Celebrity moms put the pressure on ordinary mothers to look swell.

BY MELISSA FLETCHER STOELTJE

San Antonio Express-News

Special to the BBM 

SAN ANTONIO - It wasn’t all that long ago that baby boomer mothers embraced the soccer mom icon, with her elastic waistband jeans and big, bulky sweaters. That stereotype was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live,” which did a spoof on “mom jeans.” (”Because I’m not a woman, I’m a mother.”)

But then came Victoria Beckham and Kelly Ripa and Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwyneth Paltrow, svelte stars who popped out babies and then poured themselves back into their size 00 knickers within a matter of weeks. Suddenly it wasn’t good enough to have clean hair and spit-up-free clothing.

As a 21st-century mother, you have to be ripped and buff and hot.

What exactly is a yummy mummy?

“It’s a woman who, if you removed the babies and (stroller) from the picture, would not be identifiable as a mom, rather a sexy, glamorous woman,” says London-based Polly Williams, author of “The Yummy Mummy” (Hyperion, $22.95), a novel that sends up the whole yummy mummy mystique.

“A yummy mummy is what happens when hipster 30-somethings breed.”

Williams says the relentless media focus on celebrity moms such as Demi Moore and Kate Moss is fueling the YM trend, making ordinary moms feel inadequate when they can’t attain the six-pack abs and cut biceps of the Hollywood crowd.

Never mind, says Williams, that ordinary moms don’t have the armies of personal trainers, nutritionists, nannies and cosmetic surgeons that make movie star mothers look the way they do.

“But the pressure not to ‘let ourselves go’ is also self-inflicted,” says Williams. “We’re part of a perfectionist culture and, perhaps, we find it hard to accept the mess, chaos and extra pounds that are an inevitable part of motherhood, especially those early days. We’re used to organizing our lives at work, making the best of ourselves, and it’s hard to relinquish control to someone weighing eight pounds with no teeth.”

There’s a good side and a bad side to the YM phenomenon, says Stephanie Coontz, director of the Council on Contemporary Families and a marriage expert.

“For a long time, motherhood was thought to completely desexualize women,” she says. “This is a healthy reaction against that.”

But it’s a double-edged sword, she cautions. The mandate to be yummy sets up unrealistic expectations for women and once again “commodifies” their sexuality.

Marilyn Yalom, author of “The History of the Wife” (HarperCollins, $30), says the YM ethos is “debilitating” for many women “who feel they’ve got more on their plates then they can handle without having to worry about whether their hair is shiny or if their bodies are as thin as they would like them to be.”

Sharelene Hesse-Biber, a professor of sociology at Boston College who is an expert on women’s body image, says our “consumerist” society, with its multibillion-dollar cosmetic and cosmetic surgery industry, is behind the YM trend, all of it playing on women’s insecurities.

From Botox to biceps-building, there’s a hefty price tag attached to being yummy, she says.

“What is old keeps getting pushed up,” she says. “You’re not supposed to get gray hair, you’re not supposed to get wrinkles, and if you do it’s your fault. We’ve made aging deviant and we’ve made looking perfect across the life cycle normal.”