UK Minister Thinks Coverage of Kate Middleton’s Baby Weight Is Awful

At least one public is taking a stand against OK! magazine’s gross coverage of Kate Middleton’s “post-baby weight loss regime.” Jo Swinson, the UK’s minister for women and equalities, has criticized the celebrity-magazine obsession with critiquing mothers’ post-birth bodies, saying that stories like those featured in OK! set an unfair standard of physical perfection for women.

OK! couldn’t help itself from running its Kate Middleton weight loss story a mere 48 hours after she gave birth to Prince George. She’s got a running regimen! She’s probably running right this very second, and don’t all you brand-new moms feel super lazy and fat for just sitting around mere hours after a five-to-ten pound human exploded through your vagina like a skee ball squeezing down the launching chute of a pinball machine?

Swinson, herself an expecting mother, thinks this sort of emotionally manipulative magazine spread is extremely exploitative, since the last thing a new mother needs is an entire society urging her to lace up the running shoes and hit the pavement lest she god-for-fucking-bid hang on to one single ounce of baby weight one single moment longer than is absolutely necessary. In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Swinson took a stand against celebrity mags shaming ordinary moms with superhuman celebrity workout routines:

We need to move away from the idea that women have to shed their baby weight quickly and that they’re failing somehow if they don’t. Surveys show this is a concern for two-thirds of new mothers.

Publications like OK! magazine need to get some perspective. Fitting back into pre-pregnancy jeans is not the priority after childbirth.

If you’re a celebrity mom and part of your job requires you getting back in pre-pregnancy shape to, say, star in an action movie, then yeah, maybe losing some baby weight is near the top of your list of things to do after catering to the tyrannical whims of the tiny human you’re now living with. Otherwise, your body’s post-pregnancy appearance is entirely yours to either accept or change at your leisure.