Tiwa Savage, the undisputed Queen of Afrobeats, a global icon, revealed in a recent interview that she was dropped from a major Pepsi endorsement deal shortly after giving birth to her son. The reason? Her body, which had just performed the literal miracle of creating and birthing a human, wasn’t deemed “fit enough” for their brand standards.
Let that sink in. One of the most successful artists on the continent was told, in no uncertain terms, that her postpartum body was a professional liability. Tiwa’s experience is not an isolated incident; it’s a high-profile example of a pervasive and damaging cultural obsession—the demand for women to erase every physical trace of motherhood, and to do it almost overnight.
This “snap-back” culture is a toxic myth sold to us as an aspirational goal. The celebrity social media posts showcasing flat stomachs weeks after delivery, and the endless stream of #fitmom content. The message is clear: your body’s incredible, life-giving journey is something to be quickly “corrected” and hidden. The goal isn’t to heal, but to revert.
Snap-Back Culture: The Great Postpartum Lie
Tiwa’s experience is a harsh, corporate-enforced example of a toxic pressure every new mother knows intimately: the snap-back. It’s the unspoken, yet deafeningly loud, expectation that a woman’s body should magically erase all evidence of pregnancy within weeks, if not days, of giving birth. It’s a race back to a “before” that, for many, no longer exists. This relentless pressure, amplified by a constant scroll of curated perfection on social media, is extremely damaging.
The term itself, “snap back,” is flawed. It implies your body is a rubber band that has been temporarily stretched out of shape and must return to its original form. But motherhood isn’t a temporary condition, it’s a permanent transformation: physically, mentally, and emotionally. And as more women in the public eye get refreshingly honest, they’re asking a revolutionary question.
‘Snap Back To Where?’: The Question We Should All Be Asking
As Hailey Bieber, founder of Rhodes Beauty who welcomed her son Jack last year, told Vogue, “When people talk about ‘bouncing back’ — back where?”
It’s a simple question with a profound answer: there is no ‘back.’
Hailey Bieber opened up about her struggle with postpartum body dysmorphia. “My hips are wider, my boobs are actually bigger than they were before. They did not go back,” she explained. “And great, I’ll take it, but it’s not the same body that it was before.”
For so many of women, this is the crux of the issue. They are not just dealing with the physical recovery of childbirth: the body healing, the hormonal shifts, the sheer exhaustion. They’re also grieving a body they once knew. Hailey’s journey through the dark tunnel of online criticism and hyper-fixation on her old self led her to a crucial realization. She landed on a healthier perspective. “You change head to toe. And I think there was a minute where I kept really hyper-fixating on getting back to what I was,” she said. “And then I had to go through that acceptance of, I’m not going back. So it’s really about how do I want to move forward? Who do I want to be?”.
Moving forward, not feeling pressured to snap back, is the critical shift in perspective mothers and aspiring mothers need to make for a healthier sense of self.
This isn’t just a celebrity problem. For every star navigating postpartum life in the public eye, there are millions of us doing it in our own worlds, facing the same internal and external pressures. A 27-year-old new mother from Lagos, Kelechi*, told us about her own battle with the snap-back expectation. “I just missed my old body and wanted to feel desirable again,” she shared. Despite never being a gym-goer before her pregnancy, she started intense cardio just six weeks after giving birth. “I’ve never had my boobs touch my chest. It’s a strange feeling,” she said. “While I try to enjoy my new hips, I die a little inside when I try to fit into my pre-partum jeans and they won’t budge.” It is in moments like Kelechi’s that the snap-back narrative does its most insidious work, whispering that you’ve failed, that you’ve somehow “let yourself go.”
That feeling, the battle between appreciating what your body has done and mourning the body you once knew, is a deeply relatable conflict for many moms. The jeans that won’t budge become a symbol of a past self you’re told you must reclaim, feeding a cycle of self-criticism at a time when self-compassion is needed most.
The truth is, the snap-back is a scam. It ignores the nine months of profound physiological change, the hormonal shifts, the recovery from childbirth—whether vaginal or surgical—and the sheer exhaustion of caring for a newborn. It asks women to prioritize aesthetics over their physical and mental well-being.
Moving Forward With The Transformative Experience That Is Pregnancy
So, what’s the alternative? We move forward. We redefine what a postpartum body represents. It is not a “before” picture in need of an “after.” It’s a body that has stretched and shifted to build a human being, testifying to the strength, resilience and wonder of a woman’s body. The wider hips, the softer stomach, the stretch marks, these aren’t flaws to be erased. They are results from a natural, dare I say, sacred process.
Like Tiwa, we can call out the industries that penalize women for the natural process of motherhood. Like Hailey, we can ask “back where?” and choose to move forward into our new selves. Like Kelechi, it’s okay to through the motions, to miss our ‘old’ bodies, to acknowledge that we are not alone when we feel these feelings, then come to terms with how our bodies have carried us through the most heavy periods of our lives, and finally celebrate adorn and celebrate the body we have right now however we deem fit. And for every woman staring at a pair of jeans that no longer fit, we can offer grace and remind her that she has not lost a body, but gained a new one, full of power and a story worth telling.
