LIFE is full of truisms: don’t ignore your instincts: don’t spend more than you earn; don’t go to bed angry; don’t do drunken karaoke at the work Christmas party.
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But trumping all those is one 24-carat golden rule, especially for men – don’t criticise a woman’s post-birth weight gain.
Sydney personal trainer Allan Trinh clearly missed the memo, this week launching an astonishing attack on new mums, branding them “fat and lazy”.
“How often do you see mums who are overweight with their kids these days?” he said.
“It seems having a child is a reason to stop looking after yourself.”
The response to his comments has been predictably swift and savage.
The Leader’s Facebook page went into meltdown, with Mr Trinh’s comments labelled out-of-touch, insulting and repulsive.
One local mum, who was working on two hours sleep and still hadn’t eaten by midday, summed it up best.
“My mouth is so dry but my water bottle is just out of reach and I don’t dare disturb the happily feeding baby,” she posted.
“Daily I choose between eating, sleeping or showering in the brief time I have between feeds. Exercise? I don’t even know what that word means. But fat and lazy? How rude. I challenge him to just seven days of living like this.”
It seems new mums, sagging under the pressure of sleep deprivation and stress, don’t take kindly to being judged by a publicity-hungry muscle-head.
And neither should they.
The contribution of mums in our community should be celebrated, not scorned.
They juggle more roles than a clown in a bakery; wife, mum, counsellor, teacher, chef, shopper, nurse, friend – and that’s just at home.
And if indeed they gain a few kilos in the process, that only reinforces how much their focus is on others and how little time they have left for themselves.
Mr Trinh’s incendiary remarks may have attracted headlines, but it won’t attract a single new client to him.