It's just a part of my body and doesn't need to be remarked upon.
What would it take for society to accept the belly, not necessarily as something beautiful but merely as something that is? |
 | | Martin Sweers/Trunk Archive |
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In the hours before a man mistook me for being pregnant, I ate one of the best ice creams of my life. It had a creamy pistachio center that was wrapped in black currant jam and covered in white chocolate, and it was my second ice cream of the day. I can't recall exactly what popped into my head in the moments after the man asked if I was expecting while on vacation this September — mostly because all I heard and felt was humming. But I do recall, somewhere within the noise, that I thought about those two ice creams. And I didn't allow myself to regret them for a second. |
Half a lifetime ago, I was a teenage girl suffering from anorexia, and today I refuse to ever return to that dark place. I couldn't let a stranger's comment affect how I felt about my body. But it did make me think about women's bodies generally, and recall an idea I've pondered for years: that as a society, we seem to be suffering from mass "belly dysmorphia." |
Not all round bellies are pregnant, and I'd wager that — if we include men in the equation — there are more round bellies in the world than there are pregnant women. Yet time and time again, the stomachs we see in the media are smooth, toned and flat. Because of this bias, entirely new generations inherit our neuroses, believing their perfectly normal stomachs to be abnormal and torturing themselves day and night as a result. |
I examined this topic in my recent guest essay for Times Opinion, exploring why the stigma around bellies has endured despite the body positivity movement and what it would mean to accept them — not necessarily as something beautiful but as something that just is. |
While I don't really know how we can fix this, I do think being open and honest with one another is a start. At the end of the day, I feel far more embarrassed for the man who made a comment about my belly than I do for myself. |
| READ AMELIA'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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