OPINION: Asher Keddie smoked a cigarette. Quick, everybody freak out.

Quick. Someone take Asher’s baby away. She’s clearly not fit to be a mother. Oh wait…

Do you remember when the media caught Ryan Gosling smoking just four months after welcoming his baby daughter Edmeralda?

No, you don’t. Because it never happened. It could have happened because Ryan Gosling is a smoker. But in what kind of wicked world would Ryan Gosling smoking a durrie be a news story?

Fortunately for Gosling, that headline never happened. He is a dad, and it seems a dad having a quick second away from his baby is perfectly acceptable… but not for a mother. If a mother does the same thing, it does become a headline.

A mother, a famous mother, an Australian Gold Logie winning mother, has been caught smoking and the media is just not having it.

Keddie is a new mum. In March this year, she gave birth to a baby boy. She called him Valentino.

Here she is, introducing him to the world.

Recently, four months after giving birth, Keddie travelled to Perth to visit her sister. While in Perth, 40-year-old Keddie smoked a cigarette. Actually. She didn’t just smoke a cigarette. She smoked multiple cigarettes. And she smoked those cigarettes TWO days in a row.

AND SHE WASN’T EVEN WEARING MAKE UP.

According to The Daily Mail, who published photos of the private moment, Keddie “was spotted two days in a row, puffing away on a cigarette with her husband Vincent Fantauzzo in a local park in Perth, with her newborn nowhere in sight.”

She stood in a “desolate” park. AND SHE WORE THE SAME PONCHO TWICE.

(Mamamia has chosen not to publish the images)

Now. I’m not a mother so I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to raise a child. But I can only imagine it’s f**king hard and that sometimes, just sometimes, you need to take five minutes off and stand in a park with your husband and wear the same normal-person clothes you wore the day earlier.

It’s a sad day when a woman can’t go out and live her life without the fear of being judged. About her clothes. About her face. About doing anything other than being by her baby’s side.

But know what’s even sadder? When the people doing the judging are other women.

We need to do better than that.

If Asher Keddie smokes a cigarette, it’s absolutely no one else’s business. If she goes out without her child, it’s no one’s business. And if she doesn’t wear make up, all power to her.

Asher Keddie, congratulations on being normal.

And for the record? I really like that poncho. Even if you have worn it twice.

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