Anything-but-Desperate Housewives
Jan. 27, 2006 — -- I recently met three of the hottest, sexiest women I have ever laid eyes on. Each one is a mommy who sees raising kids as her top priority. But how they spend their spare time is revolutionary.
First is Molly Shattuck. She's a busy mother of three and wife of a Fortune 500 CEO.
"I am a stay-at-home mom and so basically it's just running around with them and doing all their activities," she said.
On the surface, Shattuck has the classic, hectic life of a stay-at-home mom. But she's actually redefining motherhood in a sexy new way.
It started when she was young. While on a Grand Canyon hiking trip with her mother, Shattuck made a list of "10 things I want to do before I die." They included: having kids, running a marathon, and becoming a pro football cheerleader.
But after five miscarriages and two tough pregnancies, life got in the way and her list was set aside. But she remembered that list one day when she heard the Baltimore Ravens were holding cheerleading tryouts. She showed up at the auditions wearing a mommy outfit of outdated spandex.
"It was way more conservative than 99.9 percent of the girls in the room," Shattuck said.
Shattuck had to borrow sexy shorts from another competitor. Could a stay-at-home mom strut her stuff against 300 women -- most of them half her age? Could she make the cut?
Yes.
"If you see your number posted, come back into the room. And I walked out and there was my number posted! I walked back in, and I burst into tears," she recalled.
At 38, Shattuck became the oldest cheerleader in the NFL.
"I looked at my husband, and I said: 'What have I gotten myself into?' This skirt is 9 inches from the top to the bottom," she said, after trying on her new outfit.
By following her dreams and defying the odds, she became an inspiration to other moms.
Sheila Kelley is another woman who believes motherhood and sexiness are not mutually exclusive.
Her husband, Richard Schiff, of the TV show "The West Wing," was not at all surprised when his actress-wife became fascinated with pole dancing while prepping for a movie role.
"I looked up on to the stage and it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life, and I thought, 'Wow! I really want to learn how to do that!' " she said.
Kelley installed a pole at home -- much to the chagrin of her husband. But dancing around a pole apparently isn't just sexy, it's strenuous work.
Working out on the strip pole helped her drop 55 pounds in just three months, after giving birth to her second child.
"It's really amazing how many muscles you use. It wasn't until I was 35 that I could do actual pull-ups on the pole. I mean … I'm buff! … You just get incredibly strong," she said.
Kelley's friends began to notice and then began begging her to teach them. Her husband recalled how his wife's friends reacted. "Friends of hers would come by, take over my office in the back. I got kicked out again. And over the course of six to eight weeks, all of a sudden they had a glow. They all of a sudden were beautiful," he said.
Soon students were lining up. Kelley was booked on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "The View." Today, her business, The S factor, is thriving. Kelley is selling books, DVDs, and has studios opening in four cities.
If pole dancing isn't hot enough, how about taking it all off? Loree Bischoff of Carefree, Ariz., did just that.When she heard Playboy was looking for "hot moms," her husband took sexy snapshots of her and sent them in. But Bischoff never thought she'd get the call that came just two days later.
"It just took a minute to absorb it. I just was so unprepared. I'm 43 now. At this age for, for Playboy to call and say you're good enough to be in our magazine, I felt like it was, you know, a huge compliment," she said.
But Bischoff wouldn't do the layout unless her kids were onboard. It was time for that awkward conversation.
"How many moms go: 'All right son, I'm thinking about, you know, doing a naked picture. What do you think?' " she said.
And in a mother-daughter role reversal, it was Bischoff's 20-year-old daughter, Montanna, who was overprotective.
"She is like: 'Well it is the most respectful magazine.' And I was like: 'Yes, Mom, it is, but you are also going to have people not looking at it respectfully.' "
But Montanna didn't want to discourage her mom. "I said: Don't do anything for me, I don't care. I say, do what you want.' "
With her family's blessing, Bischoff said she was comfortable at the photo shoot. But when the magazine hit the stands, she anxiously took her first peek. "As prepared as you are mentally, and you know you were there, and you know you did it, it's like, you open up and go: 'Whoa!' "
But, she was happy with the results, she said: "I was like: 'Wow! That's nice. They did a really nice job."
And despite her daughter's initial fears, she and the whole Bischoff family say they're proud of her gutsiness.
And the other hot moms I met said that they were proud and that their families were supportive of their decisions too.
Kelley takes pride that her strip-pole classes are reconnecting women with their sexuality. She believes that mothers need to pass on that legacy to their daughters.
"I want my daughter to see the world from her eyes and not have to be taught that a woman moving her body naturally is a bad thing," she said.
Shattuck says her family is proud of her cheerleading -- even though it cuts into family time. She's glad she tried -- and achieved -- another of the 10 things she told her mom she wanted to accomplish years ago on that mother-daughter hike in the Grand Canyon.
"Rejection is not failure. It's temporary. Regret is failure, because you're carrying it with you the rest of your life, thinking: "What if?'"
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