When six months ago Kate Middleton gave birth to her third child, she left the hospital just seven hours after delivery with her baby in her arms, smiling and seemingly perfect. The same happened when Carlota, the second daughter of the Dukes of Cambridge, was born. Both images were highly criticized for not show the postpartum reality, and these criticisms are now added to those of actress Keira Knightley.
In an essay published in Refinery 29 that has just come to light, he attacks Kate saying that giving that image of 'nothing has happened here' hides the true reality of motherhood after giving birth.
What is this criticism coming to now?
In the new book by Scarlett Curtis, 'Feminists Don't Wear Pink (and other lies)', the actress writes a letter to Edie, her 3-year-old daughter with James Righton. In the essay titled "The Weaker Sex"Knightley compares what she lived after the birth of her daughter, who was born a day before the Duchess's daughter, with the experience of Kate Middleton, or at least the image she gave.
In Babies and more Express delivery: Kate Middleton leaves the hospital seven hours after giving birthAn "unreal" postpartum
The actress has compared the magnificent recovery of Kate Middleton and the unrealistic image that has given, or as I say what we have seen from doors out (we have not really known if it was "his" truth), with his own postpartum, much more difficult.
"We see on the television screen to her (Kate), seven hours after giving birth, makeup and heels. That is the face the world wants to see. Hide. Hide our pain, our divided bodies, our dripping breasts , our furious hormones. Look beautiful, look elegant, don't show your battlefield, Kate. "
"Seven hours after your fight with life and death, seven hours after your body has opened and bled, that life screams out. Don't show it. Don't say it. Stay there with your girl and a group of male photographers will shoot you. "
Instead, the actress relates that her postpartum was much harder:
"My vagina broke. You went out with your eyes open. Arms up. Screaming. They put you on me, covered in blood, vernix and your deformed head. Moving, panting, screaming," Knightley said.
"He clung to my chest immediately, hungry, I remember the pain. The mouth tightened tightly around my nipple. I remember the shit, the vomit, the blood, the stitches. I remember my battlefield. Your field of battle and your life vibrating. Surviving. And I am the weakest sex? Are you? "
In his letter, Knightley recalls that they were visiting the hospital to meet his newborn daughter while "wearing a hospital gown with paper pants" and still bleeding from childbirth.
Each woman has different experiences
Two very different birth experiences, no doubt, and probably most women identify more with Keira's postpartum than with Kate's.
But neither do we expect British royalty to teach postpartum weaknesses, because it won't happen. What could be a good step for normalization? it's possible, but we won't see Kate disheveled and her breasts dripping.
Judge the maternity of others
And another observation about the criticism of the actress about the "unreal" postpartum of the Duchess is that beyond that she can have her opinion and many people agree with her, falls into criticism towards the maternity of another woman, to your postpartum experience, a gesture that not a good example.
We do not know what another woman may suffer in her postpartum. That it has not been shown in public does not mean that it has not happened. In fact, Kate Middleton had a hard time with her hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy that caused her to suspend her official agenda.
I think each woman lives her pregnancy and her postpartum differently, that none is better than another.
