Is the post-pregnancy body the new weapon of choice among super-fit women? Yes, charge critics of Norwegian soccer wife and fitness blogger Caroline Berg Eriksen, who posted a flat-stomach, bra-and-panties selfie to her 245,000 Instagram followers just four days after giving birth.
“This is not a selfie. This is an act of war,” writes one Australian blogger in response to the image — just one of many blogs, news outlets, body-image experts and social-media commenters around the world to weigh in on the matter in the past few days, putting the photo at the center of a major online body-image controversy. “This whole situation has become ludicrous. The competition for women to give birth and then immediately remove any trace from their their bodies that they ever carried a child is OBSCENE. There is no other word for it.” Another blogger calls the photo of Eriksen, who is married to pro soccer player Lars-Kristian Eriksen, “wildly provocative.”