Fit Mom Chontel Duncan Refuses to Apologize
Last month, Chontel Duncan Instagrammed a photo of her baby bump. She was standing next to an also-pregnant friend-only four weeks apart in their pregnancies-and she knew their bodies looked strikingly different. She expected the post to spark a conversation about pregnant women's bodies, but she he did not expect the photo to be met with such vitriol. "I didn't think that it would be a photo that would go so viral and be spoken so negatively about," the fitness model, trainer, and founder of HIIT Australia says. "We were both very excited, pregnant women who were embracing our bodies and how different they were."
Of course, what followed were a slew of bump size-shaming remarks, comments about her being vain, and women claiming her photo triggers negative body image issues in other expecting moms. "I was just so blown away how foreign it was, to see the healthy behavior through a pregnancy be criticized," Duncan tells ELLE.com.
Then, just last week, Duncan faced even more backlash for a photo of her and her week-old newborn, Miah, where some claim she's endangering him for not supporting his head. She later explained in another post, "I'm not going to be nice about what I think about your belittling attempts to educate me on the safety or better yet my intentions as a new mum...Newborns can lift their own heads up, it's not me standing there with his head flicked back shooting away."
It seems this is the kind of scrutiny will be the norm throughout Duncan's motherhood–she has nearly 500,000 followers watching. Here, she opens up to ELLE.com about body image, facing Internet trolls, and why she's been compelled to be so transparent about every step of her pregnancy.
On dealing with constant online criticism:
"When someone's confident in what they do–they've done their research, they've got a very, very strong team behind them, and they're confident with their team, and that team is supporting them through the pregnancy–no matter what gets said about you, nothing can defeat you in your actions and goals. You can't really escape that confidence. I believe that's why [negative comments] don't affect me...I knew what I was doing was correct, safe, and beneficial for me and my pregnancy and my baby. If anything, I feel bad for commenters for leaving those words."
On feeling pressure to show her "post-baby" body to followers:
"It was terrible. I took the photos right away. I said to my husband, 'Can you take a photo of me standing against this wall? I know people are going to ask to see my body straight after the baby.' And he's like, 'Really, Chon? You really want to take a photo right now?' I'm like, 'Look, just take it now. I won't post it now.' I wanted to concentrate on what the doctors are explaining to me. I wanted to leave this hospital knowing what I'm doing because this is all foreign and brand new. I said, 'I'll take the photos now, and I'll deal with social media in a couple of days.' Anyway, a couple of days went by and I decided to read a few of my comments."
It was really upsetting to see that people were so insistent on saying how bad I looked. But, people want to see fault. They want to see flaws. They want to see drama.
"A lot of people were saying, 'Ah, see. This is what we were waiting for. She didn't realize that her body won't look as good as she thought after a baby. That's why no one's seen her photos.' Or 'Oh, how funny, she's gotten fat, and she won't post photos of her body.' I thought, I just had a baby and I didn't do it naturally-I went in for an emergency C-section. I couldn't even get up half the time, and I've got to deal with this new lifestyle that I'm so foreign with. Give me a break-I'll post the photos, I've taken them, but I'm not going to post them live as soon as I've taken them because I want to make sure my captions are right and I don't want to write something half-assed or say something that I shouldn't say. I want to make sure that I give out the right information and everything is clear. So you know, it was really upsetting to see that people were so insistent on saying how bad I looked. But, people want to see fault. They want to see flaws."
On her body image:
"I'm proud of how my body looks after a baby. I think I may not have got ginormous hips, I may not have got crazy stretch marks, but my body still went through a pregnancy. I look at it, and it's so different, but it's so beautiful at the same time because I carried my own child, and I know how much of a gift that is. I wanted to share it with my followers. A lot of my followers, my real followers, have seen my body constantly lean, constantly muscular, so for them to see me posting photos of a softer body, a body that's a little bit curvier-it may not seem like it to my new followers, but to my very old followers, it is very different for me to post a photo like that. I wanted to share, and I wanted to show people how much I can love my body and myself and my changes after a baby. It's about being confident and not worrying about being a particular size."
On planning ahead to stay fit through her pregnancy:
"A year before I conceived, I had seen my obstetrician and I explained to him what it is I do for a living. I explained to him how I demonstrate a healthy lifestyle not just for my following, but my clients. 'How do I implement this throughout my pregnancy?' I asked. He said, 'With your behavior, your health, and your lifestyle for the past five or six years, there is nothing stopping you from continuing that lifestyle to milder degree. All you have to do is maintain, don't accelerate or increase anything.'
I had a year to prepare myself. It gave me motivation to keep my lifestyle active and make sure I fell pregnant at my strongest so that these things could continue when I did fall [pregnant], and making sure I had a mentality and was prepped for it. I knew that I would have to taper things down. It was something that I thought out correctly. I didn't just jump into it and decide, 'This is what I'm gonna do.'"
On her training routine:
"When I wasn't pregnant, I would train maybe seven or eight times a week, and that's all hour sessions. I taught some classes, so that's another hour running the classes and doing the demonstration of every exercise in that class on the microphone, lifting weights with the class. It's a very full-on career that I have. Then, when I became pregnant, how I tapered down is my team or my staff would do the demonstrations for my class, and that helps obviously. I did that five times a week, so at least every week day I trained once, and on the weekend I did absolutely nothing. Not even a walk. It's quite heavy for some people, but for myself it's not."
My followers made comments on my page saying, "How sad that you're going to lose a career now. You're gonna get fat. What a waste of time training."
On misconceptions about working out during pregnancy:
"The biggest misconception, I believe, is that people don't take the time to understand that each person lives differently, and their lifestyles make a massive impact on how their pregnancy will be. People still sort of live by [the idea that] when women are pregnant, they believe this baby is fragile, that they need to be bubble-wrapped. Then, whenever anything happens–they may feel a little tired one day, or maybe achy, they instantly apply those feelings and emotions to the pregnancy and cause themselves to get into some sort of mentality. Cravings were normal to me. They're what you have day in and day out. People feel like chocolate one day, people feel like a bagel the next day. People feel like drinking heaps of water one day, and people feel like, 'I didn't drink any water today. I don't even know if I wasn't that thirsty.' [Pregnancy] mentality is a misconception.
It's become so taboo if you do anything that looks vigorous when you're pregnant. These babies are so supported that the doctors are more afraid of us hurting ourselves holding the extra load of weight on our bellies and our backs and realizing our hips and our knees and our ankles are taking a heavier load, so you struggle. There are a lot of misconceptions that these babies are super fragile in our womb. But yes, our bodies will be fine when we're pregnant. We forget that sometimes, I believe."
On why she wants to share her pregnancy journey publicly:
"I started [documenting] when I was pregnant. I had comments made through myself, my family, my friends, and also my followers making comments on my page saying, 'How sad that you're going to lose a career now. You're gonna get fat, what a waste of time training all that so you can look like that to now just throw it out the window. How awful.' I thought to myself, how many young girls that are 16 to their mid-20s are sitting there scared of being pregnant, scared of going through this amazing experience that we were designed to do. How many are sitting there so scared because they don't want to lose their confidence, their body, their image? I thought to myself, screw this. I have no idea what my body's going to do when I'm pregnant. I'm going to share with them, full and honest, and I'm going to share with them how my body changes through my pregnancy, document everything that I can to a degree without it taking over my life, because obviously I have to focus on me too. But, I wanted to share with them so these young girls could say, 'Hey, let's get fit. Let's eat well. We don't want to train and eat well to be skinny now. We don't want to train and eat well to fit into this dress for our wedding. We just want to do it because we understand that it makes someone enjoy the process of pregnancy potentially a lot better.'
I would hate to think that another female would get treated the way I did.
That's why I have a lifestyle like this: I'm trying to prevent illness, I'm trying to enjoy the chapters of life, not to just stay skinny or to have abs, you know? All those superficial implements of why people get fit and healthy. It's about being healthy, and about being mentally and physically strong and positive, and the [physical] results are like the cherry on top. Looking great is awesome, but the actual grand [reason] why we're doing it is to be healthy and to have a future that's long lasting and enjoyable."
On her last word for negative commenters:
"Live a life being positive and supportive regardless of people's decisions and choices. Just live a life where you can rest your head at night and be proud of the person you are. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Sit there and focus on yourself and how much of a role model you want to be."
