Ashley Graham, Maren Morris and Jessica Alba discuss ‘mommy-shaming police’ on Red Table Talk

Three of Hollywood’s most high profile mother’s, Ashley Graham, Jessica Alba and Maren Morris got candid about being the victims of the ‘wrath of the mommy-shaming police.’

The stars joined Jada Pinkett-Smith’s popular Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk on Tuesday and opened up about how they’ve dealt with mommy-trolls judging their parenting skills. 

‘Mommy shamers are just mean girls who grew up to be mothers,’ said 32-year-old Ashley Graham in the episode. 

Red Table Talk is hosted by Jada along with her daughter Willow and mom Adrienne Banfield-Norris. For the mommy-shaming episode, they were also joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani.    

‘I know you have felt the wrath of the mommy-shaming police,’ Jada said to Ashley who welcomed her first child, Isaac, eight months ago.

‘It’s interesting because my whole career has been based around body-shaming because I’m a curvy girl who has come into a skinny world and said that my body, and other bodies like mine, need to be normalized,’ Graham said. 

She added: ‘I can sit here and tell you that I just brush it off, but I don’t brush it off.’

Since becoming a first-time mom earlier this year Ashley has been a big proponent of normalizing breastfeeding and shares images of herself feeding son Isaac on social media. Those images, inspiring for so many, also made the Vogue cover girl a target for online trolls.

‘This photo, this is the first time I had taken Isaac out in public,’ she said referring to one of her early breastfeeding snaps. ‘He was just under a month old, and I wanted to go to my favorite brunch spot. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do if I have to breastfeed?”‘

‘Well, I’m just going to whip out my boob and feed him. So then I said to my husband, Justin, “Take a picture! This is my first time breastfeeding him in public’ this is something I always want to remember,”‘ she continued.

The body positivity advocate said she ‘agonized’ over what to write before posting it and ‘sure enough I got mom-shamed.’ 

Willow, 19, chimed in and pointed out that ‘the reason why it’s so jarring for people is because we’re taught from a young age that our bodies are meant to be sexualized.’ 

Ashley concurred considering that fact that her ‘whole career’ centers around is centered around being sexy.

‘My breasts have been the forefront of many magazine covers, so then to flip to my baby is there sucking on them, I think that people just had to switch their minds, but they are multi-purposeful,’ Graham said in response. 

Jessica Alba has had over a decade of experience being a target of mom shaming as the mother to Honor, 12, Haven, nine, and Hayes, two, with husband Cash Warren.

The 39-year-old Honest Company mogul revealed that she’s had to do ‘a lot of therapy’ over the years and learned that people who shame are usually ashamed of themselves. 

‘I’ve come to this place where I realize that most people who have something to say, it’s because they’re so insecure and it’s more of them being ashamed of themselves, them being overly critical and for whatever reason, the natural reaction is to pull other people apart for them to feel justified or them to feel OK,’ she reflected.

And, it’s not just moms shaming mom, Alba shared an upsetting story of being shamed during her pregnancy by her own doctor.   

‘Even my damn OB told me, “You really shouldn’t be gaining more than the 25 pounds for your entire pregnancy,”‘ Alba revealed. ‘And I was like, “Oooh, I kind of gained that in my first trimester with all three.” That’s just life. That’s me. That’s the way my body carries these babies.’   

Alba and Graham have both been frequent targets of mommy-shaming but Jada herself has also dealt with her fare share of bullying. 

The first time Jada was seriously mom-shamed was back when Willow shaved her head.

‘You had two parents that worked so I get shamed for homeschooling you so that you can be with us, and I would have gotten shamed for leaving you here and you not being with us,’ Jada said looking back.  

Later in the episode, Jada brought on country star and new mom Maren Morris who was mom-shamed so bad earlier this summer that she felt like she couldn’t share photos of her son Hayes. 

‘So the first bout of public mom-shaming I dealt with was with my son shortly after he was born,’ the 30-year-old singer explained. ‘It was Fourth of July and I was at the lake with my family and I had Hayes, my son, on an inflatable golf cart float [that] was tied to the dock and it was very shallow and I didn’t have a baby life vest on him.’ 

‘So immediately once I posted it, every comment was like, “Why don’t you have a life vest on him? He could easily fall out of your arms, off the float and into the water.”‘

The comments were vicious and the star was forced to turn off the commenting option from the post. 

‘I just find it really unfortunate because we’re all trying to do our best,’ Morris said. ‘We all love our babies and so it feels like a bigger betrayal when it’s a mom shaming another mother because they’ve been there too.’

Red Table Talk’s newest episode, Mom Shaming: The New Epidemic, is available on Facebook Watch now.