Super mum? There's no such thing (From Worcester News)

Super mum? There's no such thing

2:10pm Tuesday 21st February 2012 in Fair Point By Alicia Kelly, @aliciakellyWN #worcsnews

LET’S get something straight.

The reason Victoria Beckham looks miserable in photographs is not because she is an exhausted, working mother-of-four.

That’s what she says but I don’t buy it.

What was her excuse before she was a globetrotting mum – and still didn’t smile for photographs?

Instead, I suspect early in her career someone said: “Victoria, you look better sans smile.”

All that said, I’m sure she is exhausted.

Anyone whose career involves travelling between England and America every few weeks, has four children and who also must look groomed 24/7 must be worn out.

That schedule would cripple a teenager.

But it is a refreshing change to hear a celebrity mum admit she is tired.

Previously, Victoria has been a fully paid-up member of the celebrity super mum club. You know, those women who snap back into shape after pregnancy and return to work brimming with apparent vitality.

Some say these super mums make the rest of us feel bad because we cannot make it look so easy.

Well, I don’t know about you but I’d like to say, it doesn’t bother me one jot.

My reaction to the picture of slim Amanda Holden, wearing shorts, to step back into the limelight just two weeks after giving birth was not, “Wow, she looks great”.

It was, “That poor woman”.

She did look great but the reality is she can’t possibly have felt great.

We all know there are only two ways to get a baby out of a woman’s body and you don’t get over either in days.

No matter how good you look in the photographs.

Two weeks after having my son I shuffled a few hundred yards down to the local shop in my tracksuit bottoms for the first time.

And then almost immediately went home for a rest.

So I know beneath the artfully applied make-up, the naked ambition and the old-school show must go on mentality, there lurks a woman who feels as if she’s been run over by a bus.

And nothing will convince me otherwise because there is no such thing as superman – or super mum.

Whenever I see those pictures I just rejoice that there was no one waiting to take my picture on that first snailpaced outing.

I suppose I might have been able to scrub up okay if a fickle career had depended on it.

But thankfully I didn’t have to.