She peers over her glasses, scans my body head to toe as I walk across the room: You look great, Berlin. It doesn’t even look like you had a baby!
I say the only thing to say— thanks! —and then gaze stupidly down at my own body, joining along in the inspection. As if I will discover something new.
When someone tells me I look great, I get that it is a compliment. Sometimes it makes me feel good. More often, I find myself feeling embarrassed. I have the strange reaction of wanting to protest, or explain myself. Should I look some other way? Did I not earn my stripes? Looking great makes the assumption that I did something to “bounce back” or “lose the baby weight.” That Looking Great was just the next goalpost, the natural next phase of the process: Pregnancy—Birth—Looking Great—Normalcy. Now we can all dust our hands off and move on. Never mind the tremendous darkness that swallowed me up early postpartum, or the fact that I can’t seem to stop re-playing the birth over in my mind. Those things do not make for polite conversation. But Looking Great! That does. See? Everything is normal. She Looks Great!