Three months after giving birth to her first child in 2004, Upper East Side resident Jennifer Vaughan Maanavi had lost all the weight she had gained during her pregnancy and was again wearing her size 4 jeans. Capitalizing on her success, Ms. Vaughan Maanavi soon quit her investment banking job to launch Physique 57, a new Midtown exercise studio, popular among young mothers looking to get their “pre-baby bodies back.”

At Physique 57, which held its grand opening last week, instructor-led classes blend yoga and ballet moves, orthopedic stretching, and light strength training – with an emphasis on the waistline, the rear, and other post-pregnancy problem areas. As pressure intensifies on mothers to stay trim, fashionable, and blemish-free, savvy entrepreneurs like Ms. Vaughan Maanavi are vying for a foothold in the burgeoning “hot mom” market. Modish mothers’ ample buying power has yielded a new generation of fitness regimens, skin care companies, ready-to-wear fashions, and a slew of other products and services.

“Hot moms,” in fierce pursuit of silver beauty bullets, are the ideal consumers, Ms. Vaughan Maanavi, a 35-year-old Columbia Business School graduate, said. “If you tell me that an eye cream gets rid of dark circles, I don’t even ask how much it costs,” she said. “Being a mother, you’re so harried and tired that you lose a bit of rationality about your resources.”

Companies are aggressively courting young mothers, according to the editor of Brandweek magazine, Karen Benezra. “There’s this fascination with celebrity pregnancies,” she said. “People want to know what kind of baby shower starlets are having, and how they plan to dress the nursery. All this attention has supersized the whole mom experience. There’s an aspirational aspect to it.”

The co-founder of the fledgling Mama Mio skin care company, Tanya Kazeminy Mackay, said as motherhood becomes an ever-more glamorous endeavor, the retail market is thriving. “Suddenly, there is a realization that you can still look good with a baby on your hip,” said Ms. Kazeminy Mackay, whose company has developed a line of products for pregnant women and new mothers trying to stave off stretch marks and scarring. “I think it has always been the case that you don’t have to give it all up to have kids, but society as a whole has realized this watching celebrities with their pregnancies and their kids. There’s a lot of pressure to look fabulous right after you have had a baby.”

Some new mothers are chasing the dramatic results of celebrities, seen walking the red carpet or the runway just weeks after giving birth, an East Side mother, Heba Abedin, said. “You see Katie Holmes looking fantastic two weeks after having a baby,” she said. “Everyone’s trying to keep up.”

Ms. Abedin said that, in pursuit of perfect post-baby bodies, three of her friends have opted for post-Caesarean section tummy tucks. “Everyone thinks you should fit into your prematernity jeans even if you just gave birth,” she said. “You’re not supposed to let motherhood slow you down.”

Despite its extreme demands, Ms. Abedin said she feels empowered by the “hot mom” boom. “You can still walk around in your Joe’s Jeans,” she said, referring to a brand of $150 denim trousers. “You can continue to have the lifestyle you’re accustomed to, and you don’t have to sacrifice everything.”

That’s the premise of “The Hot Mom’s Handbook” (Thomas Nelson, $16.99), a just-released book by a former teacher and self-proclaimed “hot mom,” Jessica Denay. “People used to tell me all the time, ‘You don’t look like a mom,'” Ms. Denay, the mother of 6-year-old Gabriel, said.

Those curious compliments got her thinking: Motherhood, she decided, needed “a little sizzle.” Ms. Denay, 31, wanted to free the institution from its stodgy and self-sacrificing image. “There was this old-fashioned stereotype that being a good mother meant forsaking yourself,” she said. “Today, women are having children later in life, after 10 or 15 years of work, and travel, and fashion. They don’t want to give that all up when they become mothers.”

Determined to give motherhood an extreme makeover, Ms. Denay and several of her friends last year founded the Hot Mom’s Club, an online community “for moms who refuse to check their sense of style and sexuality at the white picket fence.”

Or, more likely, at the threshold of her East Side classic six.

Within days of the Web launch, Ms. Denay had received hundreds of e-mail correspondences. Many were from women who wondered whether or not they have what it takes to be a “hot mom.”

They did, she told them.

“It’s about your attitude,” she said. “It’s about confidence and balance. A hot mom knows who she is and brings it into her mothering.”

Perhaps, to a lesser extent, it’s about looking good in one of the Hot Mom’s Club tight tank tops and T-shirts, which sell for $33 and $35. Ms. Denay has already sold thousands of them via her online store, bringing in enough revenue to quit her day job. Other items for sale at the site: children’s tank tops that read “My Mom’s Hotter Than Your Mom,” and “My Wife is a Hot Mom” T-shirts for adults.

Ms. Denay’s “hot moms” movement – and the mini-empire it spawned – has become bigger and more profitable than she ever thought possible. “I’m not surprised that so many moms want to be part of this,” she said. “What’s surprising and exciting is that we’ve been able to capitalize on it as we have. In business, timing is everything, and we sure came in at the right time.”