A month after the birth of our second son, my husband, Bryan, and I had our first night out: a holiday cocktail party at a friend's. After putting down the baby and kissing my 2-year-old good night, I scrambled into a dressy outfit that was loose enough to fit over my tripled-in-size boobs, scraped my hair into a bun, and put on some makeup. Heading down in our apartment building's elevator, I caught my reflection in the brass button panel. The lighting there is reliably flattering—soft and golden. But all I saw was limp hair and sallow, puffy skin. My attempt at smudged metallic eyeliner had only exacerbated the gray bags under my eyes. I exhaled and teared up, and before I could mentally buoy myself, I said, like a child, "I'm not pretty anymore."
I wasn't fishing for compliments, though Bryan responded with a shoulder squeeze and the requisite round of oh-nonsense-of-course-you-ares. It was as if I needed to say it before someone else did, like when you critique your own cooking ("This is dry and a little tough....") to preempt judgment from others. In that instant, I was totally blindsided by a sense of mourning—for the loss of my younger, fitter, brighter-eyed self; of the freedom I had before having any children. I felt as if irreparable damage had been done, to both my looks and my life.
The glaring irony, of course, is that I'm the health-and-beauty director of this magazine. I have access to the newest makeup colors and high-tech skin creams months before they hit stores. I have VIP cards entitling me to free services at Manhattan's best hair salons and spas. I receive invitations from dermatologists for laser treatments, Botox, and lipo, and from fitness pros offering free Pilates sessions. But since becoming a mother, I'd barely booked an appointment. And despite the heaps of beauty loot waiting in my office when I returned to work, I still felt like crap.
I work with a lot of glamorous mothers, and when I brought up the topic with them, I was amazed at how many echoed my sentiments—even though, to look at them, you'd wonder what all the whining was about. It made me think: Is feeling beautiful post-children even achievable? Is there an anthropological reason why a woman's looks take a nosedive after she has kids? (Did Cro-Magnon women need to be attractive only until they secured a mate?) Why do we feel we can't take the time, or don't deserve the time, to look and feel good? And when we do try, why do we still cringe when we look in the mirror?
Remembering my elevator meltdown now, a year and a half later, I know that lack of sleep and a tsunami of hormones were largely responsible for my misery. But even months after, when I'd stopped nursing (or pumping) around the clock and was getting much more sleep, I still felt ... off. The feeling was sharper than in those first months, because as my spirits gradually improved, my appearance didn't—and the incongruity caught me off guard all the time. I'd swing my toddler, Alex, around, laughing hysterically, then glance in the mirror, zoom in on my greasy hair and deepening crow's-feet, and freeze, my smile tensing into a grimace. My mind would race: It's so unfair that laughing with your babies deepens your wrinkles. I'm tired of being a grown-up and having so many responsibilities. I'm pissed that nobody tells me, "You look too young to have children!" anymore. I'm so vain. I'm not supposed to care about this. But I do, and I'm depressed—and that makes me shallow and ungrateful. And so on.
This trifecta of entitlement, guilt, and self-hatred seems to trap a lot of moms. "Two boys kissing me makes me feel prettier," my friend Alison, who owns a PR firm in Manhattan, told me when I asked if motherhood had sabotaged her looks.
"How do you feel when you look in the mirror?" I asked.
"Like I need Botox. Awful."
Over the course of one phone call, my friend Karen, another mom of two, barely took a breath as she rattled off her issues: "My belly button droops. I have saggy skin and a poochy stomach, and my linea negra never went away. I look at myself naked and think, Who would ever want this body?"
