One of the sites I visited gave style recommendations by body shape. There were the standards that I knew, the rectangle, the apple, the hourglass, the pear, the inverted triangle, but they also included one I'd never seen in any fashion magazine or catalogue -- the oval. Well, goodness, here was finally the shape that fit me: broad, sloping shoulders, full breasts, high defined waistline not small enough to form a true hourglass, round belly, full hips, flat ass, small (in comparison) legs and arms, delicate wrists and ankles. First, I got tickled thinking that I was just a big stack of eggs, then I got ticked thinking how much time I've spent hating my shape.
I could play football without shoulder pads. Going from a training bra to a D cup at the age of ten was its own special hell. I've been grateful for the legs and arms though. I can't really call my legs small. I was a long distance bike rider when I was a teen, and that developed prominent muscles, including broad strong calves. However, they and my small wrists and ankles did allude to both the strength and delicacy my body possessed.
...i am determined
to love my body
I live here in this body.
It is home
Oh, how I've hated having such a stomach. When you carry your weight front and center, there's no hiding it. I've longed for flat abs all of my life, and no matter how many stomach crunches I've done, the belly just wouldn't go away. The first time I watched Little Miss Sunshine, I nearly cried during the short scene when Olivia is backstage at the beauty competition, looking at herself in the mirror and sucking in her stomach. I remember being that age and younger and doing the same thing. (I looked amazingly like Abigail Breslin when I was a kid, the big eyes, the long hair, and that was my body.) Being pregnant furrowed my belly with stretch marks, and then delivery bisected it with a vertical C-section beginning at my navel and ending at its now double dipping lowest curve. I've joked that if I could turn my head around backwards, my stomach would now like a much better ass than my real derriere. On top of all that, hidranitis suppurativa has dotted it with raised purple scars that tunnel and get larger.
With beauty being only skin deep, my belly misses every aesthetic standard our culture has for a female body, yet I am determined to love my body. I live here in this body. It is home, and I've wasted far too many years loathing it. I doubt this belly will ever go away. I passed the belly gene onto the womanchild. When she weighed 88 pounds with every vertebrae and rib standing out, and she, I and a team of doctors and nutritionists were fighting for her very life, she still had a belly. I'm doing around 25 crunches a day, and the decrease in inches in my abdomen is markedly smaller in proportion to what I'm losing in other body parts. (25 may not sound like much, but when I started exercising around nine months ago, I was proud to do five.) The muscles severed by Caesarean will never have the strength and tautness they once had, and this skin is undeniably stretched beyond its ability to rebound.
So how do I love what I'm told is unlovable? By going back to basics! Though I may not have abs of steel, I have a cast iron stomach whose digestion is only marred by migraine induced nausea. That soft, roundness which makes me anathema to fashion does make me very comfortable. The daughter, cats, husband and former boyfriends can attest to that. I have a lap that is meant to hold living things wanting love, and I have the heart to give them that love. Right now, that's all I can think of, but that's a pretty good beginning. Strength, comfort and love centered in my belly, yep, that's good enough.
body image, belly
