Week 8: Ashley Graham is a "Pretty Big Deal"

When I first wake up, I often like to scroll through Instagram or Snapchat. Particularly, I will (almost obsessively) clear my stories and subscriptions on Snapchat, and when I am finished looking through those, I will browse the "For You" section on Snapchat's Discover. Discover is basically a bunch of pop-culture and current news articles that Snapchat thinks I will be interested in. On Tuesday, I was scrolling through, and I saw an article about Ashley Graham "breaking the internet" with her Instagram posts about her pregnancy and postpartum struggles. I think, after watching Baby Cobra and seeing the boundaries Ali Wong broke with her comedy special, I was intrigued to see more examples of this in media (Wong). Like we discussed in class Wednesday, women are becoming more and more comfortable with these topics, as they should be, and I am thankful that we now have role models with platforms who share this important part of their lives. In this blog post, I would like to discuss Ashley Graham's posts further and reference the articles I read on Snapchat about her sharing her pregnancy and postpartum life with us. 

Just like how Jesse David Fox mentioned how Wong "humanize[d] motherhood" with Baby Cobra, Ashley Graham is also normalizing this subject with her Instagram posts. In one of the articles about an Instagram post of her pumping in an Uber, the author claims that Graham is "on a mission to help normalize breastfeeding" (Williams "Pumping in Uber"). Similarly, Graham writes in one of her captions, "No one talks about the recovery and healing (yes even the messy parts) new moms go through" (Graham). Perhaps even more telling, she states, "It's unbelievable the obstacles we still face talking about what women really go through," hitting the nail on the head about how shocking it is that society still does not promote this truth telling (Graham). Personally, I agree with the statements that Graham and Wong are making about society and conversations about pregnancy-related issues. We have progressed enough (at least I would like to think we have) as a society to be comfortable in discussing what truly goes on with women during pregnancy and the postpartum stage. Alas, we still fight to normalize these natural parts of life and are sadly shamed and looked at differently for it. 

For more information on Ashley Graham and the positive impact she is making on normalizing all aspects of motherhood, please check out her podcast, Pretty Big Deal (Williams "Breastfeeding"). She recently made a video introducing her son on her podcast, alongside her husband, Justin Ervin. Her Instagram page is a great source for material like this too!

Works Cited 

Fox, Jesse David. "Appreciating Ali Wong's Powerful Pregnancy Joke in Baby Cobra." Vulture, 9 May 2016, https://www.vulture.com/2016/05/ali-wongs-powerful-pregnancy-joke-in-baby-cobra.html. 

Graham, Ashley. "A S H L E Y G R A H A M." Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/ashleygraham/?hl=en. 

Williams, Valerie. "Ashley Graham Posts Video of Herself Pumping in an Uber." ScaryMommy, 27 Feb. 2020, https://www.scarymommy.com/ashley-graham-pumping-breastfeeding-uber-video/. 

Williams, Valerie. "Ashley Graham Shares Sweet Photo of Herself Breastfeeding Her Son." ScaryMommy, 5 Feb. 2020, https://www.scarymommy.com/ashley-graham-breastfeeding-photo-instagram/. 

Wong, Ali. Baby Cobra. 5 May 2016. 

Better For My Daughters

Disclaimer: I am not pregnant nor do I have children. I didn't want the title to confuse anybody :--).

While watching Baby Cobra, I was thinking to myself how amazing Ali Wong looked in her skin-tight dress while 7 and a half months pregnant. My next thought was “I could never do that.” I have felt insecure with my body for as long as I can remember. No matter how skinny or chubby I am, I still have the same feeling of “I can’t let people see what shape is underneath my clothes.” When I was a size medium, I wore a large. Now that I’m a large, I wear an XL. BUT RECENTLY… I became tired of it. I started asking myself why. Why was I so afraid that someone would be able to make out the shape of my hips? Why did it feel like a cardinal sin for my shirt to touch my stomach? Why was I so worried about it?

I thought back to growing up and getting ready with my mom in the mornings. She would put on a shirt and say something like, “ugh you can see my fat rolls in this. Ew, I look so gross. I can’t wear this into public.” For as long as I can remember, my mom has always put herself down. If someone compliments her hair, she’ll reply with “really? I feel wind-blown.” If they compliment her shoes, “I just found these on a rack somewhere for cheap, I don’t even like them, really.” If they compliment her shirt, “Oh don’t look at it, I look so big and bloated right now.” 

As I grow older, I find myself repeating a lot of those phrases. I find myself blowing off compliments and turning them into self-deprecating statements instead. I realized I’d rather not have anyone comment on any part of my appearance at all. I felt uncomfortable saying “thank you” in response to a compliment because the woman I looked up to my whole life never said that. I started dressing plainly and in way-too-big clothes in high school so nobody would want to compliment me. Most of my wardrobe is gray, black, white, and navy blue. I don’t do my hair and makeup. I don’t want to risk someone telling me I look nice because I don’t know what to say back. 

Recently, I started making a conscious effort to stop this behavior. I started practicing saying “thank you.” A great way to reply to compliments, I’ve found, is to compliment them back. So now, I put on makeup when I feel like it. I dress up when I feel like it. I don’t want to adopt my mom’s habit because I don’t want to pass it on. I don’t want my daughters to see me speak down to myself and think it is normal. I want to be better for my daughters. I want them to be comfortable in their own skin. I want to be comfortable in MY skin. I want to wear a latex dress when I’m pregnant.