"“Even if it’s unspoken, there is a very clear expectation that you will maintain a certain appearance if you’re a woman,” the former CNN anchor and NBC News White House correspondent Campbell Brown told me. “The ability to maintain that appearance flies out the window when you get pregnant.” And afterward, too. The reality is that when you come back from maternity leave, you’re probably not at your pre-baby weight, and most likely your child isn’t sleeping through the night. “You don’t look as good,” said a correspondent who has a young child. “I don’t know how you solve that problem, because we have become accustomed to seeing a certain image of a correspondent. And a mom, in many ways, with bags under her eyes, does not fit that idea.” (As a former executive put it, there was a time when male management and senior-level producers judged women based on “Is she fuckable or not … And that puts you in a whole category. When you’re a working mom, you’re automatically not in that category.”)"