27/05/2020
My tummy looks a bit like the woman in this painting.
Yeh I don’t mean to brag, but this is a painting of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.
It’s a tummy with curves and bumps.
It’s the same tum I’ve had as long as I can remember. And I can remember. Being about 8 years old wearing a pink frilly bikini and the bottoms sitting up perfectly over my little roll. I remember it was okay because it was ‘puppy fat’ and cute. But even then there was a crease in my skin that told me that bump was a part of me and not something that could just be erased.
Then I remember as I became a teen seeing models and singers with their low low 90’s pants and being surprised that they had no tum like mine. Like, Brittany’s belly button sat smack bang in the middle of her flat stomach, whereas mine sat lower down, just above my little bump. It was from them that I thought a flat stomach was what you were meant to have. Anything else meant you were maybe just a bit fat.
So I’m talking 20 years of striving for something that was impossible all along.
Because most women will never achieve a flat stomach without surgery, because for most of us it’s biologically impossible. Your tum might just be as much a part of your body as your ear or your arm.
Isn’t it crazy that our society can actually influence something as signifcant as this? That if Christina rocked out in the “Dirrty” film clip with a roll over her chaps I might have loved my own body a bit more? How can we change this so our own children don’t spend the next 20 years thinking that sit ups are going to erase part of their body? Maybe we can start by accepting our own?
So why is it okay to have a round tummy and not a flat one?
1. Well biological reasons aside, none of us should have to strive toward a perfect body type that’s been created by society. It changes every few years anyways! One minute we need flat abs, the next minute we need a big b***y and a hundred years ago a curvy tummy was in. Who can keep up? Easiest and best not to.
2. The design and make up of our bodies is different to men. I mean men and women both have lot of stuff in their stomach, including about 7 metres of intestines. But a woman’s reproductive system has a lot going on! Ovaries and uterus etc all take up quite a bit of room. And they’re really important too so we need extra padding to protect them. It’s actually really cool and something that should be celebrated, not banished!
3. Then there’s hormones and visceral fat stores. We store fat differently to men and have a lot more going on with hormones. Everyone is effected differently by this, which is why some women can achieve a flat stomach and others just never will. So stop fighting it. By all means focus on health and fitness. Of course! It’s so important. But what is not important is having a flat stomach.
Finally, scientists once thought the Earth was flat and then they realised it was round. What a light bulb moment hey?! Similar story here…you thought your tummy was meant to be flat. But maybe it was perfect all along.
