Parenting

Kelly Clarkson Talks About Sex, Family and Body Image

by Hollee Actman Becker
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My daughter was born in August 2002, during the first-ever season of American Idol. And as I lay there in the hospital room feasting on ice chips and cursing the day we decided to go ahead and pull the goalie, I joked to my husband that we should name our baby after whichever contestant got voted off that night. Great idea, right?

So the contestant voted off that night was Christina Christian—which sucked for us, because we’re Jewish. But had a certain 20-year-old from Fort Worth, Texas been born with a slightly less epic set of pipes, I’d probably be calling my kid Kelly Clarkson.

All of which was running through my head when I read that Miss Independent herself was covering the May Issue of Redbook with her own daughter, River Rose. Well, that and the fact that I’m now really, really old. And if you’re wondering how Kelly went about choosing her baby’s name, it’s because, as she told People, she lives near a river and she loves alliteration.

Anyway, much of the buzz surrounding Kelly’s cover turn is coming from the fact that she refuses to be body-shamed (see also: Pink, Bethenny Frankel), and that she swears she won’t be penciling in sex with her husband any time soon. “I always swore ours would not be a relationship where we have to schedule sex,” she tells Redbook. “That is never going to happen. We put each other first. I call it the oxygen-mask mentality—take care of yourself first!” Yeah, yeah, that’s what we all said. Talk to us again in six months.

Kelly is a total badass, though, when it comes to shutting down the online haters who consistently try to make her feel bad about her bod. “I don’t obsess about my weight, which is probably one of the reasons why other people have such a problem with it,” she tells Redbook. “There are just some people who are born skinny and with a great metabolism—that is not me.”

And while the pop star admits to sometimes wishing she’d been born with a better metabolism, Kelly is smart enough to realize that the grass is always greener. “Someone else probably wishes they could walk into a room and make friends with everyone like I can,” she says. “You always want what someone else has.”

Like an epic set of pipes, for example.

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