My tummy

I have a tummy. It is not small.

When I was in my mid-20s, my tummy was flat. I wasn’t eating enough — I didn’t have an eating disorder, but I was terrible at taking care of myself. As I started heading toward my 30s, and eating rationally, my tummy grew a bit, but I could still think of myself as small-waisted. Hourglass-shaped. People still called me thin, even with my non-trivial butt and boobs.

After I crested 30 my tummy started to really grow. I went from size 12 to size 12/14 in pants, then to a size 14. Some of this is because of my butt; some, however, is because of my tummy. I’ve only given up trying on size 12 trousers this year, though they haven’t fit me in a while. I clung to that 12, partly out of annoyance at the way womens’ clothing is sized (I’m a size 10 to 12 in everything else, just not pants), and partly because I wanted to think of myself as not having a big stomach. But I had to admit it — my stomach was not convex, or flat, or even a little concave any more. It was a noticeable bulge, and it made me feel… fat. And no matter how much I rail against the ridiculous, brainless, heartless, cookie-cutter, boring beauty standard for women in my culture, it still infected me. I find beauty in women of all different shapes and sizes, but I felt I lost it in myself.

I did what I swore I would never do: I started asking K if I looked fat.

“What? No, of course not,” he’d say, or something like it. I’d believe he believed what he said, but he loved me and was therefore biased and unable to judge correctly. Besides, I know very well that to some people, most of them working in Hollywood or the fashion industry, I am fat. And there’s just nothing worse a woman can be, is there?

Some women obsess about their thighs or their butts, but I disliked my tummy. I wasn’t about to diet, knowing diets do not work for the vast majority of people. Besides, I like food. I did sit-ups, which made me feel good, but didn’t shrink my tummy at all. K started to get annoyed with me not seeing the beauty in my body that he did.

After we began our d/s relationship, he figured out what to do.

“Admit you’re beautiful,” he told me one day.

“What?” It was the most difficult thing he’d ever asked.

He put his hand around my throat. “Admit it. Say ‘I’m beautiful.’”

I laughed and said, “you’re beautiful.”

He slapped me. “Don’t be a smartass. Admit it.”

It took me a really long time to say, “I’m beautiful.” It took me longer to begin to believe it — a lot of exhilarating discipline that left me wonderfully exhausted, a lot of being forced to look in the mirror and talk about what I saw there in a positive way, a lot of struggling with myself. Now, I can say I’m beautiful as soon as he wants me to, and believe it in the moment, though it doesn’t always follow me throughout my day, not yet.

I mentioned thinking my tummy was big tonight, and K ran his hand over it. “Yes,” he said. “It’s so sexy. I love all your curves.”

I knew K liked my stomach the size it was, but it was still hard to assimilate. It’s not the kind of stomach a sexy woman is “supposed” to have. “I don’t think it’s sexy,” I told him.

“Well, you’re wrong. It’s a perfect size.” He forced me to say it. As I heard myself saying, and felt myself believing, that my tummy was a perfect size, I thought about his phrasing. A perfect size. One of many possible perfections. There are so many ways to be desirable, and I had lost sight of that.

I’m not going to try to hide my tummy any more. I’m going to wear my bikini, find lingerie that shows off my tummy, wear shirts that cling to it. I’m going to be beautiful in my own way.