Ashley Graham said it correctly when she compared mommy shamers to mean girls. “Mommy shamers are just mean girls who grew up to be mothers.”
While talking with Jada Pinkett Smith about mom-shaming on Red Table Talk, model Ashley Graham and actress Jessica Alba got extremely candid about how they feel about mom-shamers and how it makes them feel when they get mommy-shamed. For Graham, while she knew the mom-shamers would come out to get her after becoming a mother, she thought she’d be able to ignore it better than she has.
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Ashley Graham, Jessica Alba Get Real About How Mom-Shaming Has Affected Them
“It’s interesting because my whole career has been based around body shaming because I’m a curvy girl who has come into a skinny world, and said that my body, and other bodies like mine, need to be normalized. I knew that [mom shaming] was coming and I was ready to combat it, but it never feels good to have someone tell you that you’re not doing a good enough job, that you’re doing something wrong.”
As for Jessica Alba, she put it as simply as possible, “it hurts, man. It really, really hurts.” For Graham, however, she’s not only received it from the strangers who follow her, but also from family members for her effort to normalize breastfeeding.
“My whole career is based off of being sexy and my breasts have been the forefront of many magazine covers, so then to flip to my baby is there sucking on them, I think that people just had to switch their minds, but they are multi-purposeful,” Graham admitted.
Currently, Alba has been fielding unsolicited comments when it comes to her 2-year-old son, who currently has no interest in potty training. “You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”
And when it comes to how the mom of three has handled all of the shaming, she says she had to let herself realize that it’s a reaction from people who are not happy with themselves.
“I’ve come to this place where I realize that most people who have something to say, it’s because they’re so insecure and it’s more of them being ashamed of themselves, them being overly critical and for whatever reason, the natural reaction is to pull other people apart for them to feel justified or them to feel OK.”
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The group of moms went on to talk more about the judgments they have received both online and from other moms of children their children go to school with. In the end, Dr. Ramani Durvasula said, “the fact is, we’ve got to stop and we’ve got to pay attention and look at every mother through a lens of compassion.”
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