Yesterday I picked up the new issue of People for some light reading over lunch. I quickly lost my appetite reading about diet and exercise tips from Melissa Joan Hart, the former star of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Nothing makes my Weight Watchers tray look more pathetic than learning about a celebrity mom who enlists a personal trainer and nutritionist to reclaim her "bikini body" of 113 pounds.
Don't get me wrong. I think Hart looks fabulous and I agree that a mother of two toddlers has a right to be hot. I appreciate her talking frankly about needing 14 months to lose the weight, as opposed to the airbrushed photos we usually see a couple of months after a celebrity gives birth. (Her comments about Farrah Fawcett -- not so much. I'll leave that to another blog to dissect.)
But it's become almost a Hollywood rite of passage for a movie star to share her painful weight-loss story as a way to revitalize her sagging career or publicize a new project. (The opening of a candy store, in this case.) It's much harder for the rest of the working moms in America who are struggling with bigger issues than willpower -- working one or two jobs to pay the mortgage and medical bills; not getting time off work to attend school events; and genuinely worrying about having a roof over their heads.
What do you think? Do these kind of celebrity stories do more damage than good? Or can you identify with Melissa Joan Hart's story?
Photo credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images
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It drives me nuts to read about most celebrity parents – the photo ops at the playground where the mom is playing with her kid, or hearing glowing accounts how they actually change diapers or get up in the night with them. Isn’t that what parenthood is about? And yeah, the post-baby weight loss stories are pretty depressing. For most women, our bodies change completely and we’ll never have our flat stomachs and toned thighs back (if we even had them to begin with!).
How about the part where she said that she won’t be eating anything she sells at her candy store, except the nonfat frozen yogurt? Argh!
So she’ll sell stuff she things are bad for you to eat.
That’s not hypocritical at all.
I agree and disagree! Yes, most of us cannot afford the things that make celebrity weight loss possible…but in a way they inspire me to MAKE THE TIME to lose the weight. I function better, and am more able to work, cook, clean, raise my daughter, when I am in shape. It is a part of my life…it has to be…if it’s not, the bills, work, stress of life becomes overwhealming!