Moms Speak Up After ABC Refuses to Air Ad About Postpartum Products

Frida, a mother and baby retailer, released a commercial this week in support of its range of postpartum recovery products. In the one-minute ad, a new mom is seen struggling to walk, use the bathroom and deal with cumbersome pads. Frida says it released the commercial on YouTube because the ABC network refused to air it during Sunday’s Oscars. “It’s just a new mom,” the new intro to the ad states, “home with her baby and her new body for the first time. Yet it was rejected.”

The clip is an unflinching look at what new mothers physically cope with in the days and weeks following vaginal birth—something that remains taboo in American media. While television and movies have become more honest in recent decades about the realities of birth, menstruation and postpartum depression, the physically messy and painful aftermath of childbirth remains absent from our screens.

We caught up with seven moms to find out how they feel about the Frida Mom commercial, as well as ABC’s decision. They had a lot to say.

Renee Pickup, mother of one
“I think for the most part we don’t show this stuff because we want to exalt motherhood and the newborn time as this super positive, beautiful thing—without realizing how disenfranchising and dehumanizing that is for women. We’re not supposed to matter—not even to ourselves. We pretend it’s all beautiful, and not painful or lonely. Motherhood as martyrhood.”

“In the first few days, going to the [bathroom] is terrifying. If you have stitches, or a small tear that’s left to heal naturally, or even if things are just a bit—I don’t know—sore because you just passed an eight-pound person through a very small passage, urinating feels like pouring acid on an open wound. Because essentially you’re pouring acid on an open wound! And you’re bleeding heavily for at least 6 weeks. Motherhood on screen is either dysfunctional and abusive, or nurturing and idyllic. On film—mainstream film and TV anyway—women’s bodies are for sex, looking at and for killing. When Margot Robbie gets an Oscar nom for a film where she barely has any lines, we know that a woman’s body is the most important thing about her—and that body had better not be leaking. Of course this isn’t for Hollywood!”

Alexis Brooks, mother of one
“That ad is super accurate. I still have those mesh panties! I also bought Depends, based on recommendations. I have no idea why this ad would be refused airtime, other than the fact that she doesn’t look perfect. American society is obsessed with sex but entirely unwilling to see a version of a woman in a minor state of undress that doesn’t fit with what is broadly considered attractive. This amount of nudity is only considered vulgar if the woman doesn’t look the way we want her to.”

Rachel Roberts, mother of one.
“This is very realistic—the stitches and the feeling that your insides are about to drop right out through your vagina at any point. No one tells you about it. After birth, the nurse made me go and have a bath and I felt like I was going to die. I was just lying in this hospital bath bleeding, without my baby and terrified. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling of being scared to walk because of the pain, and the amount of blood loss. The truth is, it’s actually really f–king messy and not cute in any way. I think it isn’t put out there because it ruins the ‘romantic’ newborn baby thing.”