Ricki Lake has followed an unusual career trajectory: from dancing the mashed-potato in Hairspray to talk show host to home birth advocate. The new documentary about widwifery that she executive-produced, "The Business of Being Born," recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Rebecca Traister reviews the film on Salon:

It's the 2001 birth of Lake's second son, Owen, in the bathtub in her apartment, that appears in the movie and has already garnered the film gossip column ink. "On the Internet they've already said, 'Ricki Lake gives birth naked ... Ew, I want to vomit,' or 'I think I just threw up a little in my mouth,'" Lake reported laughingly, as she described her own terror at watching the scene on the big screen the night before...

"That birth was very healing," Lake said, "both from the standpoint of having been sexually abused as a young girl," -- an event she has recently begun to discuss publicly -- "but also having body issues my whole life and being obese for such a long time. I made peace with my body that day. I was able to pat myself on the back and say, 'OK, so I got stretch marks!' But what an amazing and significant thing my body was able to do!"

Fat jokes, she claims, were the least of her concerns. "I was trepidatious about putting my footage in the film," she said. "I don't want to seem like I'm exploiting it. But I felt like it was necessary." Epstein added, "In the beginning when we were trying to get funding, Ricki putting her footage in there raised the ante. For her to expose herself this way, it confirmed this isn't some celebrity vanity project -- quite the opposite! This isn't Angelina Jolie traipsing through Kenya with an economist."

No. "The Business of Being Born" is most definitely not Angelina Jolie traipsing through Kenya with an economist. It's a magical mystery tour of bodily fluids, sliced uteri, gloppy infants and gaping vaginas. I watched it at a press screening seated across the aisle from Lake's mentor, venerable transgressor John Waters. Waters appeared calm if slightly faint as baby after baby was sloppily disgorged, and had guffawed appreciatively during the discussion of the demand for elective C-sections for those "too posh to push." "I said to John after the screening that I bet that was the most vaginas he's ever seen in his life!" said Lake.