Jennifer Garner Voted Celebrity Mom Of the Year (Someone Tell Jessica Simpson)
Was 2012 the year of the celebrity mom? Every time you looked at the news, or glanced at a magazine or even stumbled upon a gossip website (totally inadvertently, obviously), the celebrity mom was all over it. From Jessica Alba's green baby company, to Beyonce's Blue Ivy, to all those bodies bouncing back after baby. We are inundated with images that celebrity moms are just like us.
Today's Parent recently released a poll that listed Jennifer Garner as the year's Top Celebrity Mom because of her relatability; frumpiness to glam quotient; and the fact that she does crafts and shops at the farmer's markets. Top Canadian gossip blog, LaineyGossip, had some very pertinent thoughts on that decision, as well as the growth of celebrity mom culture.
Truth is that as much as we readers want to know about celebrity moms and feel like they would be our best friends -- they are not just like us. But the media persists in telling us that we have a lot to learn from celeb moms. Including these top lessons:
You Can Lose the Baby Weight in Weeks: Megan Fox, Tori Spelling and all the others get lauded for bouncing back after baby because they look thin weeks after giving birth. This is not normal. These women have personal chefs, trainers, and they spend hours at the gym.
Jessica Simpson got paid millions to show the rest of us how to do it. She told us she lost 50 pounds by "not being perfect" and so we can too. I beg to differ - we regular people don't have the same resources nor do we get paid four million bucks to do it.
Have Babies Close Together: Jessica Simpson tweeted "Bumpin' and Proud" with this photo, confirming that she is that she is fairly far along with baby number two while baby Maxwell is only seven months old. (Did she think breastfeeding was birth control? Did she want to get out of her Weight Watchers contract?) Britney Spears and Tori Spelling also have kids with a minimal age gap.
Lifestyle TV: Jessica Simpson shows off baby bump in bikini
Even Really Famous People Barf: In what is possibly the celebrity pregnancy story of 2012 and the baby story of 2013 -- Kate is pregnant and barfing. The Duchess of Cambridge, who has the entire British medical service at her beck and call, is suffering from acute morning sickness and can only intermittently stop throwing up.
Don't Have Babies Close Together: Tori Spelling spent most of her fourth pregnancy on bedrest and missed a lot of Hattie's first year because of placenta previa. One of the causes of the condition is having babies too close together.
Everyone Loves A Baby Picture: While we normal people debate the question of doing the Facebook reveal or not; celebs have bigger issues. They have to decide whether or not they sell their baby pictures for millions like Drew Barrymore just did, or let the paps do it, or reveal on their own through Instagram and Twitter, or keep the babies on the down-low like Anna Paquin.
The Birth Of Your Baby Is The Most Important Thing In The World: Beyonce + Jay-Z = Blue Ivy and a super-charged, luxury birthing suite at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York supposedly shut down the hospital. Colour me jealous on that one!
Having a Baby Will Make You Relevant: See Jessica Alba, Hilary Duff, and soon Kim Kardashian. Truth is, having a baby in the real world can make you feel irrelevant as you leave work, your social life and daylight behind.
Everyone Loves To Judge A Baby Name: My most favourite baby name of the year is Maple Sylvie Bateman (Jason Bateman's daughter) because it sounds so much like Maple Syrup Bacon. I think it may be a joke, that guy is a sly one, but I do like the name. There was also Uma's seven-layered baby, and Reese's Tennesee to judge.
NOTHING: The truth is that we can learn a lot from our friends who have babies, we can learn from websites, and even our mothers and mothers-in-law have something to teach us; but we have very little to learn from celebrities. They control the parts of their lives that we see. Do you really think that paparazzi hang out in Target parking lots hoping a celeb drops by?
We have no idea if Jennifer Garner is a great mother (I admit it, she does look like one), or which celebrities ignore their children and let the staff bring them up. Just like in the real world some celebrities make their children a priority and some don't but we can't tell who that is from the paparazzi pictures. We won't know what really goes on in Hollywood until the tell-all books start coming out.
Do you have a favourite celeb mom?
Want more chaos? Last year, I listed the things I swore that I would never do as a parent. Of course I have done all of them.
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