Thanks to the celebs having babies and still looking drop dad gorgeous, it has led the way for a new phrase being banded about, that of the Yummy Mummy. Now when I was a child there was no such phrase. Instead there were heroines and icons. These ladies were of average weight, wore a touch of lippy and dazzled you with their smile and sense of motherness. Their beauty routine was set in stone and consisted of soap and water and a weekly trip to have their hair set for the week with enough hairspray to kill the ozone layer. They weren’t unrealistically thin; they didn’t wear expensive designer gear or put baby in the same designer get up. They were about making the best of what they had and subsiding what they didn’t have with good hard honest work. Granted it was mainly house work but they were the centre of the home and the family.

Today things are very different. Women work, damn hard, and then fit in all the other things in life. A single mum does all that and then some more. Oh but now we are supposed to be a yummy mummy too. But just who are we doing it for. Do we do it for the men as I am pretty sure men wouldn’t agree, do we strive for yummy mummy status for ourselves or just for all the other women?

So what makes a yummy mummy? In the tabloids they are portrayed as a mum who has a certain lifestyle of no work and always looking immaculate. As unobtainable this is for the average mum I do thing all of us secretly want to make the best of ourselves. Improve a small thing here or there. I know I do. I know I am lucky as I am naturally average weight but even I feel I should do something. I have my good days and my bad days in front of the mirror and wish I had the botheration to put make up on every day. So if I feel like this I am sure there are loads of mums who feel the same and maybe want to change or tackle even more about themselves. But how do you do it when you’re a singe mum and time and money are tight.

Ok so what do we have?

There’s the weight / fitness bit – I hate diets as I refuse to be told what I can and can’t eat. As for exercise I loathe it more than anything, you will never find me in the gym let lone boringly swimming up and down a pool.

There is the looks department. My sense of fashion is rather dim being out of the fashion world for such a long time and realising that comfort is far more practical then hyperthermia or worse. As for makeup, I know what goes were, I know I look more human with makeup, I just can be arsed every day.

Then there’s the how I feel about myself bit- now this is where I think the celebs cheat. It has been written a thousand times (and mainly by men) that a truly beautiful woman is a woman who has confidence, who laughs and smiles from the heart. This they say is a natural beauty. So isn’t this what a yummy mummy should be? But here we have the catch 22. To feel good most women need to look good. And to look good you need to feel good. No wonder the celebs just cheat and buy the look.

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