A mother spends 9 and a half months eagerly anticipating the birth of her new little one, witnessing her body blossom – and often recording her growing tummy throughout the exciting journey. But for whatever reason, once the baby is born, mums often slip into the background and decide to put their family, friends, and event pets in pictures with bub, while they hide behind the camera lens.
Real Mum Bodies
The Internet can be both a mum’s best friend and worst enemy. While there are still a number of celebrity-focused magazines and websites boasting about a starlet’s hot new “post baby body” and fitness pages that focus on workouts for getting your figure back quickly, a growing number of websites are standing up to the fallacies and are striving to promote and support the new body that post-baby mum’s find themselves in.
Websites such as “The Shape of a Mother” and Jade Beall Photography’s “Beautiful Body Project” showcase the beautiful pre- and post-baby bodies of mums, allowing women to embrace their new body, one that has been able to produce, carry, and nourish a baby for a year and beyond.
Why Mothers Shouldn’t Hide Behind The Lens
Mothers can often be heard but are often less seen – at least in pictures, or videos, or any media that may document them looking their “less than spectacular” self. Mussed hair, no makeup, roomy and comfy clothes… these are all things that mothers beat themselves up over, and use as a reason to not have their picture taken alongside their children. “The kids are cuter – why not get just them in the shot?” we unjustly reason.
A very moving blog written by Allison Slater Tate called “The Mom Stays in the Picture” makes a very important and compelling point that will force many mothers to reconsider staying in front of a camera lens rather than behind it: that their kids, and their kids kids, will be the losers. They will be without that pictorial record of, and connection to, a key person in their lives – their mum. We’re attractive just the way we are, whether it’s in the eyes of the “judging” public or of our adoring children. We don’t remember our own mother as being in any way imperfect. Rather we remember her open smile, the clothing that she wore when playing with us on a warm evening, the way her being present in our daily lives made us feel. When looking at pictures of our mothers, we don’t remember any imperfections -simply because they didn’t and don’t exist. All we remember is the boundless love she had to share, and nothing can be more perfect than that.
One way that Peachymama is making it easier for new mums to look both great and comfortable is by designing clothes that work for their bodies, particularly for those mums looking for breastfeeding clothes.
Let us help you get back in front of the lens.
Further Reading:
https://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/wellness/g795/learn-to-love-your-body/