#Kelly Diane Howland

[elisesole]

Mom Fat-Shamed at Target Speaks Out on Postpartum Pressure

A woman shopping at Target received some unwelcome weight-loss advice. (Photo: Kelly Diane Howland via Facebook)

A new mom who was offered unsolicited weight-loss advice while shopping at Target is opening up about the “impossible expectations” of postpartum perfection.

In a Facebook post that’s gone viral with 23K likes and nearly 11K shares, Kelly Diane Howland, a mom of three in Indiana, describes how she recently visited Target with her newborn daughter. While she was there, she was approached by a woman who offered her business card for It Works, a company that sells weight loss wraps.

“But let’s not pretend that approaching me specifically was a coincidence,” Howland, a breast milk jewelry designer, wrote. “Because it’s not like she ran up to every female at Target to hand out her card. But she did come to me — with my baby billboard of being brand new postpartum. We all know that this culture hammers into postpartum women a lot of physical insecurity about their bodies after delivering their miracles from their wombs. I don’t think I have to spell out for a single woman the cultural pressure that postpartum mothers face regarding their physical appearance. We know. We all know. She knew. And that’s why she approached me.”

Howland added, “Can we please not perpetuate the pressure, the impossible expectations, and therefore keep alive the insecurities that we newly postpartum women face regarding our new and changing bodies as we enter motherhood? Instead of leaning into superficial ideals imposed upon us, can we PLEASE start bucking the system and instead start praising each other for being the amazing, life giving, creation birthing vessels that we are?”

She concluded, “My body doesn’t need to be wrapped or squeezed or changed. It needs to be valued and revered for the incredible life it just brought into this world. THAT is beauty and THAT is all it needs.”

The average woman needs a year to lose her baby weight, and some women never lose it at all. Still, women are often bombarded with both direct and subtle messages to erase all evidence of pregnancy. In January, a mother who had recently lost 80 pounds visited a Park City Lululemon store and says she overheard a saleswoman laugh and say, “Do we even have anything in her size?”

In 2014, a Canadian mother of five, who hit the beach wearing a bikini for the first time in 13 years, was mocked by three strangers for her postpregnancy stretch marks. She wrote about the experience on Facebook in a post that went viral, saying, “I can only hope that one day you’ll realize that my battle scars are something to be proud of, not ashamed of.”

And celebrity moms are not immune to the pressure to drop pounds — in 2015, after Kelly Clarkson appeared on the British talk show Graham Norton Live, a television personality tweeted, “What happened to Kelly Clarkson? Did she eat all of her backing singers? Happily, I have wide-screen” and “Kelly Clarkson had a baby a year ago. That is no longer baby weight. That is carrot cake weight.” In response, Clarkson said to a reporter regarding the negative remarks, “I’m awesome! It doesn’t bother me. It’s a free world. Say what you will.”

Howland didn’t reply to Yahoo Beauty’s request for comment. However, she’s received an overwhelming amount of support from women all over the world. “I now have a digital pile of letters from fellow mothers who also resonate with the desperate plea to society to stop looking at the evidence of motherhood on our bodies as flaws,” she wrote on Instagram.

That’s a message Howland wants to impart to her daughter. “Women, these changes for our daughters start with you and me,” she wrote. “They’ll model what they see. Love your bodies unabashedly, and you’ll open the doors of change and give your daughters the opportunity to do the same.”

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

• Plus-Size Model Shares Cellulite In Photo: ‘It’s Nothing to Be Ashamed Of’

• Hot Model Irina Shayk Looked Like a New Mom Should After Giving Birth

• Toddler Born With Facial Deformity Becomes a Model

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

[tabloidtoc]

Closer, March 16

Cover: Lana Turner -- love, heartbreak and scandal 

Page 1: Contents 

Page 2: The Big Picture -- Mae West along her Perfect 36 dress dummy and Kate Smith’s Large and Miriam Hopkins’ Boyish in 1932

Page 4: Harrison Ford opens up about his home life 

Page 5: Baby Peggy -- farewell to the final surviving child star of the Silent Era, Rick Springfield auctions guitars to help Australia 

Page 6: Hellos & Goodbyes 

Page 8: Picture Perfect -- Debra Messing with her dog Henry, Amy Robach and her dog Metro, Sherri Shepherd and her dog Lexi 

Page 10: Jim Carrey on his show Kidding, John Legend and his daughter Luna, Amy Poehler and Kelly Clarkson 

Page 12: Mardi Gras -- Bryan Cranston 

Page 13: Jennifer Coolidge, Robin Thicke and his son Julian, Charlie Day and Mary Elizabeth Ellis 

Page 16: Jeff Bridges -- Hollywood hasn’t changed me -- he grew up surrounded by stardom but the beloved actor has always stayed grounded 

Page 18: Cover Story -- Lana Turner -- inside her scandalous world -- the screen icon’s glamorous existence was riddled with heartbreak and pain 

Page 22: Celine Dion rebuilding her life -- she has put aside her sadness to embark on a new journey 

Page 27: Spot the Difference -- Joel McKinnon Miller on Brooklyn Nine-Nine 

Page 29: Horoscopes -- Pisces Eva Longoria 

Page 30: Entertainment -- Rufus Sewell on The Pale Horse, Michael O’Neill of Council of Dads, In the Spotlight -- Catherine McCormack 

Page 32: Movies -- Ben Affleck on The Way Back, DVDs 

Page 33: Books, Music -- Mandy Moore on Silver Landings 

Page 34: Television 

Page 36: Great Escape -- Donnie Wahlberg and Jenny McCarthy on Turks & Caicos 

Page 40: 5 foods to help you live longer, Ellen Pompeo 

Page 42: Whatver Happened to the Waitresses From Alice -- Polly Holiday, Linda Lavin, Beth Howland, Diane Ladd, Celia Weston 

Page 43: It Happened This Week 

Page 44: Tiffany opens up about music, motherhood and why she’s happier than ever 

Page 48: The Robert Young nobody knew -- the Father Knows Best dad’s real life daughter remembers him as a complicated caring man 

Page 50: Susan Sarandon -- fame, family and 50 years in showbiz 

Page 52: Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s new life -- bucolic Vancouver Island offers the couple everything they need for a fresh start 

Page 54: The style of Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Page 58: My Life in 10 Pictures -- Joanne Woodward 

Page 60: Flashback 

[kidsviral-blog]

New Moms Go Through So Much, So This Woman Pointed Out Something That Needs To Stop

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/new-moms-go-through-so-much-so-this-woman-pointed-out-something-that-needs-to-stop/

New Moms Go Through So Much, So This Woman Pointed Out Something That Needs To Stop

When Kelly Howland went to the store with her newborn baby, she was probably expecting her tiny, adorable daughter to get a lot of attention from fellow shoppers.

What she didn’t expect, however, was to be approached by another woman who was trying to sell her weight loss products when it was clear that she had just given birth. While Howland knew the woman was just doing her job, she was also well aware that she had been specifically chosen for the sales pitch because of her postpartum body.

That’s why she took to Facebook to talk about the unrealistic expectations that society has for moms and their physical appearances after bringing new life into the world. Her message is something we all need to hear.

“We all know that this culture hammers into postpartum women a lot of physical insecurity about their bodies after delivering their miracles from their wombs. I don’t think I have to spell out for a single woman the cultural pressure that postpartum mothers face regarding their physical appearance. We know. We all know. She knew. And that’s why she approached me,” she said.

Facebook / Kelly Diane Howland

“Can we PLEASE not perpetuate the pressure, the impossible expectations, and therefore keep alive the insecurities that we newly postpartum women face regarding our new and changing bodies as we enter motherhood? Instead of leaning into superficial ideals imposed upon us, can we PLEASE start bucking the system and instead start praising each other for being the amazing, life giving, creation birthing vessels that we are?”

Facebook / Kelly Diane Howland

“Can we just offer each other adoration of the amazing things that we’ve accomplished and see our physical changes as marks of phenomenal accomplishment that only our sex has the privilege of experiencing? My body doesn’t need to be wrapped or squeezed or changed. It needs to be valued and revered for the incredible life it just brought into this world. THAT is beauty and THAT is all it needs.”

Read more: http://www.viralnova.com/new-moms-message/