WERQ: Beyonce in Alice by Temperley

I agree on that in the sense that women today feel like crap (really) if they are not skinny just two months after gibing birth, and worse, men think that is what’s supposed to happen. I seriously hear A LOT of comments in the line of “she used to be pretty until she had a baby” or “she *still* hesn’t dropped the baby weight”. You should ideally not gain over 25 Lbs, but what you gain you do not have to lose in a heartbeat. 
Which is partly why I do not like the Jolie types, who gain no weight while pregnant; and the ones who come out in whatever magazine flaunting their post-baby body like a fitness/diet accomplishment, but very silent about the lipo and breast lift they had, in many cases, right after the delivery .   There. I had to vent. Sorry for the sourgrapes. 

30-35 pounds is the current recommended weight gain, depending on your starting weight. And the advice I was given about weight loss was “9 months on, 9 months off.” Which is about what it took for me.  If she’s breastfeeding, that complicates things as well – some women lose weight like crazy when breastfeeding, but others find their body hangs on to the weight as “insurance.”

“  Kept our fingers crossed that baby wouldn’t wake up before we snuck in
a quick workout (or cleared the dishes from the sink, but not both).”

Those of us who’ve been there salute you with love.

Actually, you mention a reason why I will always like Heidi Klum. When she walked in the VS show soon after giving birth, she basically told everyone that her job was her body; therefore, she had a support staff to help her. She said “regular” working moms shouldn’t be expected to live up to that standard because they aren’t making money off their ability to rock a bra and panty set. I still remember that when I get frustrated at those few extra pounds that won’t go away.

That’s one the reasons why I have a lot of respect for Heidi Klum. 

Nose job…pics from the early Destiny’s Child days to more recently and it’s definitely different.  Not insanely drastic, but enough to tell make her more homogenized. Also, there have been rumors of a boob job, but I don’t know.

Here’s a before/after of the nose: http://hollywoodnose.com/BeyonceNoseJob

Damn, that is heartbreaking and infuriating all rolled into one. Before all the mess she was beautiful, but it’s this NEED to conform to a whiter standard that sucks.  Blonde, stick-straight hair, nose and lips different…it’s nonsense and it’s a TERRIBLE message.  
If you want to change your look, cool, but do it because you want to…not because you feel the need to make yourself more ethnically ambiguous. 

I felt the need to comment on this because, between this reaction and the comments I saw about Viola Davis choosing to wear wigs so as to be more palatable to a more mainstream audience, well, I just had to say something. People act as if “conforming to a Whiter standard” is a phenomenon that occurs in a vacuum. By all means yes, people who do so should be side-eyed. But the bigger side-eye should be directed to the very fact that the very idea wouldn’t even need to happen if this country didn’t have a profoundly racist past that has shaped a more covertly racist present. I am sorry to say this, but there is virtually no way that Beyonce would have become as famous as she was if she was any darker-complected, rocked natural hair, and/or had a broader nose. She did what she had to do to get where she wanted to go – and part of that was eliminating those aspects of her Blackness that would prevent her from achieving the level of fame that she now has. I don’t think anyone “wants” to make themselves more racially ambiguous. The choice to do so is, itself, circumscribed by social and cultural realities.

I say this as as Black woman with natural, kinky hair and brown skin. There is a reason that there aren’t many women who look like me that are famous, and there is a reason that those who do choose to wear wigs of straight, long hair; de-puff their lips; and whittle down their noses. And even then, the success some so desperately want may elude them to forces that are beyond their control and still affect their choices.

Anyway, just putting my two cents in.