It’s a painful experience, but I do read the Daily Mail every day. I always feel that it’s important to be aware of the misinformed bile it’s giving out to people.
On right-hand side of their web page there’s a column called “Femail Today” which gives an index of articles about various celebrities going out wearing clothes and either putting on or losing weight. Each are bad, apparently. Because that’s what women should be interested in.
They often use a ridiculous phrase whenever a pregnant woman steps out in public. They say that she’s “showing off her bump”. Today it was Holly Madison. I wouldn’t have heard of the former Playboy playmate and US reality star either if she hadn’t been in Dancing with the Stars three years ago. What was Ms Madison doing? She was filling with car with petrol. I can’t imagine for a moment that she was thinking “I must show my bump to the world”. More likely it was something like “darn, the red light’s flashing, I’d better get some gas.”
She only announced she was pregnant the day before. It’s quite common for a woman’s identity to just disappear, even if the baby you’re carrying is not much bigger than a grain of rice. Suddenly you become public property. People come up to you in the street and pat your bump and think they have the right to ask you all sorts of personal questions.
Pregnancy takes around 40 weeks. During that time, you pretty much carry on as normal. You go to work, you go shopping, you go to the gym, you go out to parties. Harriet Harman fought and won a parliamentary by-election in 1982 during her pregnancy. Angela Constance, now the Scottish Government’s youth employment minister, won her Livingston constituency from Labour while in the early stages of her pregnancy with son Cyrus. I’m sure that neither of them thought for a second that they were “showing off their bump” as they headed off to the next stop on their campaign trail.
You can’t exactly leave your bump at home when you are pregnant, but it shouldn’t define everything about you. Pregnant women don’t stop being nurses, lawyers, government ministers or whatever.
Further down, by the way, the Mail decided to have a pop at some other pregnant celebrity who was on her way to a yoga class. The paper expressed disbelief that anyone could bend with a bump, showing their usual ignorance of both pregnancy and yoga.
It really annoys me that the aspirations of young girls appear to be directed towards fashion, frivolity and footballers by the likes of celebrity magazines and the Femail column on the Mail website. I kid you not – Louis Walsh actually suggested in his book Fast Track to Fame that aspiring female singers should give their career a boost by dating a footballer. We need to provide alternative sources of inspiration for young girls. Let’s hope that will be a big part of the Olympic legacy with so many positive role models – from the warmth and wide ranging wisdom of Clare Balding’s broadcasting to Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendleton and now Sarah Storey’s and many others’ achievements in their sports.
At some point in the next few years it is likelier than not that Kate and William will have one or more children. The media will go into overdrive and Kate will have even more ridiculous things written about her. The reporting on William will be very much business as usual, while the reports on his wife will be, pretty much, about a bump with a woman attached. It’s a depressing thought.
Caron Lindsay is a Lib Dem activist and blogger. This post originally appeared on her blog here. You can find her on Twitter as @caronmlindsay
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