Caroline Berg Eriksen Under Fire for Post-Baby Selfie, Photo an 'Act of War' Against Mothers
Caroline Berg Eriksen, a fitness blogger an wife of a professional soccer player Lars-Kristian Eriksen, is coming under fire after posting a selfie four days after giving birth.
Eriksen has drawn comparisons to another infamous mother who caused outrage amongst mothers for what many feel is an unhealthy obsession with a woman's post-baby body.
Eriksen posted the photo of herself on Instagram, along with the caption, "I feel so empty… 4 days after birth."
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The photo quickly went viral and received negative remarks from mothers around the web.
"This is not a selfie. It is an act of war," Australian parenting blogger Rebecca Sparrow wrote. "This whole situation has become ludicrous. There is no other word for it … the competition for women to give birth and then immediately remove any trace from their bodies that they ever carried a child is OBSCENE."
Australian Telegraph writer Sarrah Le Marquand was a more mild-mannered in her approach to the controversy but still admitted that Eriksen is a "shameless exhibitionist."
However, Marquand added that "slamming the super-fit and genetically freakish likes of [Eriksen]" is also another form of judgment which all mothers face too much of.
Prenatal nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Melinda Johnson insisted that every woman's body reacts differently to pregnancy.
"Obviously, what we're looking at is someone who is genetically gifted," she told Yahoo Shine. "But we can't say she's unhealthy, we can't say [what] she is."
Erikson is drawing to comparisons to Maria Kang, another fitness blogger and mother of three, who recently had her Facebook account shutdown after comments she made regarding obese women were deemed to constitute hate speech.
Kang made the comments after learning of a new campaign featuring plus-sized women posing in lingerie. When Kang took to Facebook to express her opinions about the photos she was temporarily banned from Facebook after her comments went viral.
"Why should overweight women be proud of their bodies … The popular and unrelenting support received to those who are borderline obese (not just 30 to 40 lbs. overweight) frustrates me as a fitness advocate who intimately understands how poor health negatively effects a family, a community and a nation," Kang wrote on her Facebook page.
Kang's page was eventually restored by Facebook who apologized for mistakenly taking the page down.
