Where have all the real women gone…?

An article by Maggie Gordon-Walker    2 Comments

A friend of mine posted this link on Facebook recently about the Photo-shopping of pictures for magazines.

It makes depressing viewing. We live in a world that is a nightmarish reversal of The Emperor’s New Clothes. We are bombarded by images of these fantastically gorgeous women, which we nod and accept as if they are real. The clothes are there, albeit only just in some cases, but the person behind them has gone. We need a small child, or an army of them, to shout out that these images are impossible. They are Barbie like monstrosities, and wasn’t it proven that a Barbie doll’s proportions are not genetically possible?

I remember seeing a picture about 18 months ago of Amanda Holden arriving at a Britain’s Got Talent audition. ‘Less than a month after giving birth to her daughter’ trumpeted the paper, ‘and after having been in intensive care, here she is “radiant” in blue silk dress by somebody extremely expensive that none of you lot can afford…’

And so on. There is the picture of her looking radiant, as promised. Her stomach is as flat as a young girl’s. Has she been Photo-shopped? It doesn’t really matter when this is all we see. Women who give birth at the age of nearly 41 and spend time in intensive care should not look like this a few weeks later. As soon as she was released from hospital she must have been on a hardcore diet and exercise regime. And for what…? To show that she is still worthy of her crown as ‘Woman who Cries on Judging Panel’. She knows she must look perfect, every moment she is not in her own house, because if she allows it to slip for even a second, there’s several hungry up and coming starlets desperate to be in her shoes.

Was it always this bad? Women have always been judged more on their appearance, rather than their ideas or accomplishments, this is not new. Are they not allowed to let real life show, even for a day or two…?

When I run Mothers Uncovered workshops, I ask participants to name mothers in the public eye that might be considered role models. There is always a thoughtful silence as they cast their mind over the various actresses, presenters, singers etc and concede that none of these women are shown mothering. Even when they are in their 43 page ‘Hello!’ feature special, everything is perfect, everything is manufactured.

This maybe would not matter, if it weren’t for the fact that the 99.9% of mothers who are not in the public eye feel inadequate next to these airbrushed lovelies. They forget these images are not real. They feel fat, messy, exhausted, irritable, emotional. They ache all over. They wonder if they’ll ever be anything beyond ‘mum’ again.

Where have all the real mums gone…?

Maggie Gordon-Walker