Mothers no longer have the luxury of looking like slobs and blaming it on their children. No, these days we are all expected to be yummy mummies; back in our skinny jeans minutes after giving birth, our nails manicured and our hair perfectly blow-dried. Oh and did I mention we should also be wearing designer clothes in order to compete with all the other perfectly turned out yummy mummies at the school gates?
I was trying to buy a pair of jeans from Gap a few months ago when the friend I was with told me that under no circumstances would she be seen dead in Gap jeans. “I’m not having the other mothers laughing at my backside,” she said and went off to spend 1500 dirhams on a pair of designer skinnys.
Where does this pressure come from? Surely we could all agree just to relax a little and give each other a break? Is it celebrities? Is it men? Whatever it is, we hate it. A Mumsnet survey conducted in 2008 found that only one in four mothers were satisfied with their bodies and that 40 per cent were depressed by pictures of celebrity yummy mummies, saying they made them feel “saggy”.
When I was heavily pregnant with our second child, we moved to France. I had lost most of the baby weight from the first baby, but I can’t pretend I was looking my best. My husband was too nice to say anything at the time. But he did tell me afterwards he was rather shocked by how far I’d let myself go. In my case the pressure to change came from being surrounded by skinny French women. I would wander around the streets of Paris and wonder why I was the fattest person on the pavement. And I wasn’t even that fat. I was also terribly unstylish. So I decided to write a book about French women and find out how they stayed so thin and looked so good, basically so that I could copy them.
There is no magic formula, but what it comes down to is small tweaks that you employ every day. For example you can make sure your nails are in good shape, even if your bottom is a longer-term project. Drink one glass of wine with dinner instead of four. Opt for skimmed milk in your latte. And walk as much as you can. Surprisingly I found that most French women would rather stick needles in their eyes than go to the gym. They stayed thin by walking, even shopping is seen as good exercise.
Obviously they watch what they eat, one of them told me she hadn’t eaten a croissant in 13 years, but they do still eat what they want. However, instead of scoffing a slab of Brie, a French woman will have a little taste and then stop. They also pay a lot of attention to detail, so the eyebrows are shaped, and the lip-gloss is always in place, even if they’re only taking the rubbish out.
I do think before the rise of the yummy mummy English women had a habit of using childbirth as an excuse just to let go. “I’ve had a baby,” they would say, lounging on the sofa with a box of doughnuts. “I need to keep my strength up.” And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we have sharpened up slightly, but what I do hate is the relentless quest for perfection that is just unrealistic when you’re struggling with exhaustion, a colicky baby and nothing that will fit you bar a pair of hideous tracksuit bottoms.
So relax as much as you need to, but try to emulate the French a little. And lay off the croissants, as well as the doughnuts.