Leonardo DiCaprio has been photographed shirtless on a beach, looking like a normal human adult. Cue headlines declaring that the “dad bod” is back – that is, if it ever went away.
Because while society still ruthlessly polices women’s bodies, such that an equivalent photo of a female film star would be touted as proof that she’d let herself go, men allowing things to go a little soft is roundly tolerated – or even thought of fondly.
This double standard is far from new, but the photos of 51-year-old DiCaprio bring it into fresh focus. What’s more, one year into being a mother myself, the searing unfairness feels especially outrageous. Where, may I ask, is the appreciation for “mum bods”? While the phrase makes my toes curl, the sentiment stands – especially considering what “bods” go through in the course of becoming a “mum”.
Pregnancy is metabolically comparable to an ultramarathon. After that, you have childbirth, which I’m telling you from personal experience can go on for days. By the time my son was born, I felt like I’d been hit by about seven lorries – yet instead of recovering, I was suddenly in charge of keeping a newborn alive around the clock.
This is all par for the course, and I don’t resent a moment of it – what does get me frothing at the mouth, though, is the expectation that women ought to climb that metaphorical mountain without allowing it to leave a physical trace.
In childbearing, women’s bodies undergo immense shifts. Some of it is visible – changes in weight or body shape, stretch marks, postpartum hair loss – and some isn’t; over the course of pregnancy, my brain was literally rewired, cells exchanged between my son and I, in ways that will persist throughout my life.
Even without the process of birth and pregnancy, mothering is liable to wreak physical havoc. No matter how one becomes a parent, the role’s attendant sleep deprivation, lifting, rocking, and ceaseless emotional availability inevitably entails neglecting one’s own needs.
While dads do more childcare today than ever before, the lion’s share still falls to women, and it’s hard to explain to a screaming infant that you’ll be with them in a moment, darling, once you’ve prepared some healthy dinner and gone for a jog.
As such, all things being equal, it seems reasonable to expect some kind of respect or kudos for mothering’s mammoth feat. Allowing our bodies to change without it being a source of shame is surely the least we’re owed. Yet, the pressure to “snap back”, to not only bear the physical brunt of childbearing and care but to do so invisibly, persists. In fact, in this era of picture-perfect mom-fluencers and Ozempic, I’d say it was worse than ever.
Just think of the body shame heaped on Rihanna over the course of her three recent pregnancies, no matter that she made the whole process look more glamorous than it ever has in recorded history. While we’d like to imagine we’ve moved beyond the era of, say, Victoria Beckham being weighed in front of a studio audience in 1999 to prove she was back to her pre-pregnancy size (no, really), today’s snarky headlines show that our deep-seated prejudices are harder to shift than any so-called “baby weight”, not to mention far uglier.
Meanwhile, the license to inhabit an unoptimised body is extended to all men regardless of whether or not they are fathers at all. DiCaprio doesn’t have children, but the “dad-bod” label is his to claim because it describes a state of being rather than an identity. Sure, there’s a slightly mocking undercurrent to some of the coverage – but only equivalent to gentle ribbing from friends, rather than the total annihilation seemingly threatened when women veer in the same unmanicured direction.
Ultimately, this is because we still value women for how they look rather than who they are or what they do. True equality will have been achieved when society is equally tolerant of women’s storied bodies as it is of men’s – or even, dare I suggest, celebratory of them, considering the vastly skewed physical burden they bear in bringing babies into being.
Plenty of ancient societies did just that. Mother goddesses and fertility cults abounded before patriarchy’s ascent, relatively recent in the wider context of human history. Now, I’m not saying we should overthrow the current order and reinstate matriarchy – oh wait, no! I totally am. It’ll be fun, promise — first order of business: we’re never saying “bod” again.