Looking Like a MILF
“Don’t expect it to be flat,” is what the nurse said to me just hours after I had given birth to my son. You know she must have seen me glance in the mirror as I was climbing, actually dragging my beat up body into bed. I looked at her and said, “huh?” “Your stomach, don’t expect it to be flat,” she pointed to my enlarged abdomen, “Many women think that once they give birth, *poof* their stomachs immediately go flat.” Since I had never experienced a flat stomach ever in my lifetime, I kind of smirked, looked in the mirror one more time, and thought, “it will go down.” But it never really did, especially when I found myself pregnant a year later (yeah, what was I thinking). In that time between the birth of my son and then the birth of my daughter, I thought a lot about how I wanted to look as a mother, but it wasn’t until I made the conscious choice (well really my hubby did) not to have any more children, did I really begin to assess the historical and contemporary meaning behind motherhood and attractiveness. This led me to think more about the MILF and the idea of the sexy mama. (and for those who don’t know what MILF stands for, look it up on Google. I am not telling you)
If any of you watch Mad Men (and you are nuts if you do not), last season’s portrayal of Betty (Don’s ex-wife) served us an image that we have attached, at least subconsciously, to motherhood. Women who are mothers usually become fat, or stout, as it was called back then. The Betty of earlier episodes was the woman we love to hate, beautiful and thin, but alas it was a mirage in many ways, just like her marriage.
Betty moved on and with that her waist has expanded. In fact when she visits the doctor to get a prescription for some diet pills, he tells her he is not surprised she gained weight. She is older (34!) and a mother. He verbalized the expectation that motherhood leads women to become lazy with their looks and their waistlines. They pay more attention to their children than themselves (and their husbands, which is the biggest shame, am I right???) What was the line from the song “Wives & Lovers?” Ah yes:
For wives should always be lovers too,
Run to his arms the moment that he comes home to you.
I’m warning you,
Day after day, there are girls at the office and the men will always be men,
Don’t stand him up, with your hair still in curlers, you may not see him again.[1]
That’s right ladies, get the curlers out of your hair and take off the housedress. Your husband is coming home, so you’ll want to look like this:
Or this:
This is what mothers look like today! And you can too! Well…sort of. Maybe. Hmmm, mostly likely not, but hey you can always dream (or obsess). If anything, Jessica Simpson’s road back to her “body” signifies that motherhood is not defined by the baby you give birth too, but it’s defined by the body you have months, actually weeks, after THE event. That body is not the one Betty had last season, but it is the one she had previously and the one that is now lauded every few months as some starlet has given birth and everyone is watching with batted breath as to whether or not she will succumb to the motherfatitist, an affliction that is commonly characterized by a flabby gut, dark circles, and just general unkemptness. Any sign of this, and well, we all know what that means…you on the cover of OK!, with your eyes covered with a black line, while your fat ass and cellulite are magnified 100x. You also find yourself explaining why you did not lost the weight quickly, as Aishwarya Rai, Bryce Dallas, and Jenna Fischer can attest to.
If you beat motherfatitist, you are praised and revered.
Feel guilty? Well you should and guess what? It’s not new. Motherhood has been a target of retailers, advertisers, and even doctors since consumer culture took root within American society. Not only were they consumers for their families, they were also the perfect targets for guilt, especially about their physical looks. Advertising promised creams, wax, foundations, girdles, stockings, and a whole host of other items that would correct too much hair, too wide of hips, and too round of a face. Your flaws could be minimized and if that did not work, there were other options.
Dieting became a new phenomenon starting in the 1890s, when fat became a dirty word. The female slender figure became the norm. For mothers, though, there seemed to be leniency to a point. The matronly body, which was a little wider and little stouter, signified that mothers were not considered sexy, especially as they aged. However, by the 1950s, mothers certainly did look less matronly, in fact, they wore heels, pearls, and sweater twin sets. She may not have been “sexy,” but she did look glamorous pushing the Hoover and opening the Fridgdaire. Not only did diets help with this, but by the 1950s, diet pills became the new answer for the inability to control the appetite.
And by the 1960s, Weight Watchers began in an attempt to help women develop willpower over food. Many members were mothers, who either did not want to take diet pills or could not get a prescription, and looked to Weight Watchers to help them achieve the svelte bodies they saw in magazines, T.V., and movies. (Anne Bancroft in The Graduate anyone?) For the rest of the 20th century, the diet industry blossomed, exercise became a religion, and the plastic surgery profession corrected what diet and exercise could not.[2]
Plastic surgery fully developed after WWI, after thousands of men on both sides of the Atlantic, looked to surgeons for solutions to devastating facial and bodily injuries. The profession expanded their patient base after women expressed interest in correcting physically “abnormalities,” such as small breasts or large noses (and for mothers, a little tummy tuck). From the 1950s to now, the big three, diet, exercise, and a little nip and tuck allowed women, and mothers specifically, to fix what their children and age had messed up. The look of motherhood changed from matronly to sexy, confident, and ageless. In short: a MILF.[3]
BUT, looking like a MILF belies what also drives the desire to look sexy. Being the sexy mama also might mean she liked s.e.x. What, mothers like sex? For shame! Thanks to the Catholic Church and its elation of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, motherhood was anything but sexual. Besides maybe having more than one child, which of course meant having sex, the thought of someone’s mother having sex for pleasure, well that was just blasphemous, gross, on my God, I cannot get the image out of my head! Motherhood was saintly, moral, and asexual. I mean isn’t that what the twin beds signified?[4]
Yet, by the 1950s, sex and sexuality had become a focus of the medical profession and even the federal government. The Cold War fueled concerns of a communist takeover of the U.S. and the world, and good sex within the confines of marriage, orgasm and all, became as patriotic as apple pie and baseball. To ensure that married folk were doing the deed properly, doctors instructed women (and men) the correct and patriotic way to have sex (and to have an orgasm). This meant that sex became serious topic of discussion (and of government security), while also expanded medical authority. But at the same time, to talk about married women having sex, meant actually acknowledging that they were indeed having s.e.x. and most likely enjoying it. In fact, the thought that women in general actually embraced their sexuality became an increasing norm displayed in magazines, movies, and in T.V. after the 1960s. The Pill, feminism (and with the women’s health movement), Roe vs. Wade reshaped the idea of female reproductive health and sexuality, and with that mothers as sexual beings took root. Looking and being sexy equaled beauty and youth. If you could be a MILF, well then, you’re still young, and obviously still desirable.[5]
Now, this is not to suggest that all mothers aspire to be a MILF. There is a pornographic element to the label I am sure that many find demeaning, with good reason. But then again, when Jessica Simpson flashed her boobs on Twitter (and signed a 4 million dollar contract with Weight Watchers), or when Miranda Kerr walked on the runway eight weeks after giving birth, or Beyoncé flashed a toned and curvy body in May thanks to lettuce and a treadmill, as well as the many mothers who graced the covers of magazines, such as Women’s Health, Health, Vogue, and even Playboy, we can all agree that motherhood is definitely no longer matronly, old, or asexual.
[1] Wives And Lovers” (B. Bacharach, H. David), 1963.
[2] “See, Kathy Peiss: Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. See also Daniel Cook, Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer
[3] See Elizabeth Harken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery
[4] See Rebecca Jo Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America
[5] See Elizabeth Watkins, The Estrogen Elixir: A history of Hormone Replacement Therapy in America and The Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970. See also, Elaine Tyler May: America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation. See also, Carolyn Herbst Lewis, Prescription for Heterosexuality: Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era, Jane Gerhard, Desiring Revolution: Second Wave Feminism and Rewriting of America Sexual Thought, 1920-1982, and Ruth Rosen: The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.
Cheryl Lemus earned her PhD from Northern Illinois University in 2011. Her dissertation, “‘The Maternity Racket’: Medicine, Consumerism, and the American Modern Pregnancy, 1876-1960,” examines the rise of the modern pregnancy in 20th-century America. She is mainly interested in gender and women’s history, the history of medicine in America, and the rise of consumer culture.