The Yummy Mummy Manifesto

Part 1 The Goddess Expecting 1. Morning Sick in Manolos Finding Your Feet and Holding Your Ground Standing on an Upper Manhattan sidewalk in early spring, I saw a pregnant woman bounding toward me in three-inch heels. At first I was appalled, thinking immediately of her spine, the stress on her lower back and hips. But my knee-jerk shock swiftly melted into a smile. The lady was zigzagging through a traffic jam in that madly determined way that only New Yorkers know. She looked like a missile with a bump. On the very same day in the West Village, I crossed a woman on the street who was cradling her swollen belly with two splayed hands, her eyes half shut and her mouth half open. It was as if she had begun to yawn, or sigh, or moan, and simply left her mouth ajar, ready for the next wave of awesome emotion to engulf her face. She looked almost as if she were in early labor. She might have been. To the naked eye, she was uncouth, so openly vulnerable and unwieldy in a city that jealously guards its space and conceals its frailties. If you don't have a child, it is all too easy to make snap judgments about the way a pregnant woman should be. In public. In private. In bed. At the office. Overdressed, underdressed, lethargic, overweight, or ungroomed. Fashion and society at large have applied static standards of style, diet, and deportment to the gravid woman, as if there is a tidy, correct, or polite way to be pregnant! The social neurosis about the aesthetics of pregnancy manifests most clearly in the coverage of celebrities. The movie star who carries her twins in overalls is branded "lazy," the rock star who wears a message T-shirt and a mini with her bundle is "tacky," and those who gain too much weight (and don't shed it fast enough afterward) are simply "out of control." The constant policing of the fashion choices and weight fluctuations of the famous might seem like harmless fun in the context of a gossip magazine, but the ramifications for all mothers run deeper. If we're willing to judge the heavy pregnant body of a movie star mum so damningly or to celebrate her radical (and probably unnatural and unhealthy) postpartum weight loss, then how are we looking at ourselves? The wordspregnancy styletoo often contradict the very personal style of each woman's pregnancy. Mainstream fashions are repeatedly grafted onto very different bodies in very different contexts. In the corporate world, it is common practice for an employee to conceal her pregnancy for up to four months (as much for office politics as for health and discretion) and then to continue her term dressing as if in deeply conservative denial. In offices we are praised for carrying small, carrying neat, and, implicitly, performing with the same vigor as nonpregnant coworkers. Never mind that we might want to slam the door shut and lie down on the floor, or wear desert boots instead of pumps that pinch a swollen foot. When I look at career gear in maternity stores, it always strikes me as a uniform of dreary concealment with a heavy emphasis on business shirts. Worn, one presumes, to assert the fact that a woman loaded up with hormones can still mean business. It's not easy to fit in with a structure of manic efficiency when you are carrying a child, since work, by its very nature, is an environment of criticism, competition, and scrutiny. To survive the gap that grows between the private journey of your body and the grind of your public duties, I suggest work clothes that feel like shelter: soft shawls, wraps, and shrugs that make you feel cozy and protected under the glare of office lights. Generous, flattering swing jackets, karate-style pants, 1960s A-line trapeze dresses, a bright trench coat in the best fabric you can afford, and boots in a soft, stretchy suede that expand with you. ComJohnson, Anna is the author of 'The Yummy Mummy Manifesto' with ISBN 9780812975826 and ISBN 0812975820.