For new mothers, losing the weight they gained during pregnancy can feel like a race, especially when the media chronicles and celebrates the slim-down progress of celeb moms like Blake Lively and Kim Kardashian.
But Anne Hathaway, who gave birth to a baby boy in March, is over the ridiculous pressure to get back in a string bikini stat. On Tuesday, the Alice Through the Looking Glass star posted a photo on Instagram of a pair of jeans she had cut off at the knees. The caption: "There is no shame in gaining weight during pregnancy (or ever). There is no shame if it takes longer than you think it will to lose the weight (if you want to lose it at all). There is no shame in breaking down and making your own jean shorts because last summer’s are just too dang short for this summer’s thighs.”
This isn't the first time Hathaway has spoken out about the crazy expectations for new moms. In an appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show in May, she talked about her run-in with a trainer at the gym who made a comment about dropping "the baby weight" just weeks after the actress had given birth to her son, Jonathan. (Poised as ever, Hathaway informed him it was too soon to start worrying about the scale.)
While the trainer’s thoughtless remark caught Hathaway off guard, she told Ellen that motherhood has actually given her a sense of empowerment at the gym: “I walk in and I'm like, 'Yeah, I work out with 5-pound weights, but I pushed a baby out of my body, I feel good right now!'"
Because that's really what it's all about—appreciating your body for the amazing things it can do, not how it looks at any one moment in time. Or as Hathaway put it so perfectly at the end of her Insta post, "Bodies change. Bodies grow. Bodies shrink. It's all love (don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)"