• Susan Seligson

    Susan Seligson has written for many publications and websites, including the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, the Boston Globe, Yankee, Outside, Redbook, the Times of London, Salon.com, Radar.com, and Nerve.com. Profile

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There are 5 comments on The Tyranny of Bikini-Ready Moms

  1. Why do we have to be skinny to wear a bikini? If more of us showed what real bellies look like after giving birth, we could reset expectations for all.

  2. She says, “One of the reasons I wrote the book is I’m really hopeful that young people will have certain conversations before the babies come. I spend a lot of time addressing the neotraditional family,” she says. “Certainly many well-educated people believe in gender equity, but when the babies come, what they do in practice is sort of almost pre–second wave.”

    She means, “People say they believe equality, but once they have kids they make choices I don’t like, so clearly they don’t”

    Really I think, at least based on the info this article gave, the book seems to ignore that often women just make different choices than men. This doesn’t mean women are inferior or that there’s a systematic oppression going on, just that women are more likely to /want/ to stay at home with kids. Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of outcome.

  3. I really appreciated the article and Prof Hallstein’s work.

    I wondered what skinny mom type sites are like. They actually aren’t completely unhealthy, having articles that promote body positivity like this one:

    http://www.skinnymom.com/swimwear-photoshoot-campaign-2015/

    Of course, this does not detract from the professor’s main points about media treatment of celebrity mom’s and the concept that mothers are expected to do “body work” in addition to other labor.

  4. Prof Hallstein’s work is thought provoking and I see a lot of merit in these views. I wonder if she might spend some time looking at the huge number of women on Instagram who are now working out to the extent that they develop a great deal of muscularity. They put on bikinis and show off their bodies in a never ending stream of selfies. I would be interested to read Prof Hallstein’s analysis of this trend.

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