BEC: Why Fifi Box's photo with her new baby is making women smile

By REBECCA SPARROW

Fifi Box, I love you.

That’s a big opening statement (and perhaps slightly stalky since Fifi doesn’t technically know who I am) but I don’t care because I love you, Fifi. I bloody do.

Yesterday, standing in the “express lane” at Woolies,  stressing about whether I was one grocery item over the legal limit my eyes flicked across to the magazine rack.

And there on the cover of a weekly glossy was a cover that made me do a double take. I was transfixed by an image of a vaguely familiar (who IS that? I know that face …) new mother staring back at me.

A new mother  — looking so very tired and yet flooded with love — holding her sleepy newborn daughter.

I couldn’t read the headline, so it took my brain a full 30-seconds of Rubik’s Cube moves to work out this clearly besotted new mum was in fact Fifi Box.

Fifi Box whom I’ve loved since I interviewed her eight years ago for a former newspaper column. (I came away impressed with how self-deprecating, genuinely friendly and refreshingly candid she was.)

Fifi Box who has issued the first photo of herself with her smoochalicious new daughter Trixie looking real. Natural.  Normal. Like one of us.

And I bloody love her for that.

Why?

Think of it this way, Fifi’s beautiful, real, natural, new mother photo is in complete contrast to how new mothers are usually presented on mag covers. Usually new mothers are, you know, showing off their ‘bikini-ready bodies’ standing there wearing chopstick high heels with perfect hair and flat tummies, new babe in arms.  Apparently I missed the memo that once you squeeze a baby out of your clacker (or have one delivered through the sun-roof) you morph into a Bond Girl. Who knew?

This gallery will give you an idea of how most celebrities present themselves post-baby:

My point is, I was delighted to see that gorgeous photo of Fifi yesterday. Not just because I was excited to see her new baby girl but because Fifi’s pure joy radiates off the page. The 36-year-old shimmers with that authentic ‘new mother glow’ rather than that “Made-for-TV-New-Mother-Glow” we’re so used to seeing.

The “new mother” images magazines live to churn out where celebrities have spent three hours with a SWAT make-up and hair team gluing on fake eyelashes before pretending to pose au natural with their newborns.

The same SWAT team which is  called back in on the day the star is scheduled to leave hospital.  God forbid any woman looks slightly shattered or unkempt after GIVING BIRTH. Better to look like you’ve just spent 3 days at a spa. Not that any mother can’t or shouldn’t look like that … it just shouldn’t be EXPECTED. You with me?

And not that I judge any celebrity for succumbing to the pressure of glamming it up post-labour for the cameras.  Frankly I’d hate to live in that world where there is an expectation to look “movie star glam” even -in Tori Spelling’s case – mere minutes after giving birth to your fourth child.  So I get WHY they do it.

I’m just grateful — as a mother, hell as a woman – that there are celebs like Fifi Box and Chrissie Swan and Dannii Minogue and Jules Oliver who aren’t afraid to keep it real.

Who – by the mere act of tweeting these photos – remind us that freshly minted new mothers aren’t all swanning around in hospital looking like they’ve stepped off the set of The New Housewives of Birth Suite.

That the heavy make-up and blow drys and soft lighting isn’t necessary to look beautiful.

You are a new mother.  You are beautiful just as you are. Sister, you brought a new life into the world.

So congratulations Fifi.  Welcome baby Trixie.  And thank you.

We’d love to provide some contrast for the static, staid and glossy gallery above and post some photos of our readers at their happiest moments (sans perfect hair and make up). Please upload your favourite ‘happy’ photo below or email nat@mamamia.com.au and we will add you to our gallery. Publisher and Creator of Mamamia, Mia Freedman has helped us to get started…

Update: Because the Mamamia team needs to eat/sleep, we won’t be adding any pictures to the gallery tonight – but continue posting them in comments and emailing them through, and we’ll add them first thing tomorrow morning.