Nicole Ritchie and her starving fetus. Now that (in the immortal words of Carrie Bradshaw) the 'idiot stick figure with no soul' is on her way to motherhood (and jail), gird yourself ladies, every magazine cover, newspaper article and internet gossip site will waste words on her every movement, on her pleas for people to give her a 'fresh start' and for her to wax vomitous on the joys of being pregnant. If anything, Nicole will be constantly surveilled (not unlike other celebrities, but in an even more unsettling, all pervasive kind of way): everyone will question how much she is eating, whether she is gaining any weight and how quickly she 'bounces back' (as if there is anything to 'bounce back' to).
I suppose I could give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she made some mistakes and now she is paying for them, however, what really gets me fired up is that all of these young successful women (the Paris Hiltons of the world) do really stupid things and every decides to forget about their idiocy. In Ritchie's case, now that she is officially pregnant (4 months to be precise--could have fooled me!), no one is questioning her devotion to becoming a mother. Since when did motherhood become the easy way out? And who would have thought Nicole's vanishing body could actually sustain another life when she can barely sustain her own?
I suppose I could give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she made some mistakes and now she is paying for them, however, what really gets me fired up is that all of these young successful women (the Paris Hiltons of the world) do really stupid things and every decides to forget about their idiocy. In Ritchie's case, now that she is officially pregnant (4 months to be precise--could have fooled me!), no one is questioning her devotion to becoming a mother. Since when did motherhood become the easy way out? And who would have thought Nicole's vanishing body could actually sustain another life when she can barely sustain her own?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)