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Published July, 2004	Email this article \| Print this article

Screw you, Cindy Crawford.

Beautiful People Make Better Mothers

by Kelley Cunningham

Elizabeth Hurley lost her baby weight faster than YOU did. Look! Pamela Anderson can give birth and blow her husband at the same time! Cindy Crawford looked better pushing her baby out than you looked at your wedding! Sarah Jessica Parker walked out of the maternity ward wearing Manolo Blahniks!

Listen up, People, Us, paparazzi and assorted star-fuckers: STOP IT! Please stop showing us the whole folksy celebrities-as-parents thing. We can’t stand it anymore. It’s bad enough that they parade around like they are the first women to ever have given birth. But when you’ve got the 3am postpartum weepies, every cell of your body aches and you’re trying to quiet a colicky, sadistic infant the last thing you need to hear is that Cindy Crawford was back at yoga in one week. Cindy, I’ve got your Downward Facing Dog right here. And she bites.

I don’t want to know how wonderful their lives are! Oh look, there’s Calista Flockhart with her kid and he’s having a tantrum. Wow, those beautiful celebs must be just like us! Bullshit. You know she handed the brat off to the nanny when she got home and popped a Xanax. Plus she gets to sleep with Harrison Ford, for crissake. I think I could deal with my kid’s tantrum if I knew Indiana Jones was waiting for me between the sheets. And I certainly wouldn’t let him fall asleep like Karen Allen did.

Motherhood is hard enough without comparing ourselves to celebs. Our culture is so enamored of these people that we are utterly amazed when they do something mundane. Wow! Matthew Broderick went out to eat and he was looking sleep-deprived because he’s a new Dad! We’re supposed to say, “Aw, ain’t that sweet!” but instead we are really thinking “must be nice to get out to dinner, you lucky sumbitch. What is it, the cook’s day off?”

I also love the celebs who say “Oh, I really lead a very dull, normal life”. Shut up. You know what? Normal does NOT involve having a movie premiere to go to this weekend. A personal umbrella handler and your name on a director’s chair have nothing to do with dull and ordinary. Just because you pick up your own kid from school when you’re not on location does not mean you’re one of us.

Nobody tells us how wonderful we are when we take our kids to the park. Nobody asks us our secret when we manage to get back into our old jeans. We labor in obscurity, forever, with no hope of rescue, relief, or Dolce and Gabbana.

Not only are we forced to look at how lovely and spoiled the stars are, we are also forced to listen to their parenting advice.

Madonna doesn’t allow her kids to watch TV, oh scratch that, has instructed her team of nannies not to let the kids watch TV, because it’s evil. Oh please. MADONNA is preaching to us on morals? Did I miss something? What’s next, the Pope’s Missive on Marital Aids? Madge, get real. If you were home alone trying to get dinner going, helping with spelling homework, dealing with an explosive diaper, and trying to keep the toddler out of the poop all at the same time, you would have Sesame Street on the idiot box faster than you can say “Papa Don’t Preach”.

There is just no way they could ever have the smallest dust mote of a clue what it is like to raise children like the rest of us. Yes, all parents adore their kids and worry about them, but anybody could do it part-time, with tons of money and support, and think they are really getting down to the nitty-gritty of parenting. It’s the 24/7 for 18+ years that will wear you down. They are in a completely different league so don’t try to convince us otherwise by showing us pictures of a Prada-clad Angelina Jolie taking her kid to a playground. By the way, what the fuck is it with Prada, anyway? Is it some kind of celebrity uniform or something?

I would love to see how fast celeb moms could get back to looking gorgeous without nannies, personal trainers, personal assistants, masseuses, spa vacations, stylists, make-up artists, home-delivered meals, money and a full-night’s sleep. I’d give them one week before they would be wallowing in the manure like the rest of us. I’m envisioning Sarah Jessica stuffing Oreo’s into her pie-hole while rustling through Matthew’s closet for a big shirt to cover the maternity leggings she’s still wearing. She’s teary because her fave Blahniks won’t fit since her feet have gone up a whole size since the baby. And like the rest of us, there’s no money for a new pair. She hasn’t been out of the 500 square-foot apartment all day and the only aromatherapy facial she’s going to be getting is when her son pees on her face during a diaper change. Oh no! The baby just threw up on the dress she wore to the Golden Globes and there’s no nanny to clean it up. Just you, Sarah Jessica. Try living like this for a few months. Then maybe I’ll listen when you tell me how wonderful life is with a newborn.

Us magazine takes pictures of pregnant celebs and points to their “bumps”. Since when are pregnant bellies called “bumps”? How cute. For the rest of us, I think a more realistic term might be “staggeringly huge stomach” or “spine-busting, kidney-rupturing mountain of future heir”. Speaking from experience, I don’t think it would be too amusing to follow us nobodies around when we’re pregnant, taking pictures of our stomachs for a “bump watch”. At five months I was so huge that complete strangers would ask “when are you due??” and “oh my God, can I get you a cab?” As I waddled down the sidewalk people would catch sight of my stomach and their eyes would widen comically. It’s disconcerting to have horrified onlookers move to the side so you can pass. At nine months, Us would have had to run my picture as a two-page spread.

God knows we try our pathetic best to look good. We see an article about the beautiful new strappy sandals that glam moms Elle McPherson and Uma Thurman are buying. Of course, our feet have more cracks than dried-out play-doh but we put the kid in the bouncy seat next to the shower, and in we go to sand off the crud with all the new supplies we just got at CVS. Any seasoned mother knows the child will start to cry the minute your hair is full of suds. Hurry! Rinse off while you are envisioning your child tipping over, knocking himself out and child services coming and taking him away. The newspaper will report that while your child was in peril you were sanding your feet with a smelly pumice stone, you selfish, vain woman. After a few fruitless attempts at self-beautification the burqa doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

And now here’s the latest People. Oh goody. Some gorgeous celeb is knocked up again. Doesn’t she look marvelous? Listen up, Princess. Don’t venture into our ‘hood, the land of the great unwashed and unchic. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We WILL hurt you. There are a lot of seething mothers here who hope you develop a set of hemorrhoids so big that you’ll have to find room for them next to your handprints on the Walk Of Fame. Shut up and have the kid already and if we hear that you had an easy labor you better watch your back on the red carpet, Missy.

Kelley Cunningham is a writer, award-winning artist, weekend poet, and an art director in children's publishing. Her work has been published in Brain,Child, Mamalicious, and The Funny Times. She has illustrated five books for children. A sampling of her amazing art talent can be seen at her website. Kelley lives in Pennsyltucky with her three wonderful sons.

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