Moms Did This To Promote Post Partum Positive Body Images But See What They Got

Four moms, Desiree Fortin, Katie Crenshaw, Meg Boggs and Bethanie Garcia all met through the social media platform and collaborated on several body acceptance projects.

They realized they’d finally have the chance to meet in late April during a conference for mom influencers called Mom 2.0. So, they decided to team up for a photo.

One of the moms, Fortin said:

“Each of us share our postpartum experience and we learned to celebrate our bodies after babies. For me, I carried triplets and my body changed a lot. It took me time to appreciate my new body.”

The women posted the photo to their respective Instagram accounts. It was a honest group photo of their postpartum body to promote positive body images and it was then shared by at least 15 other accounts. What happened next, Fortin said, was unexpected. She said,

“It gave people an opportunity for those negative people to come and say horrible things. Thankfully, the four of us are really strong.”

While one commenter wrote: “Is this an advertisement for why women should get tummy tucks?”, Another said: “Posts like this bother me. Not losing the weight is a choice.”⠀

Just a few days into the body shaming, though, Garcia reached her tipping point and posted a response to Facebook.

“It just wasn’t ok,” Fortin said. “Enough was enough.”

The post read, in part,

“I want to encourage anyone who felt the need to leave any of the above comments to dig deeper, self-reflect, gain some perspective, learn. Your comment says WAY f—ing more about you than it does about us. Be better.”

One of the moms, Crenshaw said:

”I’m not giving my story to the people in the cheap seats. I’m giving my story to the women who saw themselves represented. To the woman who said she’d always thought her legs were too big for white jeans or she couldn’t show her arms before we empowered her.

It’s for the woman who said she’d never gone to the pool without a cover up on before she saw my posts. They are my people. Because vulnerability isn’t a weakness, it’s what will bring us back to each other. There will always be uninformed, insecure, hurt people with claws out. The minority is loud, but we are louder.”

Meg Boggs added that despite all the backlash, she’d still do it all over again. She said:

“It was a giant reminder for me that we have a long way to go in changing the societal perception of postpartum bodies. And it’s probably going to make some people uncomfortable along the way.

But I could receive a thousand more of those hateful comments and it still wouldn’t stop me from sharing this message with women around the world. Because then that one comment comes through and says, ‘I’ve been struggling and this helped me today.’ And I know that it’s worth it.”

Fortin said the negativity wouldn’t change her mission to continue being “the voice for the person in hiding.” She stated:

“It won’t stop us. We stand for stand for every woman who needs to hear they are beautiful, loved and affirmed.”

Other moms took to the comment section to share how they finally embraced their postpartum bods.

Danielle Medlock

I’m a yoga instructor and have always been self conscious about my “mom bod” until I went to a Buti Yoga training weekend. We were all in our sport bras and shorts, looking around brought tears to my eyes as for the very first time I was realizing that THIS is the norm.

I think we typically live in the head space that somehow our own bodies are the only ones with loose skin, stretch marks, lumps etc when in fact we are the majority. So I say, take the shirt off, wear the two piece, feel comfortable in your own skin whatever it looks like ❤️.

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Tracy Corbin

Before I had kids and even after them I had a smokin’ hot body. Then my metabolism began to get slower. Hitting the onset of menopause made me gain weight.

No matter what I do, I can’t lose it. Anyway, my long winded point is, a woman’s body goes through natural changes throughout its lifetime. It’s normal. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. Just enjoy your body at every season of life.

Jill McIntyre

My 3 year old daughter pointed out my stretch marks and asked what they were. Without skipping a beat I told her “Stretch marks but I call them tiger stripes” She then said “your tiger stripes are soooooo beautiful” and kissed my thigh. As a much younger woman I would have been embarrassed and ashamed. I’m so happy I finally love all of me. And that I’m raising a decent human.

Amb Sav

What people don’t understand is this is to let women know that you will not automatically look like a supermodel immediately after birth or even a few months after birth. With my first baby I was back in a week super skinny size 0. My second it took a while longer and my third oh never mind.

But in reality it take a year for your body to get back to normal after giving birth. Stop bashing women because they aren’t super skinny and aren’t vain enough to run to a plastic surgeon immediately after birth. As long as they love their children and are happy that’s enough.

Read the four moms full post below…

“Is this an advertisement for why women should get tummy tucks?”⠀
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“Why aren’t there any fit women in this photo? Not every postpartum body is fat and loose.”⠀
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“Why has society made it ok to bash women who bounce back yet glorify women who can’t lose weight?”⠀
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“How about dieting?”⠀
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“Posts like this bother me. Not losing the weight is a choice.”⠀
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“I’m a mother of 4 but I’m also a smokin’ hot wife because that’s my duty. No way I’d be happy or settle to look like this.”⠀
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“Photos like this tear women apart.”⠀
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“So, you’re saying that skinny women don’t have real bodies?”⠀
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Just a small sample of the comments we’ve received over the past few days since our original post went live. It’s a shame that the point has been completely missed by some of the people that have taken time out of their day to comment. (The point being: the four of us have been friends online for a long time and finally met IRL and took a last minute photo together…of our different postpartum body types…to show that all body types are beautiful.)⠀
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If you look at this photo and your first thought is “why are there no skinny women”, you have bigger issues to deal with, my friend. You can look literally anywhere: film, TV, Instagram, magazines, video games and see skinny women. Other body types are absolutely underrepresented in media and it causes women with those body types to feel less than… to feel like they’re not good enough.⠀
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I want to encourage anyone who felt the need to leave any of the above comments to dig deeper, self-reflect, gain some perspective, learn. Your comment says WAY fucking more about you than it does about us.⠀
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Be better.”

https://www.facebook.com/thegarciadiaries/posts/2304839546437347:0

Photo credit: Facebook