Fashioning Women's Bodies: Babies and Other Forces That Shape Us
I have heard that women typically gain a cup size with every pregnancy. Cultures that value large families tend to also have beauty norms for women that trend curvier than is the norm for upperclass White culture where we get sayings like "You can never be too rich or too thin."
For upperclass American career women experiencing fertility issues, this can sometimes be resolved by gaining a mere five pounds. You need 25,000 "stored" calories -- aka body fat -- for your body to believe you can sustain a pregnancy and if you are thin enough ("anorexic") your menstrual cycle can outright STOP.
My guess is this fact helped women in the past hide their gender when they chose to pursue careers as soldiers or pirates. We know some women did this and presumably the examples we know of are a substantial undercount because some of them would have died on the field of battle without ever being outed.
To this day, reproduction and career aspirations present a source of conflict for women that men do not face. This biological fact is the root cause of social norms that "men are supposed to have good careers so they can support a family" and women are supposed to CHOOSE between career and family.
Some women who have trouble conceiving their first child are able to have a second one without fertility treatments if they succeed in having a first one. It's like the body "learns" how to get pregnant -- or perhaps more accurately the experience of pregnancy induces biological changes which make another pregnancy more likely.
I have heard the book The Handmaid's Tale described as a parable about current trends in reproduction: Some women have children -- and lots of them -- but no real career and others pursue a career and may adopt children or hire a surrogate to have a child for them, having waiting too long to try to get pregnant.
Around the world, Caesarean deliveries are skyrocketing. A procedure once used as an emergency means to save the life of mother and child is increasingly used as a means for career women to schedule the birth of a child rather than wait for the inconvenient timing of whenever Mother Nature bothers to get around to it.
We also have an obesity epidemic rooted in cultural changes (the rise of car culture, for example) and most likely a steady decline in nutrient density of factory-farm grown foods. People who are overweight and unhappy about it are even more unhappy about "social pressure" -- a polite word for bullying and verbal abuse in this case -- and pushing back against it.
I am absolutely in agreement that heavy people should NOT be bullied and verbally abused over it, but these two different issues end up overlapping in a way that conflates a question of health -- are you an unhealthy weight? -- with cultural norms of beauty rooted in social norms for women's roles and how childbearing impacts their physique.
The fact that it does so muddies the waters on an already complicated issue and opens the door to people implying -- whether intentionally or not -- that having children is a bad thing and makes you "fat and ugly" and unfashionable.
I was rail thin and flat-chested in my youth, gained some normal, healthy curves as a consequence of having children and have also suffered from excess weight as a consequence of health issues.
I take issue with promoting EITHER "thin career woman" bodies OR "curvy mom" bodies as a cultural norm. I think BOTH can be perfectly attractive and healthy.
Cultural standards of beauty which promote one or the other aren't really about beauty. They are about society deciding for a woman what she is supposed to do and allowed to do with her life.
I think most likely the best way to sidestep the issue entirely is to have few or no photos of models on the site and instead find some other means to convince potential customers this clothing line is something they would want to spend money on.
For upperclass American career women experiencing fertility issues, this can sometimes be resolved by gaining a mere five pounds. You need 25,000 "stored" calories -- aka body fat -- for your body to believe you can sustain a pregnancy and if you are thin enough ("anorexic") your menstrual cycle can outright STOP.
My guess is this fact helped women in the past hide their gender when they chose to pursue careers as soldiers or pirates. We know some women did this and presumably the examples we know of are a substantial undercount because some of them would have died on the field of battle without ever being outed.
To this day, reproduction and career aspirations present a source of conflict for women that men do not face. This biological fact is the root cause of social norms that "men are supposed to have good careers so they can support a family" and women are supposed to CHOOSE between career and family.
Some women who have trouble conceiving their first child are able to have a second one without fertility treatments if they succeed in having a first one. It's like the body "learns" how to get pregnant -- or perhaps more accurately the experience of pregnancy induces biological changes which make another pregnancy more likely.
I have heard the book The Handmaid's Tale described as a parable about current trends in reproduction: Some women have children -- and lots of them -- but no real career and others pursue a career and may adopt children or hire a surrogate to have a child for them, having waiting too long to try to get pregnant.
Around the world, Caesarean deliveries are skyrocketing. A procedure once used as an emergency means to save the life of mother and child is increasingly used as a means for career women to schedule the birth of a child rather than wait for the inconvenient timing of whenever Mother Nature bothers to get around to it.
We also have an obesity epidemic rooted in cultural changes (the rise of car culture, for example) and most likely a steady decline in nutrient density of factory-farm grown foods. People who are overweight and unhappy about it are even more unhappy about "social pressure" -- a polite word for bullying and verbal abuse in this case -- and pushing back against it.
I am absolutely in agreement that heavy people should NOT be bullied and verbally abused over it, but these two different issues end up overlapping in a way that conflates a question of health -- are you an unhealthy weight? -- with cultural norms of beauty rooted in social norms for women's roles and how childbearing impacts their physique.
The fact that it does so muddies the waters on an already complicated issue and opens the door to people implying -- whether intentionally or not -- that having children is a bad thing and makes you "fat and ugly" and unfashionable.
I was rail thin and flat-chested in my youth, gained some normal, healthy curves as a consequence of having children and have also suffered from excess weight as a consequence of health issues.
I take issue with promoting EITHER "thin career woman" bodies OR "curvy mom" bodies as a cultural norm. I think BOTH can be perfectly attractive and healthy.
Cultural standards of beauty which promote one or the other aren't really about beauty. They are about society deciding for a woman what she is supposed to do and allowed to do with her life.
I think most likely the best way to sidestep the issue entirely is to have few or no photos of models on the site and instead find some other means to convince potential customers this clothing line is something they would want to spend money on.