Belly up ladies, the battle of the belly

“Are you pregnant?” However innocent (or malicious) the intent, if the woman being asked the question is not pregnant, she has just been told to her face that she is fat.

The weight we carry around our middles charmingly known as belly fat! I do not know of a woman who is not self conscious about her tummy and will not do anything in her power to hide it.

Even the woman you look at and go hmmm if only I can have a tummy like hers is surprisingly in a constant battle of the belly! We accept, as our fate that we do not have the best legs in the world, that the saddle bags are going to be with us forever but at any given moment, my gym is full of men and women desperately crunching their abdomen to try to flatten their tummy!

The tummy is the most traitorous part of a woman’s body, the most difficult to conceal and control, even the fashion industry has tried to whip it into shape through corsetry to no avail.

Fashion has celebrated every part of the female anatomy, think the peplum that exaggerates the hips, the low cut neckline and oh the wonder bra that accentuate the breasts, the thigh high slit a celebration of the woman’s legs, the sleeveless a perfect way to show off the arms, and the exaggerated tiny waist line in the high waist band!

But when it comes to the pouch, unless it is to display its absolute perfect flatness, the stomach mysteriously has never been a visible signifier of a season’s trend, well the bikini first exposed the pouch to fresh air and the naked gaze in the early fifties and then more recently the crop top but that’s about it. The skinny jeans does not count because its very name gives you a clue as to whether you should wear them or not plus they have a way of holding everything else in but the pouch!

Ironically social media is awash with the pregnant bump, the new status symbol, which announces “I’m about to be a mother. “A proud signal of fertility in an age where there is so much anxiety about getting pregnant and so much heartache and failure, perhaps the only time we feel justified to proudly own a bump and lay it all out for the world to see.

Photo by nappy from Pexels

Forget the breast, the belly is the most intimate section of a woman’s visible anatomy if you ask me. Beneath the belly lies crucial organs, the kidneys, spleen, appendix, Fallopian tubes, ovaries, let’s just say its complicated medically down there. It bears the scars of surgery from cesarean section, ectopic pregnancies, it expands and contracts with our menstrual cycle, also under the belly is the stomach which rises and inflates as we eat, eat too large a meal and we may discreetly have to undo the top button of our trouser. The ultimate blow to our self esteem, we know we have gotten too fat when we can no longer zip up our favorite pair of jeans.

It is gruelingly hard to achieve a flat stomach the most drastic measure being liposuction-literally vacuuming the fat out of your body but again as surgeons warn, if you add weight after the procedure, the new fat deposits will return dis-proportionately meaning you might wind up with a fatter tummy than before so we are reduced to the two standbys that is diets and exercise but like anything that involves the gym and dieting it requires dedication and persistence that most of us just don’t posses.

So all hail to the celebrities who push out a baby in the morning and meet up with their trainer in the afternoon, the effort is truly monumental. If you can live on egg-white omelets, two hours a day of cardio and 400 crunches before breakfast, you certainly deserve those loaned Versace gowns!