Katrina Kaif's postpartum trolling isn't a celebrity story. It's every mother's story

Katrina Kaif's postpartum trolling is not just an isolated story and nor is it just a celebrity story, millions of moms go through the same scrutiny after childbirth.

In Short

• Mothers say weight pressure often comes through casual remarks masked as concern
• Some women avoid photographs and social events after childbirth body changes
• Internalised comparisons and fitspiration content can deepen anxiety and body dissatisfaction

“You know, you look cute with this baby fat. But you should think about getting rid of it because it will be difficult for you later. Don’t take it otherwise, ye tumhare bhale ke liye hi keh raha hoon.”

He says it gently, plants a peck on his wife’s forehead and walks away — convinced, perhaps, that he has said something caring.

Inspired by a true event.

There is something particularly cruel about the phrase “bounce back” when it is attached to a woman who has just had a baby.

It makes childbirth sound like a temporary interruption to the body, something that happened, something that should now be corrected. The expectation is simple: have the baby, recover, lose the weight and return to the woman you were before like it was a minor inconvenience.

Post pregnancy, what most women find challenging is losing the weight they have gained. And what makes it worse are the bystanders who don’t let that pass.

Katrina Kaif found herself at the receiving end of that scrutiny. After recent pictures of the actor from Ambani Ganpati celebration surfaced online, social media users started trolling her for the postpartum weight. The reaction was familiar: a woman's body had changed after childbirth, and strangers felt entitled to point it out.

She is hardly the first.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan faced intense public commentary about her weight just months after giving birth to Aaradhya in 2011. The discussion became so intrusive that her post-pregnancy body was being treated almost like a public issue.

Richa Chadha has also faced trolling and scrutiny around her body after becoming a mother. Swara Bhasker has spoken openly about being criticised for not losing her postpartum weight on strangers' timelines, saying she consciously chose not to “bounce back”.

Not to mention Bipasha Basu, who wowed everyone with her recent photoshoot for Elle. People left no stone unturned to make her conscious about her postpartum weight gain after the birth of her daughter Devi.

It is tempting to dismiss all this as the peculiar burden of being a celebrity. After all, actors live under a camera's gaze. Their bodies are part of the image they sell. They have access to trainers, nutritionists and, often, resources that most women don't. But speak to mothers who have never walked a red carpet and the same anxiety comes up.

Journalist Karishma Kalita for instance, had spent years struggling with her weight. When she got married in 2016, she weighed 90kg and was borderline diabetic. By the time she became pregnant in 2025, she had reached 56kg through home workouts and a strict diet.

Her biggest fear during pregnancy wasn't childbirth. It was what would happen to her body afterwards.

She ate carefully throughout her pregnancy and continued working out until the eighth month. But after her baby was born, life changed. The motivation to exercise disappeared somewhere between caring for a newborn and simply getting through the day.

Eighteen months later, she has started working out again. But the old body remains a reference point in her mind. “I still look at the mirror and try to find the old me,” she says. Sometimes, she says, she has cried looking at the 24-inch-waist jeans she used to wear.

Her husband, she says, has been extremely supportive. Yet even that support doesn't automatically silence the insecurity. “I feel that I'm not attractive enough,” she says. She wants to feel good about herself, but also admits that a part of her wants to look good for her husband. She has wondered whether he is tired of seeing her as a “slob”.

Sometimes nobody says anything, you still hear it

That is perhaps the more complicated part of postpartum body pressure. It doesn't always arrive as an outright insult. Sushmita Marik, a mother to a one-year-old daughter and an L&D coordinator, says nobody around her explicitly expected her to return immediately to her pre-pregnancy weight. She consciously wanted to give her body time.

But even while she was being patient with herself, she was comparing herself with other women. “Sometimes the pressure doesn't necessarily come from someone saying something to you, it comes from everything you see around you and the expectations you slowly internalise,” she says.

And sometimes, the comment comes disguised as concern.

“Oh, you've put on a lot of weight. You should control it now, otherwise it will become very difficult later.” Or, after she started exercising once her daughter turned one: “Gym jaate ho farak toh kuch pad nahi raha.”

The comments might be thrown out casually. They don't land casually.

Sushmita says she doesn't have a single proper photograph of herself from almost her entire first year as a mother. Even when someone took a picture, she was thinking about how different she looked.

“I don't look the way I used to.”

Looking back, she says, the absence of those photographs says a lot.

That is not just a celebrity problem.

A 2025 study examining the pressure women feel to “bounce back” found that 70% of the 114 postpartum women surveyed were concerned about their postpartum weight. The sources of pressure weren't limited to one place: respondents cited society, their own body dissatisfaction, family, media and other postpartum women.

Another study on postpartum women found that exposure to “fitspiration” videos led to greater upward social comparison, higher anxiety and lower body satisfaction. In other words, the transformation videos filling a new mother's feed can become another way of telling her that her body is not moving fast enough.

It isn't always men

There is another uncomfortable part of this conversation: women themselves can perpetuate it.

Sushmita says she has seen women casually comment on another new mother's weight. Our other sources spoke about comments from friends, family and loved ones. One mother said remarks such as “This won't fit you anymore, why don't you donate it?” or “You've given up on yourself” stayed with her long after they were said.

The gaze changes, too.

A 36-year-old fintech founder, who is mother to an eight-year-old son, says she avoided photographs, weddings and social occasions because she wasn't comfortable with her body. Even eight years after giving birth, she remains conscious of certain angles and finds herself subconsciously trying to hide parts of her body.

“Your waist isn't the same as it used to be,” is one of the comments she remembers.

But she makes another important point: postpartum changes aren't always captured by a weighing scale.

Even if a woman's weight eventually returns to what it was before pregnancy, her body structure can change.

And then there is the fear of being unwanted

The 36-year-old mother says she has not personally witnessed a husband cheating because of a wife's postpartum weight and doesn't want to generalise about men.

But she understands how the fear can take hold.

“When a wife is already insecure about her body, even something like hearing her husband speak fondly about another woman can trigger emotions that maybe wouldn't have been there before,” she says. “You become much more aware of your own body and how you think you're being seen.”

That feeling of suddenly wondering whether you are still desirable is often missing from conversations about postpartum weight.

A woman isn't just looking at a stomach that has changed. She may be looking at herself through what she imagines is somebody else's gaze. She may wonder whether her partner still finds her attractive. Whether her friends notice. Whether people are judging her when she walks into a room. Whether she has “let herself go”.

And she may hear stories about husbands who comment on their wives' bodies, distance themselves from them or use their insecurity as a reason to seek attention elsewhere. Those stories can make an already vulnerable woman feel even more exposed.

None of that means infidelity is caused by a woman's body changing. It isn't. Nor does it mean husbands are universally unsupportive. In fact, the mothers we spoke to described supportive partners too.

But the fear itself is real. And it can become another reason a woman feels she needs to get her old body back.

The celebrity transformation can cut both ways

For these women, celebrity transformations aren't necessarily something they simply resent. Sushmita, for instance says, they can actually inspire her.

“If she can do it, perhaps I can too,” she says.

Sharmila (name changed) feels similarly conflicted. A transformation can offer hope, but it can also create an unrealistic expectation when the work and resources behind it aren't visible.

That is the trap.

A celebrity loses the weight quickly and she is applauded for “getting her body back”. A celebrity doesn't lose it quickly and she is mocked for having “let herself go”. Either way, the body is being evaluated.

The same woman who has spent nine months growing a human being can find herself being discussed as a before-and-after picture.

And ordinary mothers are watching.

Perhaps the question we should be asking a new mother isn't “When are you going to lose the baby weight?”

It is: “How are you doing?”

Are you sleeping well? Have you eaten? Do you have help? Are you getting time for yourself? Do you feel like yourself at all?

The body can wait.

The woman inside it may need us to notice her first.

- Ends