Story number two is not so much an incident, but a happy nod that the phenomenon of post-baby weight loss is getting more press. Katie Gentile of The Daily Beast wrote an article about how tabloids are obsessed with how quickly stars can get back in their skinny jeans after giving birth, perhaps prompted by the red-carpet awards season and spring fashion shows. It is a problem for women (and men) to have the impression that it is either normal or healthy to lose twenty or forty pounds of baby weight in a matter of weeks, and I hope it’s a misconception that continues to be dispelled. For more on the subject, be sure to check out our October interview with Claire Mysko, co-author of “Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat?” Co-written with former supermodel Magali Amedei, the book includes strange-but-true stats about how pregnancy is covered by tabloids, and interviews with celebrities who appear in those very same tabloids. Pick it up, and let’s keep the conversation going.

Claire Mysko (photo by Kate Glicksberg)

This month we interviewed author Claire Mysko,  co-author of  “Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat? The Essential Guide to Loving Your Body Before and After Baby.” Available online and in bookstores starting today, the book tackles the body image issues many women experience before and after pregnancy, some of which are exacerbated by a baby-crazed media. An expert on body image and self-esteem, Claire is also the author of “You’re Amazing! A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self.” This self-esteem guide was named to the 2009 Amelia Bloomer list, a project of the American Library Association which recognizes empowering books for girls and young women.

Occupation: Writer, speaker, consultant

Favorite blogs: Glossed Over, BlogHer, Jezebel, Salon’s Broadsheet

Favorite websites: girlsinc.org, about-face.org, adiosbarbie.com

What inspired you and Magali Amadei (co-author) to write “Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat?”, and how did the book come into being? Magali and I had been working together for years to raise awareness about body image issues and eating disorders. We first started talking about the idea for this book when Magali was pregnant with her daughter. Her recovery from bulimia had been all about shifting her focus away from the numbers on the scale. Then suddenly, it was as though everywhere she turned people wanted to talk about weight. During pregnancy, everyone wanted to know how much she had gained. After she gave birth, every other new mother she encountered wanted to commiserate about how she was planning to shed the pounds. We realized that pregnancy and new motherhood bring up huge appearance-related anxieties for women–nearly 80% of the women we surveyed for this book admitted that they have concerns about the body changes that come with pregnancy and motherhood. Yet women don’t have much support to deal with this pressure in a healthy way. Instead, we get loads of tabloid stories about celebrity new moms who lost their baby weight in five minutes.

In your book, you talk about the power of tabloid magazines and the “baby bump watch” stories they run on celebrities, and you research and interview celebrity moms like Bridget Moynahan about how they handle the pressure. What surprised you the most in your research and in talking to them? Women tend to feel insecure when they compare themselves to the stars’ “perfect” bodies. But all the workouts, diets, and glammed up photo shoots don’t add up to happiness and fulfillment for celebrities. In fact, a lot of them regretted the amount of time and emotional energy it took away from them at a crucial time when all they wanted to do was bond with their babies.

How do you want women to respond when they see magazines telling them how to “get your body back?” The media term “get your body back” is a setup for disappointment. Even if women are able to get back to the same weight they were before pregnancy, they need to understand that there are some things about their bodies that will be permanently changed. Not only that, but a child permanently transforms your entire life. New motherhood is a time to focus on moving forward.

Tabloids report on Nicole Kidman's "post-baby" body.

You also mention that the number of People magazine stories about pregnancy, babies and postbaby bodies more than doubled between 2003 and 2005. Why do you think there has been such a recent surge of interest on the topic? There is a huge profit web attached to celebrity pregnancy and baby fever, and with the proliferation of online media, including celebrity gossip blogs, the potential for profit keeps multiplying. The problem is that these images and messages are selling the Mommy Brand–the must-have maternity and baby gear and the designer diets and workout plans. None of that has anything to do with the real work it requires to be a parent.

How would you suggest women balance the value of tabloids as items of entertainment, as opposed to prescriptions for the “perfect” life and being a “perfect” mommy? It can be fun to escape into the glossy world of celebrity entertainment sometimes, but it’s important to keep a healthy perspective and look at those stories with a critical eye. Most women we talked to were well aware that the stars have teams of nannies, chefs, and personal trainers, and even that images are routinely retouched. And while that awareness is certainly a step in the right direction, it doesn’t necessarily protect women from feeling the sting of comparison, especially during pregnancy and after childbirth–times when we are more vulnerable and prone to self-doubt. When we asked women to describe their feelings about the media’s coverage of celebrity pregnancy and motherhood, some of the most common words we heard were “ridiculous,” “unhealthy,” and “frustrating.” If you are consistently feeling bad about yourself when you read those articles or look at those pictures, the best way to take care of yourself is to limit your exposure. We also encourage women to use their voices to talk back to the media. Too often we internalize the negativity and assume there is something wrong with us, when really the problem is with the media we’re consuming. If you see or read something that irks you, send an email, make a comment, or write your own blog post about it.

Of course, there’s so much more in your book about the importance of and challenges to maintaining a healthy body image. Where can we find the book? The book is available in bookstores October 1st. It can be found online at Amazon and Indiebound.

- My Beautiful Mommy (WTF? Plus like mother like daughter?Gag) (Boing Boing) (Jezebel)

I clicked on the first link, where it took you to a story on boingboing.net about a new children’s book called “My Beautiful Mommy”. The book covers the various plastic surgery “improvements” a mother of a young daughter goes through, trying to explain to the little girl how these changes will make her mommy better. It’s written by a plastic surgeon named Michael Salzhauer, whose intentions for writing this surgical enhancement-themed tale are obvious.

Immediately, I was shocked. I was OUTRAGED. How Dare HE?!? I wanted to craft a scathing post, criticizing this unethical practice of marketing plastic surgery = happiness to children, and even using the classic format of a child’s book to do so. But, I scrolled further down the page to find an update to this post.

Turns out the book is self-published, and it isn’t going to be appearing in your child’s bookbag anytime soon. PHEW! What a sigh of relief.

Or is it?

What I was reacting to were the remnants filtered through various blogs and online journals of a nearly hysteric piece on the book in Newsweek. How can a book that’s self-published and who’s ISDN# was rather difficult to locate warrant a lengthy article drumming up paranoia? What is Newsweek attempting here? I can’t help but think that Newsweek was attempting to gain publicity for itself on the back of a rather meaningless publication from a plastic surgeon with poor judgment.

“Find item that has potential to alarm”

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“Shock publicity and journalism”

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“Newsweek viewed as Public Defender and do-gooder ”

The formula isn’t new, for sure, but its still alarming. How Ypulse reacted to it is something I’ve wanted the LAMP itself to be aware of.

We seek to be a resource for youth, parents and educators, and in this day and age of easy self-promotion through blogs and other publishing methods that spurns the content creators to pump out as much as possible, there is a real impetus on responsibility for those organizations who seek to be effective and not alarmist. It’s important to remember when seeking publicity can also fan the flames of hysteria.

You can’t hear it, of course, because they are so skinny, but the statement was loud enough when the lower house of Parliament in France passed a law yesterday which would make inciting “excessive thinness” a crime.  If the law passes in the Senate, then offenders could be punished with a fine of over $70,000 and three years of wearing the same clothes (pinstripe prison jumpsuits).

Although I abhor the marketing of rail-thin figures as ‘models’, I’m not sold on the value of this law.  For one thing, it seems a little vague.  What is excessive for one person may be healthy for another, and the only person who has the right to determine what is and isn’t healthy is a doctor examining the person in question.  (Milan got this right in 2006 when they decided to use a standard measuring tool, in this case, BMI.)  I also worry because inciting excessive thinness can easily be a side effect of a media message without being the message itself.  Consider an ad for Calvin Klein.  On the surface, the message they’re sending me is to buy their clothes, but under that, they’re telling me I need to be skinny to be sexy.  But, they may also be telling me that I need to have money, be heterosexual, be of a certain race or any other number of things, depending on how I choose to interpret the message.  Can we really start prosecuting people based on subliminal ad messages?  Would holding marketers accountable for every possible message mean an end to subliminal advertising, or would it just make the practice more refined? On the other end of the spectrum, is it fair to focus only on messages inciting excessive thinness and not look at messages that may incite excessive fatness?

Writing as someone who has zero experience with the law on pretty much any level, I do think this law can do some good if it is passed by the French Senate.  For one thing, it would make pro-an(orexi) a and pro-(buli) mia websites criminal because they advocate extreme and abusive attitudes towards health and body image.  The pro-ana and pro-mia sites wouldn’t shut down overnight, if entirely at all, but a strong measure denouncing them would still send a powerful message that a disease is to be treated, not touted like a pair of Jimmy Choos.  I would love to see models with a bit of meat on their bones at the next Fashion Week, or mannequins at the mall that, were they human, were of such proportions that they could stand without supports.  However, a law needs to be specific in naming the practices which it makes criminal.  Until then it’s fairly toothless as far as I can tell, with far too many loopholes.

I could write pages on this, and I won’t, but I do want to add that no matter what happens with the law against inciting extreme thinness, my biggest concern will always be with the culture of thin.  I don’t think realistic ads or models with a few more pounds are enough to stop a society from believing that thinner women are prettier women, but I am a supporter of holding people responsible for the messages they send–that’s why I hope the French law is revised in such a way that it is clear enough to really effect change.

For example, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media released an overview of their findings today that males outnumber females at the rate of almost 3 to 1 in films.  It should come as no surprise they found that women were far more likely than men to be hypersexualized in kid-targeted media. However, it is also worth noting their findings regarding the portrayal of men in animated media, specifically the frequency with which men are drawn as having unusually large chests or having an impossibly muscularized body.

Their statistics happen to come out at the same time that Guy Trebay of the New York Times published an article about male models getting thinner and thinner.  (You’d think the media could at least stay on message–which is it, should men be skinny or ripped with muscles?)  Of course, none of this renders the issue of skeletal female models any less urgent, but it serves as a good reminder that both boys and girls are receiving conflicting messages telling them how they “should” look.  For a mildly humorous example of just how conflicted these messages can be, check out this piece about CosmoGirl’s latest attempt at being responsible.

Take some time to sit down with your children and students, and talk to them about what they see.  It’s unrealistic to expect them to never watch another movie, but help them understand the difference between air-brushed entertainment and healthy men and women.

(For tips from Commonsensemedia.org on how to take an active role in your child’s media habits, click here.)