Yummy Mummy

The rise of the Yummy Mummy has been noted with horror in my neck of the woods (well by me anyway). Why? What is the point of them and, more importantly how do you get to be one? It's a bit of a vague category, no one has ever explained to me exactly what a Yummy Mummy does or looks like to deserve the accolade. My husband often tells me that I'm a Yummy Mummy, but I think it's his way of reassuring me he still fancies me, or indeed a form of foreplay that he'll need to keep up for the next week or two if it's going to work. I admire his optimism not to mention his ability to approach an old subject with fresh ideas. Anyway, where real Yummy Mummies are concerned, the general points to be observed according to my very unscientific surveys are that they must: be thin (possibly the most important requirement) have a baby (second only to being thin), be thin while having a baby and immediately afterwards be even thinner, wear thin clothes (indeed clothes their baby can fit into), pretend to eat a varied and healthy diet as opposed to slim-fasts and steamed fish, look as if they have just stepped out of the fashion pages of Vogue, push a ridiculously large pram that needs the nanny and the butler to assemble every morning, have long hair that they never tie back and baby never seems to pull/smear banana into and meet other Yummy Mummies for lunch everyday without worrying if their maternity pay will stretch to it. So that's me out then.

So why does all this amount to Yummy at all? I know it rhymes rather cleverly with mummy, but so does honey. Honey Mummy? Sounds good, after all the title is meant to suggest that they are desirable to men both pre and post pregnancy, so honey/bees round a honey pot/sticky sweetness all the references point to yes (both in and out of bed). Yummy Honey Mummy may be going a bit too far however. The next question to ask would be are Yummy Mummies really yummy? I mean really, would they taste better spread on toast than the rest of us? Surely they'd be a bit tough, all that sinewy leanness and the treadmill hard calves would break your teeth. Dining out on a softer, fatter (that's where all the flavour is according to Jamie Oliver) version would be far preferable. The Yummy Mummy would be all crocodile skin, hooped earrings and shiny white teeth, you wouldn't get much for your investment (which would have been considerable, The Portland doesn't come cheap you know).

So apart from a few WAGS (God bless them and their brain cell) and some celebrities, does anyone actually, personally know a proper bona fide Yummy Mummy? Think about it, they only really exist in Heat magazine (Grazia if they're really posh). Isn't it time we reclaimed the title, or merely claimed it for the first time? At the end of the day who's to say who's a Yummy Mummy and who isn't?
Let's make a pact, we'll all call ourselves Yummy Mummies and redefine the term, fling caution to the wind and emblazon it on our persona, our t-shirts go on then even our Tesco nappy bags. It would be fantastic! Freeing! One in the eye! For a while. I doubt though, however hard we push that the world will suddenly wake up to just how yummy the inside of the new Yummy Mummy is, whatever we look like on the outside. A new name will emerge assuredly out of the crowd to describe the original, real Yummy Mummies, forcing us sham ones to retreat from our new found power to lick our wounds (or ice creams) sullenly in the corner. Still, at least we're full of flavour.