In a preview for an upcoming episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kylie Jenner and her sisters are preparing for a Calvin Klein photoshoot and talking about their bodies. Kourtney says that Kylie's body looks amazing, and Khloé compliments Kylie's belly button, saying it's "back to normal."
In a confessional interview, Kylie explains that this is her first photoshoot after giving birth to her daughter, Stormi. "It's kind of hard and discouraging," she says about trying on clothing at fittings. When Khloé reassures her that her "body looks f-cking crazy," Kylie brushes it off. "It just doesn't," she says. While this special blend of sisterly body talk is kind of unique to the Kardashian women, it does reflect a larger societal obsession with people's post-baby bodies that is pretty damaging.
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The fact of the matter is that you have to gain weight in order to grow a baby. The amount of weight that one person gains during pregnancy depends on several individual factors — like genetics and their weight before getting pregnant. Unfortunately, some pregnant women become preoccupied with the amount of weight that they gain during gestation, because there's pressure from peers and even doctors not to gain "too much."
In Kylie's pregnancy announcement video, she shared a clip of her Ob/Gyn telling her not to eat In-N-Out fast food to avoid gaining weight. And on a previous episode of KUWTK, Khloé Kardashian said that she was stressed about gaining so much weight that she would need a C-section to deliver her baby, True. So clearly, there are lots of opinions that pregnant people — especially pregnant Kardashians who are in the public eye — have to deal with on a regular basis.
Even after giving birth, people may find that their bodies change in lots of different ways, including weight. While we don't know exactly when this clip was filmed (they teased the Calvin Klein campaign in January, which would've been just one month after Kylie gave birth to Stormi), it's important to remember that everyone adjusts to these drastic changes at a different speed. So, while some people celebrate certain celebrities' abilities to "snap back," to their pre-pregnancy bodies, that is just not a realistic or attainable ideal. After all bodies are not rubber bands.
Who knows? Maybe the rest of this episode will focus on the other aspects of motherhood that Kylie finds encouraging. It sounds like wishful thinking, but in the past few months, some of Kylie's sisters have come under fire for making inappropriate comments about eating disorders and diets, so perhaps they're slowly learning that words matter — even if they are thrown around amongst your family. In the words of Kris Jenner: "You're doing amazing, sweetie."