Saturday, December 23, 2006
Celebrity mothers and privacy
Supadiscomama blogged about celebrity mothers a few weeks ago, and I've been thinking about her views in terms of my own interests of public and private. Supa argues that celebrity mothers should come clean about their ability to instantaneously recover their figures after childbirth. Like Supa, I find myself a bit annoyed by women like Heidi Klum who are able to don lingerie and walk down the catwalk in front of thousands a mere few weeks after giving birth. I am fully aware that such women pay lots and lots of money to regain their figures quickly--and I can only imagine sacrifice lots of time with their newborn children to do so. While I applaud women like Patricia Heaton and Sarah Jessica Parker who have publicly explained how they were able to regain their figures, I don't think I have any right to know that. For me, it is a privacy issue--and part of the reason why I've tried to stop reading E news and watching E! I'm not claiming any sort of moral superiority here either. But I've complained about the tabloid nature of our culture enough that I feel like I need to stop contributing to it. So while I will still feel bitter about Heidi Klum's abs while I struggle to even find the time to do a single sit-up, I pledge to try to not care about her abs or any other celebrity's abs. After all, I darn sure don't want anyone looking in my bathroom and discovering what few "beauty secrets" I have.
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2 comments:
Well, if celebrities are so concerned with privacy, perhaps they shouldn't reveal so much in public. In the cases of Heidi Klum and Britney Spears, both of whom participated in very public showings of thier perfectly toned post-baby bodies, they made conscious decisions to display the results of whatever diet/exercise/plastic surgery they turned to to "get their bodies back." In doing so, they also made conscious decisions to display their bodies for public consumption. In fact, for both women, the showing of their bodies was a career move--to prove to the powers that be that they are still valuable commodities. Both women (along with many of their sisters in the entertainment industry) make their livings by selling their bodies, more or less, so the concept of privacy seems a bit trickier to define.
It's very impressive that you're able to "not care" about what these women look like. However, there are many, many women (and men) who feel that that is how a woman should look and who go to extreme measures to try to achieve that appearance. I certainly don't think that any of these women "owe" an explanation. I just think that they would be doing a sort of public service if they would be up front about the methods by which they achieve said results. Perhaps some of them won the gene pool lottery, but I suspect that the majority either worked their asses off or received some surgical intervention. Either way, who's it going to hurt to come clean?
First, I'm not sure we should lump Heidi Klum in the same category with Britney Spears. I agree that anyone who is knowingly photographed without any underwear on cannot exactly complain about media scrutiny.
I also agree that the concept of privacy in this case is tricky to define. What I was trying to express (in a post that was much more clever in my head) is that the division between public and private is increasingly blurred. As I wrote, I constantly complain about the tabloid nature of our culture. I find it absurd that someone would pay money to own a napkin that Brad Pitt touched. The post was meant to be more about my attempt not to care about celebrities so much any more, and after rereading it, I realize that isn't how it reads at all. Would I like to have the resources that Heidi Klum and Sarah Jessica Parker have so that I look like I did before my son was born? Yes! I think most women would. And I also think that many celebrity women establish unreasonable expectations for most women. But I also think that we have to accept some responsibility our culture's obsession with celebrities.
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