Good Genes

I have a confession to make: I am a celebrity gossip junkie. I can spend hours on the internet just reading trash. My latest fascination is with celebrity moms. You know, the Heidi Klums, Nicole Richies, Angelina Jolies and Gwyneth Paltrows of the world. The ones who are back to a size 2 even before the afterbirth comes out. I understand that these women have to look a certain way for their jobs, but it still makes the rest of us look bad (literally) when Katie Holmes and Jennifer Lopez can run marathons within 3 months of giving birth. At 6 months post-partum, I was lucky just to get out of the house without a soggy Cheerio stuck to some part of my head.

So, how do they do it? I have read everything (I mean it -- I have read every celebrity rag out there). And the answers range from coy non-answers, to giving all the credit to breast-feeding, to good genes (yeah, I’m calling you out, J. Lo), to my all-time favorite “I already have a toddler. Keeping up with him/her is all the exercise I need!” Cough ** Bullshit ** Cough.

So imagine my surprise when I read an interview with Jessica Alba not too long ago where she answered the inevitable “how did you lose the baby weight?” question, with something like (I’m paraphrasing here): “It was hard. I worked out for several hours almost every day and went on a diet.” I almost fell out of my chair. An honest celebrity. What an oxymoron. That’s almost as rare as a truthful attorney. Of course, she had to ruin the lovefest I had going on with her when she then declared, “Everything about having a baby is fun! Even the explosive diarrhea!” Okay, Jessica, I would’ve sooner believed that you got your six-pack back by breast-feeding.

It’s tough being a woman in this society, what with the pressure to look a certain way, to have breasts of a certain size, and to have color and hair of a certain hue. But it is also getting increasingly difficult to be a mom as well. My mother’s generation was, I believe, the first generation to be pressured to not just be moms, but to be providers for their families. My mom was under no delusions about what she could and couldn’t do. She knew she had to work (sometimes she worked two jobs); she also knew that, as a result, quality time and real parenting would have to move to the back burner. Ask my mom today and she will tell you – very loudly – in no uncertain terms that she did what she had to do and has no regrets about it.

My generation thinks that we can do and be everything. We want to be great workers, great friends, great mothers and great wives and look great doing it, damn it. I will be honest and say that, on any given day, I drop one or more of the balls I am juggling. Sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s home, but most times, it’s me. I don’t have the benefit of J.Lo-ian genes (I wonder where her “genes” were when she was a Fly Girl on In Living Color and very obviously a big girl – but I digress) or the money to hire a nanny, a trainer and a live-in cook. So, I, too, will do the best I can (albeit with saggy abs and a flabby bottom) and, hopefully, have no regrets about it.