Andy McDowell has been open about her decision to see off attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 because she was newly postpartum.

Saturday, 5/25, while attending the iconic festival, McDowell said in an interview that she "didn't come to the Cannes Film Festival (to promote her 1989 film)" for sex, lies and videotapes because she had a baby."

"I was afraid," she explained.

The actress continued to say that being "cruel to women" was socially accepted at the time, and if she showed up and walked the red carpet, as a postpartum mom,

"I was nursing, really big, just a mother, whatever, I didn't come," she explained. "And that's a shame. It's a real shame."Being a new mom with a changing body meant that McDowell stopped attending the festival, but she said that social expectations about the new mom slowly, but surely

"Because of the change in our expectations, they can't be like that to us anymore because we brought it up." And she told the publication at the time that if she were in the same position today, she "wouldn't have been afraid to come."

"Now I'm hugging my body like a woman. I think it's very sexy," she continued.

The three moms continued to say that while women may have tolerated unhealthy social norms in the past few years, they no longer accept such criticism or harmful standards of perceived beauty.

"We insisted on it, took it back, and we said, "But this is to be a woman." We are not girls, we are women," she added.

McDowell is a proud mom of 3 children: Justin, Rainey and Margaret Qualley, whom she shares with ex・husband Paul Qualley.

"My child has always been my priority and being a mother has been the most important aspect of my life," the actress told interview magazine in an interview in 2021. "But I was always balancing both of these aspects of my life because I was competitive and wanted to work."