Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is someone to emulate when it comes to making pregnancy announcements. However the pencil thin figures of pregnant celebrities, is something that other pregnant women need not emulate. We look at why.
When not to emulate pregnant celebrities
Experts are worried that images of celebrity moms impact how women think and behave during pregnancy. Celebrities who remain thin throughout pregnancy except for their baby bump and then return to their pre pregnancy shape the minute they’ve delivered their babies tend to have this negative impact.
It is something that is being referred to as pregorexia where women feel pressured to prevent weight gain during pregnancy and then try to shed their weight as soon after the delivery as possible. Due to privacy concerns, clear figures of the numbers of pregnant women with eating disorders such as anorexia may not emerge, but this is a worrying fact.
Merryl Bear, the director of the non-profit National Eating Disorder Information Centre in Toronto believes that unrealistic images of pregnant celebrities are triggering for women’s self perception.
Other experts such as Dr Blake Woodside who heads a Canadian eating disorder program feels that it is a ‘fatophobic’ society that makes it difficult even for pregnant women to be natural.
It is important for women with an eating disorder to be extra careful during pregnancy because the disorder presents certain problems. For this reason these pregnancies should be treated as high risk pregnancies, says Dr Woodside.
How to be professional about announcing a pregnancy
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently announced that she is pregnant with a baby boy and that she is due in October. This came shortly after the announcement that she was appointed CEO of the multinational company. According to MSNBC Business she did several things right; all of which other women would do well to follow:
Firstly she told the Yahoo CEO Search committee about her pregnancy in a forthright and straightforward manner. This helps foster a relationship of trust with the employer, which in this case was amply rewarded because the board rewarded her good faith with an appointment to the top job.
Secondly she herself made the announcement in a low key, well timed manner so that her pregnancy announcement did not overshadow her professional accomplishments.
Also she only gave the amount of information that was actually needed and then moved on without dwelling on immaterial details.
