Tina Daheley says that women’s bodies are under particular scrutiny in her industry
(Picture: Dave Benett)Tina Daheley said she defied the pressure to go back to her pre-pregnancy weight after giving birth to her daughter last year.
The BBC presenter, who is mother to daughter Athena, 16 months, said she returned to work “at least five kilograms heavier” than she was before pregnancy, but refused to be a slave to the gym to get her pre-baby body back.
“My priority is and always will be my daughter, she’s my everything,” said Daheley.
“I didn’t want to spend hours in a gym after having a baby.
“I shouldn’t be made to feel like I have to spend hours of my life trying to get back to what I was – hours that would take me away from my daughter, when there are already hours that take me away from her because I’m a working mum.”
The BBC Breakfast news host said that while many women feel the pressure post pregnancy to ‘snap back’ to society’s “ideal” of what a woman should look like, it’s worse for women in her industry.
“There’s an immense amount of pressure on women in general, but particularly in my industry, around the way they look. Even more so for new mothers.
“It’s somehow accepted that women should bounce back and look exactly as they did before giving birth. Being in the public eye, all of the pressures are even more acute,” she added to British Vogue.
“I do TV news, so I work in an environment where women are, generally, very slender. And that’s no disrespect to them, it’s just the way it’s always been.
“Men aren’t held to the same standards and aren’t scrutinised in the way that women are.”
Despite putting motherhood first, Daheley still admits that she has felt down about her weight gain since returning to work.
She also admitted that she was mortified when people assumed that because she’s currently a size 12 “people are speculating that I’m pregnant.”
She added: “I’m at least five kilograms heavier than I was before I had my daughter...
“I would like to have the body I had before giving birth, but it hasn’t happened for me yet and it may never happen...
She recalled: “On the morning of this particular breakfast show, I was fretting about what to wear due to my post-pregnancy figure...
“While I was sitting on the sofa I started getting Google Alerts on my phone alerting me to the fact that people were speculating about whether or not I was pregnant.
“It made me automatically worry that I must look big and awful and that people could see my stomach rolls when sitting down.
I looked back at the news clips from that morning and I just felt awful about myself...
“We need to cut women a bit of slack. I’ve worked relentlessly for over a decade and then had a baby.
“Now that I’m back it’s important to normalise the fact that women’s bodies change after giving birth.”
