I can’t quite kick the tabloid habit.  What compels me to brood over Angelina Jolie, vamping it up in a plunge-bodice black strapless and enormous emerald-drop earrings the size of her children’s thumbs?   Or Heidi Klum strutting her flawless bikini body six weeks after birthing her third?  I never used to care about celebrity moms.  In college I looked down my nose at the tabloids if I ever thought about them at all; I wouldn’t even pick up People in the dentist’s waiting room. 

But my voyeuristic interest piqued soon after I delivered my first baby, my milk-brain so addled and fuzzy I couldn’t even read a light novel.  Words swam before my sleepless eyes, ideas swirled and would not take shape.  All I could process were photos and gossip, so my husband brought me home US Weekly as a treat.  I’d devour it in bed at night after my hot shower, that blissful fifteen-minute ritual of exfoliating, soaping, shampooing, standing alone-alone!- while my fussy newborn slept her first brief stretch.

I followed the celebrity stories, a mini-soap opera in print.  US was my favorite-the best photos, the best fashion, pure self-indulgent escapism without any depressing human-interest pieces about kidnapped toddlers or lightning-strike victims.   After my second baby I paid $20 for a six-month subscription to OK.  This magazine was delivered weekly to my mailbox with my name on it, and I read it cover-to-cover every time.  Why should I care about Angelina and her pregnancies, her designer goddess gowns, her postpartum recoveries in Africa and the South of France, her impossibly svelte figure on display?  Why does any woman want to look at such pictures?

Because while I was absorbed in the magazine, I existed in a fantasy world of glamour and skin and money.  My own life was suspended, its milk-stained nightgowns, groceries and marital squabbles.  I grew addicted to the commingling of desire and fascination the tabloids stirred in me.  Sometimes I pretended I was Gwyneth Paltrow on a new macrobiotic power cleanse, with her nutritionist and personal chef and private Pilates instructors, her full-time nannies, her endless long legs in Chanel mini-dresses and 5-inch Manolo Blahnik stilettos.  I’d work out for two hours on a special butt-minimizing machine, then head to the spa for eyebrow sculpting and a miracle plant-enzyme laser facial.  Glowing with youth, I’d jet off to a premiere in Milan and my Vogue cover shoot, followed by a swank hotel with my rock star husband. 

I actually met G-Pal when we were both seventeen.  Well, I saw her rather than met her.  She was playing tennis with her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, at the clay courts where I worked for my summer job in the Berkshires.  I clocked in at 7 am to roll the courts and brush the lines, then sat on the porch of the little maintenance shack all day to sign in players.  It was deathly boring, and I’d finished my entire English summer reading list by late July.  I was so bored I couldn’t stop snacking; some days I’d eat a loaf of warm, fresh-baked, chunky cheddar cheese baguette for lunch.  I’d already gained 10 pounds from sheer lethargy when Gwyneth showed up, radiant in her tennis whites.  She looked like a blonde angel in a mini-dress- perfect facial structure, no make-up, just natural rosy-cheeked beauty.  I didn’t know who she was then, but I recognized stardom when I saw it and gazed at this beautiful creature acing serves in the sun while I sat in the shade in my baggy shorts.

Now G-Pal and I are both 35 with two kids.  Like me, she lost her father suddenly not long before her first child was born.  She also has a blog- but the parallels end there.  On Goop.com, you can browse Gwyneth’s favorite Parisian hotels, view her spring wardrobe or buy her unwanted Chanel handbags on eBay (starting bid: $750).  She recently said that she works out hard, diets and dresses up in hot clothes because “she doesn’t want to look like a mom who doesn’t care.”  What does such a mom look like, pray tell us, Gwyneth?  Is she shlepping her baby through the Vermont mud in ill-fitting jeans after no sleep, trying to keep herself together?   Is she cruising Price Chopper in grubby stretch-pants while her kids munch Cheetos in the cart?  Does she not have access to the childcare, support and teams of experts who help her sculpt her body and clad it in killer Versace dresses?

I’m sorry, I shouldn’t get worked up like this, it’s my own fault for reading the dang magazines.  They offer the illusion of perfection-but we want it, we buy it, we eat it up, and then feel sick to our stomachs.  Now that I’m moving out of The Baby Cave, I’ve been weaning myself off the tabloids.  Some mom friends and I used to swap our worn copies of People and OK, but we don’t anymore.  Maybe our brains are getting sharper, or maybe we don’t want our three-year-old daughters looking at those pictures, thinking that’s what real women look like.

Tags:   Angelina Jolie · celebrity · Gwyneth Paltrow · motherhood1 Comment