Celebrity moms making motherhood hot

MSNBC has a very interesting article today that draws attention to the celebrity moms who are making motherhood hot.

If you’re a celebrity and run the risk of encounters with the paparazzi – you’re bound to end up on a bump-watch somewhere – so the days of dressing for comfort may very well be over – because the photos will grace every tabloid between here and Outer Mongolia.

Isn’t Angelina Jolie a humanity hero there too?

Apparently the Hollywood Baby Boom is great for several businesses ranging from where these new or soon-to-be moms are shopping to the fitness program they use after giving birth to get back into shape.

The enormous visibility of Jolie, who has managed to blend high-profile parenting with tattoos and leather, offers a fresh role model to women who believe miniskirts and motherhood aren’t mutually exclusive.

Thank goodness my grandmother isn’t able to witness the growing sex appeal of pregnancy, tattoos and leather.

It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long since being an unwed mother was unsavory – how many remember the whole Murphy Brown fiasco? The growing trend in Hollywood is changing that by adding glitz and glamour to single motherhood and it doesn’t look like that’s going to flow in reverse anytime soon.

It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when motherhood, especially the unwed kind, could spell the end of an actress’s career. In 1935, Loretta Young resorted to pretending to adopt her own baby daughter — and later altered the child’s emerging family resemblance through painful plastic surgery — rather than admit that she and Clark Gable were the parents.

It’s amazing how far some will go to keep up appearances.

The article goes on further to point out the negative impact it is or may be having on new mothers everywhere. First women faced the whole “perfect image” of Barbie and now they are facing the “pefect image” of celebrity mothers.

One byproduct of this fascination: Regular mothers are starting to think they’re falling dramatically short. And who can blame them, with the deluge of TV sound bites and glossy photo spreads depicting blissful, well-rested celebrity moms who delight in parenthood’s every moment?

No one bursts the bubble by mentioning that those jaunts to the store are strictly optional — because the rich and famous often subcontract the grunt work so they can hit the talk-show circuit, film the next movie, spend the day at the spa — or hit a club at midnight in that miniskirt that already fits again.

“The regular mothers of America, meaning you and me, are forced to read about all these things that these perfect celebrity mothers do so that their kids will be Nobel laureates by the time they’re 12,” says Susan Douglas, author of “The Mommy Myth,” which examines the unrealistic demands of modern motherhood. “But they have a SWAT team of nannies, so of course child-rearing is a pleasure.”

So what do you think? Do you think society and the media is placing more and more pressure on the already overworked and underappreciated job of being a mother through their portraits of celebrity moms?

As for myself, I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to get a tattoo planted across my belly anytime soon and consider myself to be just as cool and hip as some celeb moms.