Twenty years ago, it seemed like a huge step forward for women to be considered sexually attractive and a good mother at the same time. Prior to that, studies showed that being desirable and being maternal were considered mutually exclusive. But then in 1991, Demi Moore went and broke about thousand taboos by posing nude and pregnant for the cover of Vanity Fair, saying she hoped it would give pregnant women “permission” to be sexy.
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It was the dawn of the age of the sexy mom, and there was no going back. “Reversal of the traditional separation between maternity and sex has exploded onto the scene in recent years as the media is full of hot mammas … yummy mummies, knocked-up knock outs,” writes Kelly Oliver in the journal Hypatia. She points out that what started as a kind of feminist liberation for women is now slipping into old-fashioned objectification. (Take, for example, a certain popular yet vulgar acronym for desirable mothers that we cannot print here.) Suddenly that permission to be sexy and motherly turned into a mandate. And we’re complicit. We cannot stop staring at the zillions of body-after-baby photos online. We can (and do) buy baby bibs that say “My Mom Is Hotter than Your Mom.” School-drop-off sweatpants have to be Juicy Couture–sexy.
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