Moms' Powerful Group Photo Proves That Postpartum Bodies Are All Different

When four mom bloggers — Desiree Fortin, Katie Crenshaw, Meg Boggs, and Bethanie Garcia — met for the first time in April, they knew they wanted to take a group photo and decided to snap one to show what each of their postpartum bodies looks like. After each woman shared the picture to their respective social media accounts, predictably, both nice and not-so-nice comments started rolling in.

On May 4, Bethanie clapped back at critics in a powerful Facebook post, first by sharing some of the feedback they got on the photo.

"'Is this an advertisement for why women should get tummy tucks?'
'Why aren't there any fit women in this photo? Not every postpartum body is fat and loose.'
'Why has society made it OK to bash women who bounce back yet glorify women who can't lose weight?'
'How about dieting?'
'Posts like this bother me. Not losing the weight is a choice.'
'I'm a mother of 4 but I'm also a smokin' hot wife because that's my duty. No way I'd be happy or settle to look like this.'
'Photos like this tear women apart.'
'So, you're saying that skinny women don't have real bodies?'"

She expressed that she's disappointed that some of the women in question completely missed the point of taking a picture like this.

"It's a shame that the point has been completely missed by some of the people that have taken time out of their day to comment," she wrote. "(The point being: the four of us have been friends online for a long time and finally met IRL and took a last minute photo together of our different postpartum body types to show that all body types are beautiful.) If you look at this photo and your first thought is 'why are there no skinny women?', you have bigger issues to deal with, my friend. You can look literally anywhere: film, TV, Instagram, magazines, video games and see skinny women. Other body types are absolutely underrepresented in media and it causes women with those body types to feel less than . . . to feel like they're not good enough."

Now, she's encourageing some of the aforementioned commenters to take a kinder approach to what they see on the internet. "I want to encourage anyone who felt the need to leave any of the above comments to dig deeper, self-reflect, gain some perspective, learn," she said. "Your comment says WAY f*cking more about you than it does about us. Be better."